Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners' Attitudes towards the English Language Community and Culture in Motivating them to learn English Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners' Attitudes towards the English Language Community and Culture in Motivating them to learn English

: The current study is mainly devoted to explore whether the Iraqi secondary school students‟ attitudes towards the English language itself, the English language community and culture plays a significant role in motivating them to learn English. The research sample is a group of 40 5 th grade secondary school students. The instrument of the study is a questionnaire that measures the learner‟s awareness with the declarations of the above variables. To sum up, the findings of the data analysis of given above, the following conclusions can be made:


Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners' Attitudes towards the English Language Community and Culture in Motivating them to learn English Samira Mohsin Rodhan
combination of efforts plus desire to achieve the goal of learning process plus favorable attitude towards learning the language. It is important to consider the cultural context which influences people's attitudes and motivation in learning operation. Without learning encouragement, the student will not learn even if the appropriate classroom conditions are available for learning. Motivation is a very remarkable factor for language learning, therefore success of acquiring the language does not depend on learners only. "Teachers' approaches in schooling the language are animated in making helpful practices to learning" (Ellis R. 1994).According to (latchanna, 2009) attitude is accepted as an important concept to understand human behavior and is defined as a mental state that includes believes and feelings. Believes about language learning is directly associated with success in language class. Most Iraqi students' motivation for learning English has remained at the level sufficient either or fulfill the course requirements or to pass the entrance examinations to the next level of schooling, therefore pedagogues and tutors should used active delineation and mechanism in classes to create effective motivation and attitude among the learners to learn the language. This research is devoted to explore the role of learners" attitudes towards the English language itself, the English language community and culture in motivating them to learn English as a second language.

Aim
The study aims at investigating Iraqi EFL learners" attitudes towards the

Limits
This research is limited to the Iraqi learners at the secondary school level, and more specifically female students of the 5 th grade secondary school .

Procedures
To achieve the aims of the study, the following procedures are adopted: 1. Selecting a representative sample of secondary school students of fifth grade, 2. Designing a questionnaire to be administered on the sample of the study, 3. Exposing the questionnaire to a jury of experts in ELT to ensure its validity and reliability , 4. Conducting a pilot study to find out the suitability of the questionnaire items and the time required for responding to these items, 5. Using suitable statistical tools to analyze the data ,and 6. Presenting and discussing the results, drawing conclusions and setting recommendations.

Significance of the Study
This research is supposed to enrich the literature concerning the psychological factors in English language learning in general and the role of students" cultural and attitudes towards the English language in particular.

Culture and Attitudes in Language Learning
Attitudes at language and its culture is critical especially in language classes, and the manner in which the students respond to the English language culture effect their attitudes at the language itself. Khuwaileh (2000:282) characterizes the classroom of English language as a combination of different cultural variables. He claims that culture always manages to become a part of

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Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners' Attitudes towards the English Language Community and Culture in Motivating them to learn English Samira Mohsin Rodhan the language classroom. Thanasoulas (2001: 121) said that "acquiring the second language basically relates to learning its culture".

Motivation in language class
Motivation is a word or term derived from the word 'motive', which means the desire or need that exists within the individual and that drives him to take measures to achieve the goal he aspires to. Educators and researchers have realized that Motivation is one of the important factors that determine the level of success in the English language learning process. Dornyei (2001:116) said that, "teacher skills in motivating learners should be seen as central to teaching effectiveness". Learners' readiness to play a role in the learning process is extremely affected by the factor of motivation .
According to Oxford and Shearin (1994:67) there are six variables involved to motivate learners to learn English language (Al-Bustan & Al-Bustan, 2009:S454): 1.Tendency at the target language, 2.Anticipation about learner's attitudes to succeed, self-efficiency and anxiety, 3. Objectives as source to learn, 4.Engagement effectively in learning process, 5.Supportive climate (i.e. extent of teacher and peer support) and 6.Individual features and readiness to learn.

Gardner's Motivation Theory
Interesting in Robert Gardner"s motivation theory is not so much in the specific constructs he proposed because those have been further refined and developed by advances in the past four decades as in the overall system of ID facets in which he has placed the notion of motivation. According to

Investigating Iraqi EFL Learners' Attitudes towards the English Language Community and Culture in Motivating them to learn English Samira Mohsin Rodhan
Gardner (2010), a motivated individual is someone who sets a goal and perseveres to achieve it. Motivation is also the result of an interaction with the second language culture and the target language. Therefore, considering Gardner"s theory, social context and attitudes towards the second language and English language communities constitute the foundation to understanding language learners" motivation. Learning a language is closely related to the attitudes towards the language (Starks & Paltridge, 1996:132). Karahan (2007:84) said that "positive language attitudes let learner have positive orientation towards learning English". Gardner (1985) explains that "motivation is a combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language plus favorable attitudes toward learning the language".
He believes that "attitudes are components of motivation in language learning"(ibid). His "socio-educational model of second language acquisition" (see Figure 1) is a an outline of how learner distinguish and perform the language, is related to attitudes and motivation, and put incentives within a system of the four distinct aspects of the English language learning process (Dorneiy, 2015:75): The characteristics covered by the model are intelligence, language learning strategies, language attitudes, motivation, and language anxiety.

The Population and Sample
The sample of this study is a group of 40 students of 5 th grad secondary school students of Al Ghad private school in Baghdad out of 78 total number of the students. All the members are female and of the same age.

3-2 Description of the Questionnaire
To get information about the students attitudes towards English language community and culture in motivating them to learn English language, a questionnaire has been constructed by the research herself drawing on the following sources:

Face Validity of the Questionnaire:
Validity refers to "The degree to which the test actually measures what is intended to measure" (Brown ,1987: 221

Pilot Administration of the Questionnaire
A pilot version is administered to a sample of (20) female students of Assma secondary school for girls. Based on the time required for replying the items, it was found that the student"s need (30) minutes to reply the items of the questionnaire.

Reliability of the Questionnaire
Reliability refers to the consistency of measurement, i.e., how consistent scores are from one measurement to another. The more the test scores are consistent on different occasions, the more the test is reliable (Lado, 1961:330). However, the questionnaire has been re administered to the same pilot sample after two weeks. The statistical manipulation of the data has been obtained from the two administrations. After using Pearson formula, the result has indicated that the correlation coefficient of reliability is (0.91).

Statistical Methods
The following statistical tools have been used: 1-Chi-square: It was used to find out the significant differences between the two groups in the questionnaire

Conclusions
It is clear from the results that each of the component of Gardner"s questionnaire (interest in the English language, English language culture and attitudes towards English language community) plays an important role in motivating the Iraqi students at the secondary school level to learn and continue learning the English language. So, three conclusions have been obtained as follows : 1. Most the subjects of the sample are interested in reading about English culture and community and so as to be able to speak fluently in English .