A Study of the Attitude of Senior Secondary Students of Baghpat (U.P.) Towards English as a Medium of Instruction

The objective of this study was to compare of attitudinal difference in boys girls, rural & urban and poor & rich family towards English as a medium of instruction. A random sample consisted of 100 subjects from five senior secondary schools of Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh. In the present research work Baghpat was the field of study. Survey method was used in the present research work. Attitude scale has been used for this research work. The arithmetic mean, S.D. and f-ratio were used for statistical analysis. Some study of abroad and some studies in Indian were selected for this research work. The results show that the rural students have more positive attitude than urban students towards English as a medium of instruction.

Language Man is a social being and he wants to interact with his own views and ideas with others in human life language have manifold importance He wants not only to express him but also to listen and understand the feelings of others. This interaction is the necessity of social life and it is possible only through language. Everyone from birth to death makes use of it. It is the most distinctive human activities. Language is more than the apparently simple stream of sound that flows from the tongues of the speaker. The word "language" has been derived from the latin word 'lingua' which means tongue. French word 'langua' and 'parole' is also related to language. Language is an essential part of human life. Language is a science and literature is an art. Language is a means or verbal medium for expression or communicating ideas, feelings, experiences and realizations.
Language is used for the verbal interaction. Language is verbal as well as non verbal. Non verbal language is also known as body language or silent language. Language requires four skillsspeaking, writing, reading and listening. The accuracy of language is depends on the knowledge of grammar and correct pronunciation, correct spelling, correct reading and listening "Malinowski" defined language as, "a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words". 'O' Jespersen' define language as "a set of human habits, the purpose of which is to give expression to thought and feelings" Allen writes, "language (to quote Ben Jonson) most shows a man speak, that I may see there" Block and Trager write: "A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group operates." Plato writes, "Ideas and feelings are the realizations but when these are revealed, through mouth is known as language."

Attitude
Attitude is tendency by which one accepts or rejects the ideas or accepts good things or rejects bad things. It is a relatively stable and enduring predis position to behave or reject in a certain way toward persons, objects, institutions or issues.

Senior Secondary Students
Students who are studying in XI and XII class and their age ranges between 16+ to 19+ years are considered senior secondary students for the present study.

English Medium of Instruction
English medium of instruction for the purpose of the present investigation may be defined as a systematic organization and presentation of selected and summarized instructional material of different subject in a senior secondary school

OBJECTIVES
To find out the attitudinal difference of senior secondary girls and boys science stream students toward English as a medium of instruction.

1.
To find out the attitudinal difference of senior secondary rural and urban science stream students towards English as a medium of instruction.

2.
To find out the attitudinal difference of senior secondary science streams students belonging to rich and poor family towards English as a medium of instruction 3.
To find out the attitudinal difference of senior secondary science streams students belonging to rich and poor family towards English as a medium of instruction

1.
There exists no significant difference between the attitude of girls and boys of science streams students towards English as a medium of instruction.

2.
There exists no significant difference between the attitude of rural and urban science stream students towards English as a medium of instruction.

3.
There exist no significant differences between the attitude of senior secondary science stream students belonging to rich and poor family toward English as a medium of instruction.

Sample
A sample is a subset of the population to which the researcher intends to generalize the results. The main purpose of research is to discover the principles that have universal application. But to study whole population to arrive at generalization would be impractical if not impossible. Since it has been reported that ever if a small representative sample can be drawn from entire population then the parameters are easily represented and estimated by the sample statistics. It is important to know that the data collection has to be restricted to a sample, which becomes representative of the whole. The population of the present study constituted of 100 boys and girls from 5 schools of Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh. In the present investigation, Baghpat was the field of study. As far as population for this work was concerned, 5 schools of Baghpat were taken up. But it was not possible for the researcher to include all the schools of Baghpat within the purview of the present study. So a sample of 100 boys and girls was picked up on random basis from 5 schools of Baghpat.

Design of the Study
Methods of research are sometimes determined by the theory underlying the problem of the study, objective of the study, resources of the investigator etc. This study is based on survey method. The researcher reviewed all the research strategies and methods and found that neither historical, philosophical, genetic and case study nor the experimental research method can be called appropriate for the present study. In view of the purpose of this study only the survey method was considered most appropriate. Survey method is concerned with conditions or relationships that exits, practices that prevail, beliefs, points of view or attitude that are held, processes that are going on effects that are being felt or trends that are developing. Thus, survey method present the picture of prevailing condition of a particular time. The picture of certain conditions, trends, practices or beliefs may be obtained either from survey of the entire population or inferred from study of a sample group carefully selected from the population. It may be described a limited population which is the group under condition.

Tools Used
For each and every type of research one needs certain instruments to gather new facts or to explore new fields. The selection of the suitable instruments or tools is of vital importance for collection of date and it depends upon various considerations such as objective of the study the amount at the disposal of the easiness to interpret the result and the like. Keeping these things in view, the investigator developed the following tool for the present study.

Development of Attitude Scale
In order to assess the attitudes of the students, the attitude scale was developed by the investigator. The procedure of development of the scale followed usual steps which have been described in the sections to follow.

Preparation of First Draft
The blue print of the scale was prepared which, after passing through the stages underneath, formed the first draft of the scale. These stages were item formulation item selection and item analysis. The description of these stages has been given in the proceeding paragraphs. a) Item formulation: The items were formulated from different sources via, relevant literature, interview with senior secondary students, discussion with experts in the field of attitude scale construction. On the basis of discussion, a blue print was prepared which consisted of 70 items. b) Item Selection; the list of items, so prepared, was reviewed. First of all, these items were seen from the angle of language. The items which were having some ambiguous language were either modified or dropped. Then, the preliminary list of 58 items was given to three judges. They were requested to point out the items which were in duplicate or overlapping. After having the suggestion of these judges some of the items were defected and in some items modification was done. c) Item Analysis: The first draft of 40 items was administered to 10 students of senior secondary class of Baghpat District of Uttar Pradesh. The students were asked to give their opinion regarding English as a medium of instruction. After the completion of questionnaire it was found the some of the items were not clear to the students. Therefore some modifications were done on there items. On the basis of these results, the final draft consisting of 25 statements was prepared.

Validity
The face validity method was employed to validate the attitude scale. The face validity of the scale was established through discussion of the statements with the experts. On the basis of their unanimous suggestions and agreement, the face validity of the scale was established.

Collection of Data
The data were collected by administering the tool mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. After completing all the formalities for the present study the investigator went to the principals of the concerned institutions and introduced his self and sought their permission before administering the tests. The nature and purpose of the study was explained. At the time of actual administration of the scale necessary steps were taken to control and minimize and quessing habits of the students. For this purpose, the subjects were also told that it was only a survey for research purpose and their responses would be kept confidential and therefore, they should be frank, bold honest and sincere in answering the questions. It was further told that there was no right or wrong answer to any items. Then scale were the collected.

Scoring
In the scoring procedure Likert's method was used. In this method a number of statements regarding the issue have to be corrected. The subject is asked to indicate the degree or the strength of his attitude towards each statement on a five point scale: Strongly agree, Agree, Uncertain, Disagree, Strongly disagree. These answers are assigned numerical value running from 5-1 to 1-5 accordingly as the response is favorable or unfavorable. Thus, high scores indicate a favorable attitude. The individual score on a particular attitude scale is the sum of all his ratings on each of the items on scale. Since attitude scale consisted of 25 items the possible maximum and minimum scores that could be obtained on it are 195 and 1 respectively. Students who will score 63 or more than 63 scores would be said to have positive attitudes towards English as a medium of instruction.

Statistical Techniques
Analysis of data for the present investigation has been carried out in conformity with the objectives and hypotheses as formulated by the investigator. The main purpose of the study is to find out the attitudinal difference of senior students (boys and girls) belonging to various streams towards English as a medium of instruction. After collection of the data the analysis was carried out easier. For analysis and interpretation, following statistical techniques were useda) The measure of central tendency-Arithmetic mean b) The measure of Dispersion-Standard Deviation c) F-ratios Chan (1999) conducted a study on the present status of Chinese English language in Hong Kong. He concluded that the place of mother tongue depended quite heavily on the business, academic and professional values. Phillipsion (1998) claimed that English performed a crucial role inperibhery English countries. He arqued that English bare a social stratification function. A good proficiency in English was a necessity for up ward mobility and privileged position in a society. Lafayetee (1996) found that language proficiency is most important component of context knowledge of the foreign language teacher. Holm (1996) conducted a study on the effect of finest written language on the acquisition of English literacy. He examined the relationship between first and second language literacy by identifying the skills and process developed in the first language that were transferred to the second language. The performance of 40 university students from the people's republic of China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Australia were compared on sense of that assessed phonological awareness and reading and spilling skills in English.
Batstone (1997) conducted a study on learning to work together in a third grade bilingual classroom. Developing students English language process adds significant dimensions to any teacher's objective and tasks. The author's goal in his Spanish English bilingual 3 rd grade class in bilateral, that is full competency in English and Spanish Peuton (1997) found that a good foreign language teacher need "a high level of language proficiency in all of the modalities of the target language speaking, listening, reading and writing". Buschenhofen (1998) assesses the attitudes towards English among year 12 and final year university students in Papua New Gunea (PNG). The result indicated a generally positive attitude by both towards English and some significant attitudinal differences in relation to specific English language contexts. Lightbown (2004) writes that the most important reason for incomplete acquisition in foreign language classroom setting is probably for contact with the language. Nolan (2010) investigated whether two factors, i.e., a) the attitude of students towards quantitative technique as a service subject, b) English language ability of students and mathematical ability of students. The result suggested that the students perception of their prescribed textbook in quantitative techniques, they did not perceive the understanding of the English formulations and explanation as their main concern. Manfat (2011) conducted a study on the role of integrative motivation in the achievement of English languages learner in Hong Kong. Taken together findings from both qualitative and quantitative date of the present study gave a consistent picture that instrumental goals, especially future career development and meeting more varied people with career related purposes are more important than integrative goals such as appreciating British arts and literature. This confirmed previous findings that Chinese people tend to be more instrumental in their motivation towards learning English as a second language. Lies (2012) presented the result of a research project carried at the University of Leuven (Belgium) in valving students and lecturer from 7 different academic disciplines and inquiring into the nature and weight of the factors that may hamped the successful introduction of English and the medium of instruction.
Mohan (1998) conducted a study to find out the relationship of some socio psychological factor (attitude and motivation) and linguistic attitude to English language learning of senior secondary classes with reference to types of schooling. The result shows that a few aspects of attitudes and motivation showed an significant correlation to some aspects of English learning. It was generally noted that attitudinal variables failed to have significant explanatory variance in achievement in English. Both the "attitudinal variables" should more significant explanatory variance in achievement in English as a foreign language than attitudinal variables Sankasrappan (1999) made an attempt to probe in to standard IX pupils attitudes and interest towards the study of the English language, perceptions of the effectiveness of their English teachers and its effects on their achievement. It was found that there was no significant difference between boys and girls in respect of their attitude towards the study of English. The relationship of the pupil's attitude and towards the study of English with their achievement in it was positive.
Mamta (2002) conducted a study on attitude of postgraduate students towards English as medium of instruction. She found that the female students have more positive attitude towards English to be adopted as a medium of instruction. The student of different socioeconomic status has an equal attitude towards English as a medium of instruction. There existed significant difference in the attitude of rural and urban students towards as a medium of instruction. The science and commerce student had similar attitude towards English as a medium of instruction Bai (2010) made an attempt to study the attitude of higher secondary students toward the study of English. In that study it was found that 79.69% of the entire sample (217) of higher secondary students have favorable attitude towards the study of English and only 19.43% of them have a relatively unfavorable attitude towards it. English as a medium of instruction is found to be 90.2 and 82.04. The S.D. of girls and boys students 16.84 and 18.81 respectively. The F-ratio between these two groups is found to be 2.29 which is not significant. It indicates that there is no significance difference between the attitude of girls and boys students towards English as a medium of instruction. So, hypothesis no one is accepted ** = 0.01 It can be observed from the table no 2 that the mean of the senior secondary students towards English as a medium of instruction is found to be 90 and 80.16 respectively. The S.D. of rural and urban students is found 18.31 and 16.75 respectively. The f-ratio between these two groups is found to be 2.80, which is significant at 0.01 level of significant. It indicates that the rural and urban students have different attitude towards English as a medium of instruction So, hypothesis number two is rejected.  Table no 3 shows that the mean of the senior secondary students towards English as a medium of instruction is found to be 90.40 and 82.20. The S.D. of students belonging to rich and poor family is 16.90 and 18.98 respectively. The f-ratio between their true groups is found to 2.28 which are in significant at 0.01 levels of significance. The results indicate that there is no significant difference between both the groups. So, hypothesis number three is accepted.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Results of this study shows that girls students have the mean score 90.40 and S.D. 16.84 while the boys students the mean score 82.20 and S.D. 18.98. This shows that there exists not significant difference between attitude of girls and boys students. The mean of rural students was 90.00, S.D. was 18.31, while the mean and S.D. of urban students was 80.16 and 16.75 respectively. This shows that rural students have more positive attitude then urban students towards English as a medium of instruction. The mean of students belonging to rich family was 90.40 and S.D. was 16.90, while the mean and S.D. of students belonging to poor family was 82.2 and 18.98 respectively. This shows that there exists no significant difference between the attitude of rich and poor family.