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The paper presents a small scale study which was conducted with 151 university students divided into two groups: pre-service primary and preschool teachers not majoring in English and the control group of pre-service primary school English language teachers. As previous research (Martinović & Poljaković, 2010) has confirmed positive attitudes of a group of Croatian university students towards the English language, similar results were expected in this research. Therefore, using a questionnaire consisting open and closed-ended questions, the authors aimed to gain insight into Croatian university students' attitudes towards English as a foreign language and their perceived importance of proficiency in English. An additional aim was to establish possible correlations between the participants’ attitudes and their exposure to and proficiency in English as a foreign language (EFL), as well as their other foreign languages, their overall academic achievement and EFL grades. In view of the status of English as a global language and its predominance in the world, hence in Croatia as well, the authors hypothesized significant exposure to and high proficiency in EFL for both groups of participants. However, since one group of the participants were pre-service primary school English language teachers, it was assumed that their exposure to English, not only within their studies but also beyond, would be greater, that their attitudes towards the English language would be more positive and that they would consider proficiency in English to be more important compared to that of the other group of participants. |
