b. Attitude Allport imposed attitudes as the most powerful determinants of behaviour. Investigations have mainly addressed the issue of training attitudes. For example, when an individual is faced with a new task, with an unusual object, this episode causes a series of reactions charged with value, meaning that the stimulus has the potential to cause positive or negative reactions. Negative attitude and lack of motivation of learners can become obstacles to language learning. Smith's view (cited in Oroujlou & Vahedi, 2011) on attitudes can be summarized as follows: attitudes can be learned, hence taught; they are situational and hence can be generalized; they act in a certain frame of reference; if an event / object itself does not generate an attitude, the situation, the context will determine which will be the subject’s attitude. Kormos et al. (2011) suggest that measurement of attitudes towards learning a foreign language can be done through questionnaires with Likert scales and provide an example of earlier researches (Kormos & Csizer, 2008). Oroujlou & Vahedi (2011) emphasize that it is important to realize that it is mandatory to take into account the place of the English language in the world today as the foundation of an attitude towards this language. Also, if a student does not like to learn, does not like school, he can generalize this condition on language even before starting to learn it. Therefore, it takes positive attitude to increase students’ efficiency in foreign language classes. Attitude is generally measured in tandem with motivation, especially by AMTB, which provides very little data particularized for attitude. Given that a single accessible database (ProQuest) shows over a hundred thousand studies where
attitude appears associated with learning a foreign language, we felt it necessary to include it among the factors that can influence the results in language tests.