Language Attitudes & Motivation in Import & Export Employees: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a statistical analysis of the attitude, the motivation, and the level of anxiety that external and internal commercial agents present in their daily work when using the English language. The approach used to present the results followed quantitative comparative linguistics parameters. The setting on which the study was conducted was an international ceramic enterprise located in the Spanish province of Castellón. The company on which the questionnaire was handed has a significant commercial department which divides its agents on internal or external, and national or international. In order to obtain adequate results a correct test had to be developed which was composed by 24 questions that were handed via email to the company’s workers. From the internal commercial agents 10 of them responded on time to the questionnaire while from the external agents 8 of them responded. The attitude and motivation results pointed to a positive trend on these while the anxiety results showed some negative effects that these speakers suffer due to it. The main distinction found on the results were differences in the motivation and the attitudes that national agents presented against international ones in which national agents presented arguably more negative results. Therefore, this research has shown the different levels of motivation, attitude, and anxiety that commercial agents of an international ceramic enterprise display when using the English language and the different variables that condition these factors.