Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
“Geographical variation has been one of the main assumptions underlying L2 motivation research during the past four decades that the social milieu in which language learning takes place exerts a profound influence on L2 motivation” (Dörnyei & Clément, 2001, p. 403). When language learners share similar social characteristics, the social influence that takes place during the process of learning a foreign language requires comprehensive investigation because there will be patterns in learners’ beliefs that researchers can predict. In addition, language learners’ beliefs and attitudes toward the language learning process are influenced by the beliefs of the people around them. Language learners interact with different people and groups, including their teachers, classmates, parents, and friends. Therefore, the learners might consider these groups’ beliefs and opinions when they start learning languages, and these beliefs might motivate or demotivate the learners to learn the target language. They might use these beliefs and opinions to shape firm values as part of their belief system in language learning.
Predicting social influence is expected to help language teachers and educators understand their students’ beliefs during the starting phase of an intervention, such as creating textbooks, developing teaching methods, and designing course objectives. Incorporating the beliefs of important stakeholders, such as teachers, classmates, parents, and future employers, is necessary. However, examining, analyzing, and understanding the belief system of specific groups is difficult because of the complexity of the belief system and the nature of understanding the belief concept. Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) defined the belief concept as “the subjective probability of a relation between the object of the belief and some other object, value, concept, or attribute” (p. 131), and Ajzen (2005) wrote that people form “beliefs about an object by associating it with certain attributes” (p. 131). To illustrate, learners might associate the ineffectiveness (attribute) with online classes (the object) because online classes are already valued by the people around them. In other words, language learners consider the beliefs and attitudes of people around them and may act upon them.
This mixed-methods design study investigates the learners’ beliefs on what important individuals who influence them think about participating in lessons to learn English as a foreign language (EFL) in two settings: face to face and online. There are crucial reasons to choose these two environments and compare them based on social groups’ beliefs. For example, the two learning environments are the common language learning environment nowadays around the globe. There are few published studies that compare the influence of the social pressure when attending language learning classes in these two learning environments. Moreover, limited published studies use valid and reliable theoretical concepts to examine the influence of social pressure to learning foreign languages in both learning environments. Ajzen’s subjective norm (SN) concept is used to design the research tools for collecting and analyzing the participants’ SN beliefs regarding the beliefs of important individuals who influence them in face-to-face language learning (FLL) and online language learning (OLL) classes. These settings are compared using quantitative and qualitative data.
Literature Review
The social pressure to learn language is caused by the communities of people around language learners. Several studies show that learners’ beliefs are influenced by the opinion of people who are important to them (Aragão, 2011; Horwitz, 2007; Ushida, 2005; Wudthayagorn, 2000) and that they consider the beliefs of their relatives, classmates, friends, and teachers. Learners might act upon these beliefs and form a negative or positive attitude toward the learning environment.
The beliefs of family and relatives are important factors that influence language learners’ opinions. Donitsa-Schmidt et al. (2004) examined the influence of parents’ beliefs on their children to learn language. The researchers distribute self-report questionnaires to 692 students (4th–6th grades) and 362 parents from 14 elementary schools in Israel. Their results confirmed the important role that parents play in shaping their children’s behavior. Parents’ attitudes constitute one of the predictors of students’ motivation to study Arabic in an Israeli context. The influence of parents to learn languages and dialects might be stronger than what educational institutions might offer as educational resources to learn languages. To illustrate, Carroll et al. (2017) found that parents’ use of colloquial Arabic in the home and engagement in a few literacy practices using Modern Standard Arabic influence Emirati youth to acquire Modern Standard Arabic even though the United Arab Emirates government has invested tremendous resources in the use of Modern Standard Arabic in the education system. This finding shows the importance of examining and understanding the opinions of family and relatives for learning languages. Designing a language learning curriculum without understanding learners’ family’s opinions might lead to ineffective outcomes. Rosiak (2018) examines motivations of post-2004 Polish migrants to Wales to study Welsh and their learner trajectories on the journey to becoming new speakers, showing that Polish migrants have positive attitudes toward the Welsh language. One important factor that influences their attitudes and motivations to learn the language is the connections of family and friends to the language.
Furthermore, language learners’ friends’ beliefs inside and outside the learning environment should be investigated. Aragão (2011) found that students’ beliefs about their speech, classmates, and teachers influenced their feelings of embarrassment, shyness, and class inhibition and that these beliefs influenced the way they behaved in class. For example, the participants of the study often reported speaking English in class as a challenge. They believed that their classmates, with whom they were not acquainted, spoke English better than they did, and this belief made them feel embarrassed and restrained their use of spoken English. Aragão concluded that feelings such as shame, fear, and inhibition were strongly associated with beliefs about students’ self-concepts in a foreign language classroom, with students believing themselves to be inferior to idealized models.
In addition, Tanaka (2017) examined the roles of motivation and peers in EFL vocabulary learning. The participants were 155 science and engineering students in Japan. Among other factors, the study found that perceived competence among peers plays a decisive role in motivating and demotivating learners. Although motivated peers have little impact on learners’ motivation in a demotivating learning environment, demotivated peers have a negative influence. These findings reveal the malleability of peer influences and crucial factors for successful EFL vocabulary acquisition in a demotivating learning context. Chang (2007) explored the influence of individual EFL learners’ autonomy—their autonomous beliefs and actual autonomous behaviors—in an English department at a Taiwanese university. During interviews, Taiwanese EFL students commented that their classmates were indeed important to their learning because being around autonomous, motivated classmates positively influenced their autonomy.
Teachers are also another important group that might cause social pressure among learners during the learning process. Mismatches between the beliefs of language students and teachers could negatively affect students’ satisfaction with the language class and might lead to a discontinuation of study. Studies that examine the influence of social groups’ beliefs in OLL environments are fewer than those examining the same in FLL environments. Ushida (2005) investigated the role of students’ motivation and attitudes in an L2 study within an OLL course context at Carnegie Mellon University. The author found that, in course evaluations, the students reported that the teacher was the center of their satisfaction in the OLL courses. According to Ushida (2003), her PhD dissertation results were similar to those of Wudthayagorn (2000), who showed a positive correlation between students’ attitudes toward teachers, classes, and learning and the behavioral attitudes of young Japanese language learners. Wudthayagorn concluded that if students liked their teacher, enjoyed their classes, and were satisfied with their learning experiences, then they would demonstrate positive behavioral attitudes toward the target language, regardless of the instructional format (e.g., face to face, online, or hybrid).
SN
This study uses Ajzen’s concept and definition of social influence. Ajzen (2005) uses SN to refer to a person’s perception of social pressure to perform or not a behavior under consideration from sources such as school principals, colleagues, parents, and classmates. SN is the perceived social pressure to engage or not in a behavior, and it is assumed to be governed by a total set of accessible normative determinants concerning the expectations of important referents. Specifically, the strength of each normative belief (nb) is weighted by the motivation to comply (mc) with the referent in question, and the products are aggregated, as shown in the following equation:
According to Ajzen (2005), nbs indicate the perceived behavioral expectations of important individuals or groups, such as an individual’s spouse, family, friends, teachers, supervisors, or coworkers, depending on the person and the behavior being studied. The assumption is that these normative determinants—in combination with an individual’s mc with different referents—govern the main SN. Specifically, the mc with each individual contributes to the SN in direct proportion to a person’s subjective perception of the probability of the referent thinking that the person should perform the behavior in question. SN comprises two components: (a) the beliefs about the way important referents would like an individual to behave (nbs, e.g., “I feel pressure from my parents to learn English”) and (b) the positive or negative judgments about each belief (outcome evaluations, e.g., “Regarding my decision to learn English, my parents have the opinion that performing certain actions is important/unimportant”).
Ajzen (2002) recommended the use of both injunctive and descriptive norms to measure SN. Injunctive norms refer to an individual’s beliefs about what important referents think should be done. By contrast, descriptive norms refer to what most people actually do. In other words, descriptive norms are focused on what may be popular in the social environment, and they are based on perceptions of what is done by most members of one’s social group. In online education, if students’ parents hold differing beliefs about online education, then students will follow the beliefs of the parent who is more important to them. If students’ classmates hold differing beliefs about taking an online class, then students will be influenced by the beliefs of classmates who are more important to them. This study examines students’ SN beliefs about attending EFL lessons in online and face-to-face settings. In this work, SN indicates the perceived behavioral expectations of important individuals or groups, such as a student’s spouse, family, friends, teachers, or classmates, regarding attending online and face-to-face EFL lessons.
Literature Gap and the Purpose of the Study
The results of the aforementioned studies indicate the influence of social pressure on learning a foreign language. There is a direct influence on learners from their family, teachers, and friends, and this pressure might change the learners’ attitudes, values, and behaviors to conform to those of the influencing group. There are specific social groups such as friends, classmates, and teachers that influence learners’ attitudes toward the learning environment. However, it is difficult to examine and analyze learners’ beliefs without valid and reliable research tools. Researchers need a valid and reliable theoretical concept to elicit and examine language learners’ beliefs.
Moreover, analyzing the literature shows that there are not studies, for which the main objective is to examine the influence of social pressure on learning language using valid and reliable theoretical framework. Also, the previous studies focused on only one group, which is either teachers, friends, or parents as a sample, revealing the need to investigate the beliefs of all the social groups that influence language learners in one study. Understanding the beliefs of the people around language learners will help educators explain learners’ attitudes inside the learning environment. It will also help educators design a curriculum that takes into account the beliefs of the society. However, examining and understanding social pressure require a reliable and valid theoretical framework. Therefore, this study uses Ajzen’s SN concept to elicit and understand the beliefs of groups that learners might take into account when in the language classroom.
Research Questions and Hypotheses
Based on the results of previous studies, the following hypotheses were formulated:
Method
Context
Boo et al. (2015) analyzed the geographic distribution of the L2 motivation research from 2005 to 2014. They found that “a definite geographic shift towards East Asia from the previous centres of motivation research in North America and Europe” (p. 151). Moreover, they found that the most studied nationalities of the research participants are Chinese and Japanese. The issue of whether the geographical location within a relatively homogeneous community such as Saudi context has a motivational impact has not been extensively studied, specifically the influence of social groups such as parents, teachers, classmates, and friends. This indicates the need to explore the Saudi context because it has unique social and political characteristics that might influence the language learners’ beliefs. Saudi society is a homogeneous society. They share the same political, educational, and religious background. This research was conducted in an intensive EFL program in a university in Saudi Arabia that represents a homogeneous community. The program is a prerequisite for students who attend different university colleges, such as engineering and science colleges, in which English is the medium of instruction, and it offers four courses, namely, reading, writing, listening, and grammar. The students of the program are native Arabic speakers aged 19 to 25 years, and they are all male because public education in Saudi Arabia is sex segregated at all levels. The instructors are coming from different countries, and therefore the students and the teachers do not share the same cultural background.
Students in the first level of the extensive English program, known as the 011 English Programme, comprised the participants of the FLL group. The program is a core program for students in the colleges of engineering, computer science, sciences, financial and administrative sciences, humanities, and education. The program offers four courses, namely, listening, grammar, writing, and reading, which are taught by different instructors. The reading course was selected for this study to avoid the effect of any differences in language skills on the students’ beliefs and performance.
Students in the second level of the extensive English learning program, known as the 012 English Programme, comprised the participants of the OLL group. This program is offered to students who have passed the 011 English Programme. The reading course was selected to match the course skill used for the 011 English Programme (the FLL group). The instructors of the course use the same textbook, and two chapters from the textbook were taught online for 2 weeks using the Blackboard learning management system. The participants are familiar with online learning. They took two courses fully online the last semester using the Blackboard. In addition, the Blackboard is used as a supportive learning tool in all university courses. The current situation of OLL in Saudi Arabia has increased significantly in tertiary education. This demands more research on the OLL environment at the university level to understand the factors that might hinder the learning process online.
The reason for choosing these two specific groups as participants for this study is that these are the two main courses at the university that have a large number of students. Having a larger sample size helps the researcher have more accurate mean values, identify outliers, and provide a smaller margin of error. In addition, the researcher is not testing the students’ level of proficiency. The focus of the research is on the social groups that influence the learners’ beliefs. As there are not two classes which share the same level of proficiency, the researcher had to select two classes, for which the levels of proficiency are different.
Mixed-Methods Design: Construction of the Research Instruments
A mixed-methods design was adopted in this work to investigate the topic in depth as summarized in Table 1. The multiphase design comprised two qualitative/quantitative phases and one quantitative/qualitative phase occurring sequentially. The qualitative phase was followed by a quantitative phase, which was then followed by a qualitative phase (i.e., qual → quan → qual; Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011). The mixed-methods design was selected because of the complexity of investigating and understanding learners’ beliefs. Figure 1 illustrates the number of participants and instruments in three phases: eliciting study, piloting study, and final study. Ethical issues were considered before, during, and after the research period. Permission from the administration of the university and the institutional review board (IRB) was obtained before conducting the research. The students’ voluntary agreement to participate in this study was taken through a consent form written in their mother tongue.
Data Collection, Analysis, and Interpretation Process.
Number of participants and instruments in each phase.
Ajzen’s (2006) SN concept requires elicitation work to identify accessible nbs that influence students’ social motivation. Thus, this work started with two elicitation studies aimed at eliciting beliefs about learning English in online and face-to-face settings using interviews and open-ended surveys. In the elicitation phase, 61 students responded to the open-ended written survey about learning English in a face-to-face setting, and four students participated in interviews. At the same time, 64 students responded to the open-ended written survey about learning English in an online setting, and four students participated in interviews. After analyzing the qualitative data from the questionnaires and interviews, the online group and face-to-face group questionnaires were designed.
In the process of validating the questionnaire items and their translation, the FLL and OLL questionnaires were piloted on 99 and 70 language learning students, respectively. In addition, both questionnaires were sent to nine instructors in the program for review and to solicit feedback and suggestions. The translation of the questionnaires was validated during the pilot study procedures by asking the participants about the clarity of the questionnaire items. In addition, copies of the questionnaires were given to the nine reviewers who are majoring in applied linguistics and fluent in Arabic and English. The reviewers were asked to give their comments and suggestions on the survey items and the Arabic translation to achieve content validity and translation validity. The instructors validated the accuracy of the translation because they are fluent in both languages. All research instruments were administered in Arabic, which is the researcher’s mother tongue. The questionnaires were translated into Arabic so that the students would understand the survey items easily and their responses to the questionnaire items would reflect their true beliefs.
After reviewing the questionnaires according to the reviewers’ comments and the results of the pilot studies, the final versions of the online group (
After completing the questionnaires, the FLL and OLL groups spent 2 weeks participating in reading lessons in face-to-face and online settings, respectively. After the 2-week learning experience, interviews were conducted with 16 participants from the OLL group and 22 participants from the FLL group. The researcher used the questionnaire items as guidelines during the interviews. This mixed-methods design was used to investigate and collect the data thoroughly. Brown (2014) proposed that mixed-methods researchers use qualitative methods to discover and formulate questions and hypotheses, conduct a large-scale quantitative study to investigate these questions and hypotheses, and perform qualitative sampling to understand the quantitative results comprehensively. The researcher has an insider perspective. He shares the same backgrounds with the participants in terms of nationality and mother tongue. He also has taught in the same institute. However, during the interviews, the researcher presents himself as an outside researcher who would like to understand learners’ perspectives and the society around them to encourage the participants to express their beliefs without constraints.
Materials and Instruments
Questionnaire
Both of the final questionnaires consisted of three sections. The first section sought biographical information. The second section presented close-ended questions about students’ beliefs. The direct measures of SN were presented in four items; the five indirect measures were presented in two items. In other words, two questions were asked for each theme. For example, nb (what close friends think) was presented in one item, and its mc was presented in another item. The first set of items was related to nb, and the second set of items was developed to assess the mc for each of the nbs. Table 2 presents the five themes selected from the first qualitative phase that were used in the questionnaire.
Questionnaire Themes.
The last section of the survey contained an open-ended question that solicited comments from students about engaging in English reading lessons in face-to-face and online settings. This section provided the students the opportunity to add their thoughts and ideas about learning reading skills in both settings. As recommended by Francis et al. (2004), the items were presented in a nonsystematic order in the survey to ensure reliability. In other words, the questions used to assess SN were interspersed with questions aimed at measuring other constructs. Appendices A and B present the questionnaire closed-ended items for both groups.
Pre-Analysis Procedures
During the screening process of the survey, 81 participants from the FLL group and 45 participants from the OLL group were excluded because they did not provide enough information in the survey. Subsequently, the internal consistency of the four items for the direct measure of SN was checked using Cronbach’s alpha. In the surveys of both groups, SPSS suggested deleting the second item that measured the SN concept directly (i.e., Item 7) to improve Cronbach’s alpha. Thus, this item, which was perceived as being poorly constructed or potentially confusing for the participants, was excluded.
After timing each item of SN nb with its corresponding item of SN mc in the survey, the results were checked for univariate outliers and then converted to the highest or lowest nonoutlier scores. Then, the results were checked for multivariate outliers in the indirect measures of SN using Cook’s distance and the Mahalanobis distance. After completing the regression test, in which the mean of the direct measures of SN served as the dependent variable and the five indirect measures of SN served as the predictors, the results showed 16 multivariate outliers in the FLL group and 10 multivariate outliers in the OLL group. These outliers were excluded from the analysis. As a result, the sample size of the FLL group became 674, and that of the OLL group became 286. Finally, the data were checked for univariate normality in the indirect measures of SN. The results of the items did not exceed the criteria of skewness more than ±2.00 and of kurtosis more than ±7.00.
Results
Quantitative Results
Quantitative results of the FLL group
Descriptive results of the FLL group
The participants in the FLL group studied at two campuses and had different university majors. In their last 2 years of high school, Saudi Arabian students are required to choose between scientific and literacy streams. In this study, 629 participants graduated from the scientific stream and 45 from the literacy stream. Furthermore, 596 participants graduated from public/government high schools and 78 from private or other types of high schools. The participants joined six colleges: the college of sciences (
Inferential results of the FLL group
The data were checked for potential correlation between the scores of the five indirect measures of SN (SN1 = what close friends think regarding attendance in face-to-face English reading lessons, SN2 = what classmates think regarding attendance in face-to-face English reading lessons, SN3 = what teachers think regarding attendance in face-to-face English reading lessons, SN4 = what family and relatives think regarding attendance in face-to-face English reading lessons, and SN5 = what future employers, such as companies and the government agencies, think regarding attendance in face-to-face English reading lessons) and the mean score of the direct measures of SN using the Pearson correlation. The five indirect measures were correlated with the mean of the direct measures. This means that there is a positive relationship between the five indirect variables and the direct measure mean. The mean of direct measure will increase if the scores of the indirect measures increased.
The scores of the five indirect measures in face-to-face EFL reading lessons were used to predict the mean of the direct measure of SN in face-to-face reading lessons (
Diagram of the indirect measures of SN for the face-to-face group.
The results of Figure 2 generally support the theoretical expectations (supporting Hypothesis 1). The five indirect measures, considered together, significantly predicted the direct mean of SN (
Descriptive Statistics and Correlation of the Five SN Themes for the FLL Group (
Quantitative results of the OLL group
Descriptive results of the OLL group
The participants in the OLL group (
Inferential results of the OLL group
The data were first analyzed for potential correlation between the scores of the five indirect measures of SN (SN1 = what close friends think regarding attendance in online English reading lessons; SN2 = what classmates think regarding attendance in online English reading lessons; SN3 = what teachers think regarding attendance in online English reading lessons; SN4 = what family and relatives think regarding attendance in online English reading lessons; and SN5 = what future employers, such as companies and the government agencies, think regarding attendance in online English reading lessons) and the mean of the direct measures of SN for the OLL group using the Pearson correlation. The five indirect measures correlated with the mean of the direct measure. This indicates that there is an association between the five indirect variables and the direct measure mean. If the scores of the five indirect measures increased, the mean of the direct measure will increase.
The scores of the five indirect measures of SN were used to predict the mean of the direct measure of SN (
Diagram of the indirect measures of SN for the online group.
The results of Figure 3 generally support the theoretical expectations (supporting Hypothesis 2). The five indirect measures, considered together, significantly predicted the mean of the direct measures of SN (
Descriptive Statistics and Correlation of the Five SN Themes for the OLL Group (
Comparison of the Group Path Models
The results of this section generally support the theoretical expectations (supporting Hypothesis 3). For the five factors (SN1 close friends, SN2 classmates, SN3 teachers, SN4 relatives, and SN5 employers), there are different beliefs about attending FLL and OLL classes. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed a significant multivariate main effect for Wilks’ λ = .942,
Differences Between the FLL (
Qualitative results
Qualitative results of the FLL group
Eleven interviews (two students in each interview) with students from different majors, sections, and home locations were conducted to understand students’ SN beliefs in detail. Exactly 22 students participated in the interviews, and 134 students wrote comments, suggestions, ideas, and thoughts regarding the last question in the FLL group survey. The questionnaire questions were used to conduct the interviews. The interviews and surveys were subsequently transcribed, and the students’ beliefs were coded. Special attention was paid to the SN beliefs that motivated and demotivated the students to attend FLL lessons. This section presents the SN beliefs that influence learners to attend FLL classes.
The first variable was the presence of an instructor who believes that face-to-face EFL classes are more useful than online classes. The instructors who supported FLL classes encouraged students to take EFL classes in face-to-face settings. The second variable referred to the instructors’ enthusiasm from the perspective of the students. The students believed that instructors who prefer face-to-face settings possess a sincere intention to teach students. As a result, the students’ intention to attend FLL classes increases. The students also thought that instructors who support online learning may be busy and may not have enough time to teach their students. One participant stated, “I think busy teachers like to conduct their classes online because they cannot come to campus.” The third variable involved having a private instructor. The students believed that the use of private instructors decreased their intention to attend face-to-face classes. Some students hired private instructors to help them learn English and thus lacked a serious intention to attend their classes.
The fourth variable referred to the benefits from classmates’ questions. The students also thought that they would not have access to their classmates’ questions during online classes because their classmates might send their questions to the instructor privately via e-mail. The fifth variable referred to help from classmates. The students believed that they could use their classmates’ help in learning and translating during face-to-face classes. Their classmates might help them understand instructions and perform class activities because some are highly proficient in English.
The sixth variable referred to friends’ beliefs about learning English in face-to-face settings. The students mentioned that most of their friends support face-to-face learning. The seventh variable involved family members. The students emphasized during the interviews that most of their family members preferred learning English in face-to-face settings because most of them are not familiar with online learning. The last variable was future employers’ opinions. Most of the interviewees thought that their future employers would not pay attention to the manner in which they learned English. Instead, they thought that their future employers’ main concern would be whether the students have high proficiency in English, regardless of how they learned it. However, some interviewees thought that future employers would prefer face-to-face methods because instructors directly interacted with the students and knew the students well in such settings. As a result, the recommendations of those instructors would be relatively accurate.
Qualitative results of the OLL group
Eight interviews with 16 students (two students in each interview) from different backgrounds were conducted to understand students’ SN beliefs about attending and learning in an OLL environment. In addition, 58 students wrote their comments in the survey. After transcribing the interviews and surveys, the data were coded. Special attention was paid to the SN beliefs that motivated and demotivated the students to attend OLL lessons. This section presents the SN beliefs that influence students to attend OLL classes.
The first variable involved classmates. The participants believed that most of their classmates did not support online learning. Most of the students prefer to learn English in the face-to-face setting. One participant stated, “It is difficult for me to take only EFL classes online. I have to come to campus to attend other courses. I have to be on campus anyway.” The participants also mentioned that some courses that are held in laboratories, such as chemistry and physics, cannot be taken online. Most of their classmates are majoring in physics, chemistry, and computer science, as illustrated in the quantitative sections.
The second variable referred to family members. The students’ family members did not support online learning and instead supported the method of hiring private instructors for students when attending online classes. During the interviews, the interviewees mentioned that they took some full courses online during the previous semester. Specifically, they took Islamic culture and Arabic language skill courses online the last semester. Hence, the program was their first attempt at taking EFL courses online. They noted a difference between taking Islamic culture course and EFL courses online and believed that the former was easier than the latter because they already had a strong background in the topic and the Islamic culture course depended heavily on content memorization. One participant stated, “I know the topics in the Islamic culture course, and it is in our language, ‘Arabic’. It is easy to study online.”
To sum, the qualitative results of the FLL group and OLL group show eight factors that students’ view as important factors to attend language learning classes from the perspectives of the society around them. Three factors are related to instructors. Instructors’ preferences of the teaching environment influence students’ choice to attend the OLL or FLL environment. Language learners choose to attend learning environments that instructors who are important for them prefer. Moreover, learners’ attitudes toward learning environments are influenced by the instructors’ enthusiasm in the learning environment. Learners will engage more if the instructors show more enthusiasm in the learning environment. The participants also believe that they need private instructors more if their classes are fully online. Participants believe that attending FLL classes and interacting with the instructors decrease their need for private instructors. The next important social group that influences learners’ beliefs to attend language learning environments is classmates. The participants view the support and help from their classmates in FLL classes as motivating factors to attend language classes. Learners benefit from the discussions and questions that their classmates raise in the FLL environment. The participants believe that classmates’ support and help will be decreased in the OLL environment as there will be less interaction between learners. The third social group that influences learners’ beliefs is friends. Language learners are influenced by their friends’ attitudes toward the learning environment. Friends outside classrooms might have experienced learning in an online environment and have specific attitude toward the type of learning environment. The friends’ experiences affect learners’ beliefs about the effectiveness of the learning environment. In the qualitative results of both groups, the participants mentioned that they are influenced by the attitudes of family members toward the learning environment and the future employers’ perspectives about the learning environment.
Discussion
The results of this study support the claim that macrocontextual, geopolitical factors significantly affect people’s language attitudes (Dörnyei & Clément, 2001). The results show that the geographical location within a relatively homogeneous community presents unified social beliefs among language learners. The means of the five indirect measures of SN for the OLL group were higher than those for the FLL group, thereby indicating that the individuals important to the students (i.e., teachers, classmates, friends, families, and future employers) supported face-to-face EFL learning instead of online learning.
It can be observed from Figure 2 that all the indirect measures of SN of the FLL group, except SN2 (classmates’ beliefs), significantly predicted the mean of the direct measure of SN of the FLL group. SN1 friends’ beliefs, SN3 teachers’ beliefs, SN4 family’s beliefs, and SN5 future employers’ beliefs about face-to-face EFL learning were influential factors that affected the students’ SN beliefs about face-to-face EFL reading lessons. Classmates’ beliefs were not an influential factor in predicting students’ SN beliefs about attendance in face-to-face EFL reading lessons. This result seems to indicate that classmates exerted no significant influence on the intention to attend language learning classes. However, this factor might have had an influence on other aspects, such as beliefs about practicing the language in the classroom. Aragão (2011) found that the language learners’ views of their classmates and teachers contribute to the learners’ feelings of embarrassment and shyness, and these views influenced the way the language learners behave in language classrooms. Specifically, they might refrain from practicing spoken English and feel embarrassed when committing mistakes in front of their classmates. The high correlation between close friends and classmates might explain this result. The participants might consider some of their classmates to be within the circle of their close friends. In the results of the two groups, the highest correlation is evident between close friends and classmates. Thus, the results generally support Hypothesis 1 (in FLL classes, the participants’ indirect/implicit measures of SN will predict their explicit/direct perceived social pressure to attend FLL classes).
It can be observed from Figure 3 that all indirect measures of SN of the OLL group, except SN1 (friends’ beliefs), significantly predicted the mean of the direct measure of SN of the OLL group. SN2 (classmates’ beliefs), SN3 (teachers’ beliefs), SN4 (family’s beliefs), and SN5 (future employers’ beliefs) served as influential factors in predicting the mean of the SN beliefs about attendance in online EFL reading lessons. Friends’ beliefs were not an influential factor in predicting the mean of the SN beliefs about attendance in online EFL classes. Conversely, the results were different for the FLL group. In the OLL group, close friends’ beliefs did not influence the prediction of the intention to attend online EFL classes, whereas in the FLL group classmates’ beliefs were nonsignificant. Thus, the results generally support Hypothesis 2 (in OLL classes, the participants’ indirect/implicit measures of SN will predict their direct/explicit perceived social pressure to attend OLL classes).
Researchers have found that people who are important to language learners exert an influence on the beliefs of these learners (Aragão, 2011; Horwitz, 2007; Ushida, 2005; Wan et al., 2011; Wudthayagorn, 2000). The results of this study agree with those of Carroll et al. (2017), who found that parents influenced students’ beliefs about learning language in the Emirati context. Similarly, Donitsa-Schmidt et al. (2004) found that parents influenced their children’s attitude toward learning Arabic in Israel. The beliefs of people who are important to students seem to vary with the learning context. As in these studies, Saudi Arabian students’ families and relatives played an important role in their intentions. The MANOVA results show that learners have different SN beliefs about attending FLL and OLL classes due to the perceived social pressure, which led to significantly different beliefs (Hypothesis 3).
The high correlation among the themes of language learners’ beliefs (e.g., close friends, classmates, relatives, and teachers) shows the complexity of examining language learners’ beliefs. Although the beliefs of the people around language learners are complex and interrelated, the use of Ajzen’s concept of SN helps in understanding this phenomenon and analyzing the influence of the beliefs of each group of people. In addition, the use of the combined quantitative and qualitative data approach helps in understanding learners’ perceived social pressure beliefs to learn languages. The use of a mixed-methods design in this work clarifies the results and presents a clear image of language learners’ beliefs.
One important feature of this study is the homogeneous sample. The participants shared the same culture, mother tongue, and educational background. This type of sample might help achieve unified beliefs and attitudes regarding learning languages. Although the participants had experienced taking online courses at the university, they lacked experience in taking full online courses in their elementary and high school education. Moreover, the participants had started taking full online courses at the university. One reason that might explain the negative beliefs about taking online classes is the fact that the participants had not experienced taking full online courses in their elementary and high school education.
Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research
The results of this study are limited to the backgrounds of the participants. Future studies can be applied in a context in which the participants come from highly diverse educational backgrounds and cultures. Applying this study in a diverse society in terms of culture, educational background, and mother tongue might reveal different results. Another limitation is the fact that the participants are all male. Different studies have shown that gender influences language learners’ beliefs (e.g., Diab, 2006; Horwitz, 2007). Thus, future studies might compare the beliefs of participants according to their gender. Future studies might also examine the correlation between the social groups’ beliefs and the language learners’ level of proficiency, especially when there is a large difference between the learners’ levels of proficiency.
Pedagogical Implications
The results of this study have implications for language educators and curriculum designers and demonstrate that social pressure should be considered when designing language learning environments and curricula. The beliefs of people who are important to learners should be implemented in designing learning outcomes, syllabuses, program objectives, textbooks, and teaching methods. Language schools should conduct interviews with students’ relatives and elicit their expectations about the learning environment, and take their views into account when designing the learning environment. In addition, school administrators should include the instructors’ perspectives about teaching methods and design program objectives that implement their views of teaching methods. Students’ friends and classmates should also participate in the process of designing the curriculum. Considering their beliefs and expectations will motivate learners and help them achieve the learning outcomes of the programs. Choosing textbooks and designing syllabuses that mismatch the beliefs of the important people around the learners will create a learning environment that does not engage the learners. Considering the social pressure when designing the curriculum will lead to a more attractive learning environment.
Conclusion
As a result of the importance of social influence on language learners’ beliefs, this study was designed to understand and predict the important factors that influence language learners’ SN beliefs and thereby help language educators and researchers examine and predict language learners’ social beliefs regarding learning languages in two different learning settings: online and face to face. The results of this study indicate that important individuals influence language learners’ decisions to attend FLL and OLL classes. Comparing the results of the FLL and OLL groups shows that language learners are more eager to attend FLL classes than engage in OLL classes because of the influence of the important group of people in the context of this study. Language educators and teachers should study, analyze, and understand the beliefs of people who are important to language learners to design effective syllabuses, language programs, textbooks, and teaching methods.
Footnotes
Geolocation information
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
Funding
ORCID iD
