Instructional Science 20:331-339 (1991) 331 © Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht - Printed in the Netherlands

Does confidence in the language of instruction influence a student's approach to learning?

DAVID WATKINS 1, JOHN BIGGS 1 & MURARI REGMI 2 1Department of Education, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Koag 2Department of Psychology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Abstract. The effects of the language medium of instruction on students' approaches to learning has

been little researched, despite its obvious importance in cultures that use second-language instruction. Existing research is counter-intuitive, associating deep approaches with bilinguality, not surface. Confidence in one's competence in the L2 medium is suggested to be an important moderating varia- ble. Two studies were conducted 0) involving Hong Kong University students, and (2) Nepalese high school students. Both suggested that language confident students were low on surface and high on deep approaches, as might be expected. Relations with achievement motivation however varied between the two cultures.

Introduction

The literature has recently emphasised the distinction between the terms 'approach to learning' and 'learning style'. The latter refers to a relatively perma- nent way of going about learning tasks whose origins lie in an individual's personality and is independent of the learning contexL On the other hand, an approach to learning reflects the interaction between the teaching context and a student's current motivation (Biggs, 1989).

Investigations using qualitative research methodologies have identified the two most fundamental as deep and surface approaches to learning (Marton, HounseU and Entwistle, 1984) while factor analytic studies have added a third common approach, the achieving (Biggs, 1987; Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983). A 'deep approach' refers to those occasions when students start with the intention of understanding the meaning of the learning task - focusing attention on the content as a whole, trying to see the connections between different parts, and thinking about the structure as a whole. On the other hand, a student whose approach is characterised by a mechanical unthinking attitude, utilising rote learning and focusing on the elements rather than the task as a whole is referred to as adopting a 'surface approach'. Students who seek the highest possible marks, are well organised and hard working, and who adjust their learning strategies to suit the assessment requirements of a particular course are said to have adopted an 'achieving approach'. The ideal student is probably one who combines features of the 'deep' and 'achieving' approaches. Each of these approaches has both

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motivational and strategic components (see Table 1) and are important determi- nants of the quality of the learning outcomes of particular tasks (Van Rossum and Schenck, 1984; Watkins, 1983).

Research has also identified aspects of the learning context which influence a student to adopt a particular approach (or combination of approaches) to learning. These include the method of assessment, the teaching strategy, and the learning climate (Ramsden, 1985). However, relatively little attention has been paid to the language of instruction.

Biggs (1987) found that Australian students who were native English speakers were less likely to report adopting a deep level approach to their studies than those for whom English was a second language. Biggs (1989) interprets these results as being due to students immersed in a second language living environ- ment having to focus on meaning rather than individual words in order to cope in their everyday world. Further support comes from research by Cantwell and Biggs (1988) which attempted to compare the reading and essaywriting of native English speakers and ESLs. They found that the former were more likely to oper- ate at the word and sentence level whereas the ESLs were more likely to seek out the theme of a reading and then to use that theme to write their essay. The native speakers who adopted a deep approach were able to utilise both the word and theme levels to conceptualise and back up their arguments. Those who adopted a surface level approach focused on superficial elements of the text which they reproduced in their essays. The ESL writers, while they tried to operate at a high conceptual level, often did not have the rhetorical competence to substantiate their arguments.

The above argument applies when the L2 speaker is in an immersion context, and is analogous to a cloze comprehension test at a macro level; the student has to induce meaning from a lexical hiatus in the total context. Secondly, it assumes a 'reasonable' (but to date unspecified) level of competence in L2.

The language environment in Hong Kong is very different, with English being little used outside the formal classroom, and it may be that the association of bilinguality with a meaning orientation (deep approach) would not hold.

Kember and Gow (1989) suggest that tertiary students in Hong Kong, who typ- ically learn in English (an L2), often adopt a 'narrow' approach. This approach is characterised by a combination of deep level processing and a step-by-step strategy similar to operation learning (Pask, 1976). Kember and Gow argue that because of their low level of competence in English, Hong Kong students tend to narrow their focus in order to minimize processing load, and then "understand- memorize-understand-memorize..." the target contents, a strategy with something of both deep and surface approaches.

Other work does not appear to support the 'narrow approach' hypothesis. Surveys using both the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ; Biggs, 1987) and the Approaches to Studying Inventory (Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983) have produced

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little evidence that Hong Kong school and tertiary students are more likely to adopt surface approaches to learning than are their Australian peers; rather there are surprisingly uniform data showing strong main effects, with Hong Kong secondary and tertiary students being lower on surface and higher on deep than Australian students, which appears inconsistent with the 'narrow' hypothesis. However, there must some doubt about the assumption of metric equivalence involved in such cross-cultural comparisons (Hui and Triandis, 1985).

This research is designed to provide further evidence of the relationship between language of instruction and approach to learning in two countries where English is seldom used outside the formal classroom, Hong Kong and Nepal. In Hong Kong the focus will be on university students while in Nepal the focus will be on secondary school students. Answers to the following questions will be sought:

(1) How much do these students use English inside and outside the classroom?

(2) How confident do they feel about using English in these contexts?

(3) Is there a significant relationship between the between this level of confi- dence and the approach to learning these students adopt in their studies?

Study One: Hong Kong

Hong Kong University is officially an English medium university of around 8,100 students providing undergraduate and graduate course in the major academic and professional areas. Over 97% of the students have Cantonese as their LI, and which with written Chinese is the medium of instruction throughout primary school. In secondary school, however, the medium of instruction switches to English, and 'O' and 'A' levels are externally examined in English.

Method

Subjects

The subjects were 495 Hong Kong University students enrolled in either Psychology or Education courses. Just over half the subjects (52%) were male and their average age was 22 years.

Measure

The inslrument used to assess the students' approach to learning was the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ; Biggs, 1987) which consists of 42 items divided into six motive or strategy scales (see Table 1). Each item is to be answered on a five-point scale from "1 -- this item is never or only rarely true of me" to "5 = this item is always or almost always true of me". The items of the SPQ were translated

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into Chinese using backward la'anslation, and students could respond to the items written either in English or Chinese. Evidence for the validity of the concepts of approaches to learning and of the SPQ, in particular, for Hong Kong students is provided by Biggs (1990). The students were also asked a number of background questions, the majority of which focused on the language(s) they both used and would prefer to use inside and outside the classroom. All measures were adminis- tered during normal class lime by their regular instructors.

Analysis

The SPSS-X computer programme (Hull and Nie, 1984) was utilised to calculate basic statistics and to conduct factor analysis and multivariate analysis of vari- ance (MANOVA) in both studies reported here.

Results

The great majority of the students reported that they came from families where the father (64.8%) and the mother (87.9%) had no more than a primary education and that Cantonese was the normal language spoken at home (97.1%). However, just over a quarter of subjects indicated that a second language was at least 'some- times' used in the home and that this was often English. The students were also asked to rate their confidence in using the English language for following lectures, reading textbooks, writing essays and reports, tutorial discussions, and talking informally to lecturers and tutors on a four-point scale from "1 = definitely insufficient" to "4 = sufficient". The students' responses are presented in Table 2.

Table 1. Descriptions of scales of L t ~ and SPQ questionnaires

Scale Description

Surface Approach Surface Motive

Surface Strategy

Deep Approach Deep Motive

Deep Strategy

Achieving Approach

Achievement Motive

Achievement Strategy

Motivation is utilitarian; main aim is to gain qualifications at minimum allowable standard

Strategy is to reproduce bare essentials using rote leaming

Motivation is interest in subject and its related a r e a s

Strategy is to understand what is to be learnt through inter- relating ideas and reading widely

Motivation is to obtain highest possible grades

Strategy is highly organised and designed to achieve high marks by being a 'model' student, e.g., being poncmal, doing readings, etc.

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Table 2. Percentages of Hong Kong tertiary subjects' confidence in English language ability for differ- ent academic purposes

Academic purpose

Understanding Reading Writing Tutorial Informal lectures texts essays discussions talk

Confwlence level

Sufficient

Barely sufficient

Uncertain

Definitdy insufficient

48.2 54.5 30.6 27.9 29.3

40.4 38.6 48.7 40.3 41.3

8.2 5.3 16.1 24.3 21.7

3.1 1.6 4.5 7.5 7.7

It can be seen that about half the students considered that their level of English competence was adequate for both lectures and reading but many were much less confident of writing and conversing in English. When asked about the language actually used in tutorials, just under half (45.6%) reported that it was mostly English, the official language of instruction. However, 35.7% and 18.7% reported that either Cantonese or a combination of Cantonese and English, respectively, was more common. Virtually half the subjects indicated that they would prefer a combination of these languages to be used in tutorials with the remainder being equally divided as to which of the two languages they would prefer to see dominate.

Factor analysis of responses to the five language confidence items clearly sup- ported a single underlying factor and these were therefore summed to produce a single index of language confidence. This five item scale had an internal consis- tency reliability coefficient of a = 0.87. The subjects were divided into high, medium, or low confidence groups on the basis of their total score on this scale. Table 3 presents the means of these students' responses to the SPQ scales accord- ing to their confidence with English as the language of instruction. MANOVA was used to determine whether there were any statistically significant differences between the mean responses of the three groups. A Wilks ~ of 0.88, equivalent to an F statistic of approximately 5.32 (d.f. = 12,938; p < 0.01) was found. Univariate F-tests indicated differences significant at the 0.05 level between the means of the language groups on all six SPQ scales. From Table 3 it can be seen that there was a tendency for lower confidence with the language of instruction to be associated with higher scores on the Surface Motivation and Strategy and Achieving Motivation scales but lower scores on the other three SPQ scales.

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Table 3. Means of Hong Kong university students' responses to Study Process Questionnaire by 18alguage confidence

Low onntidence Medium confideace High confidence (n=118) (n=206) (n=153)

Surface motivation 20.92 20.55 18.94 Surface strategy 20.10 19.88 18.10 Deep motivation 21.30 22.46 23.15 Deep strategy 20.97 21.99 22.52 Achieving motivation 19.83 19.78 18.07 Achieving strategy 17.79 20.17 20.27

Study Two: Nepal

Nepal is a kingdom of some 18 million people sandwiched between the Ix~ula- tion giants, India and China. It is a land rich in natural resources but lacking in economic development. Education has particularly suffered but considerable progress has been made in recent years. In 1947 only four high schools existed but there are now over half a million secondary students. In 1987-1988 Tribhuvan University, founded in 1959, had 82,421 students enrolled in ten different discipli- nary areas. The language of instruction at Tribhuvan is English but recently Nepali has been introduced for some undergraduate classes.

Method

Subjects

The subjects of this research are 509 pupils enrolled at four of the leading English medium secondary schools in Kathmandu. The students were in their f'mal year of secondary school, averaged 15.4 years of age, and there was one more girl than boy in the sample.

Measures

The students' approaches to learning were assessed using the Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ; Biggs, 1987) a thirty-six item school version of the SPQ. Previous research (Watkins and Regmi, 1990a, b) has supported the validity of the approach to learning concepts and learning process instruments based on them for Nepalese students. The subjects were also asked a number of background ques- tions and questions regarding their use of English in and out of the classroom. The instruments were administered in their normal classrooms by the third author.

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Results

The high status of the families of the children in this study is shown by the educa- tional levels of the parents - 82.0% of the fathers and 51.5% of the mothers having attended university. Over half the students reported they wished to com- plete a Phi) degree and their high achievement levels to date suggest that may not be a wild dream.

The subjects indicated that the language spoken most often in their homes was Nepalese (73.0%) or Newari (22.2%). English was the main language of only 11 families (2.2%). The majority of subjects (80.7%) reported that in their classes they used a mixture of Nepali and English. Over half of the subjects approved but a substantial minority (35.4%) would prefer to see English predominate. The stu- dents were also asked to rate their confidence in using English in the classroom (a) for reading and writing and (b) for oral communication on a four-point scale from "1 = not at all confident" to "4 = very confident". Three-quarters of the sample indicated that they were at least "quite confident" with their English proficiency in both these areas. These two ratings, which correlated 0.54, were combined to give a single language confidence index within an internal consis- tency reliability coefficient of 0.70. This index was used to classify the subjects into high, medium, and low language confidence groups. The means of the responses of the Nepalese students to the L t ~ scales according to language confi- dence group are shown in Table 4. MANOVA found that there was a significant difference between the mean responses of these groups (WilLs 7, --. 0.92; F = 3.52; d.f. -- 12,804; p ~ 0.01). Univariate analysis indicated significant (p < 0.05) differ- ences on the Surface strategy, Deep motivation, and Achieving motivation and strategy scales. Examination of the means in Table 4 shows that there was a trend for the students who were most confident with the language of instruction to score more highly on the latter three scales.

Table 4. Means of Nepalese school students' responses to Leamin 8 Process Questionnaire scales by language confidence

Low confidence Medimn oonfidence High confidence

(n---91) (n=326) (n--91)

Surface motivation 17.52 17.88 18.78

Surface strategy 15.59 14.29 13.86

Deep motivation 23.76 24.30 25.11

Deep strategy 23.32 24.08 24.56

Achieving motivation 23.39 25.45 26.44

Achieving strategy 24.56 25.64 26.01

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Conclusion

Both studies generally support the proposition that having to study largely in a language which the students may not be confident with may affect their approach to learning. In particular, both studies indicate that the less confident students are more likely to rely on rote learning without trying to understand what they are learning. The influence of the language of instruction on the achieving approach is less clear. The two studies indicate that the more confident students are more likely to adopt highly organised learning sWategies. However, while the more confident Nepalese students also possessed the greater desire for academic excel- lence this trend was reversed for the Hong Kong sample. The explanation for this differential finding may be due to some cultural factor or to some aspect of the educational system which differs in the two countries. Another explanation may lie in the different social backgrounds in the samples from both countries. The Nepalese students attended exclusive schools and came from well-off families with highly educated parents, whereas Hong Kong university students come typically from working class backgrounds as reflected in the parental educational levels of these subjects. Such families place much emphasis on the educational success of their children as a means of economic and social advancement of the family. The poorer the family the worse the level of English in the home is likely to be but the greater the achievement motivation.

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