Students Attitude towards English Language Common Courses

Abstract

This study is intended to investigate the students' attitude towards English Language common courses: Communicative English Skills and Basic Writing Skills (CES and BWS) which are delivered to all freshman students at Wolaita Sodo University, Ethiopia. The students' attitude towards the courses was not encouraging. They did not give enough time to study English common courses; rather they focused on their major courses only. As a result, their grades in these courses became very low. To explore the students' attitude towards these English common courses, descriptive research method was used. To collect data from both students and instructors, questionnaire and interview were employed. The major populations of this study were all freshman students at Wolaita Sodo University in 2016 G.C. The researcher selected 500 students out of 3,000 students using stratified sampling technique to address students in each department. Results showed that students believe their major courses are more important than English common courses. Consequently, they give much time to study their major courses. Most students also think that English common courses are not essential, but they think as additional courses.