Revealing Attitude and Motivation of Young Efl Learners Through Metaphor Analysis: Learning English in the Crisis Time

Diterima: 23-12-2021 Disetujui: 11-05-2022 Abstract: This study aimed to find out learners’ attitude and motivation toward online English learning during COVID-19 outbreak. Eight first graders were involved in an interview session to reveal their perspectives through metaphor. The results of metaphor analysis showed that the learners have low motivation and attitude although they tend to get good score in English subject. Due to many obstacles in its implementation, students, teacher, and parents hope that the English teaching and learning activities can be done face-to-face completely to result in effective learning process.

This research offers a contribution on this area by taking consideration to the current implementation of English instruction in Indonesia. It includes studying learners' motivation and attitude toward online English learning. Studying those aspects may help teachers and other practitioners in language education area to develop more appropriate curriculum for particular learners as student motivation and attitude reflect their perspective (Jin et al., 2014). Currently, in many studies involving younger participants, learners' perspectives are often neglected due to their young age. However, their perspectives are important because it may show their language learning and develop learner-centred approach. Moreover many researchers devote themselves to this topic as it is an area where abstract theoretical considerations have relation to classroom activity (Ryan, 2016).
Regarding to the importance of young learner's attitude and motivation in language learning, special instruments and procedures are necessarily to be developed since the existing ones are more appropriate for older learner. Studying these two elements might be really complex since young learners find it difficult to express their feelings, thoughts, and perceptions (Mihaljević Djigunović, 2012). Moreover, using ordinary interview and questionnaire is considered to be not thorough in collecting the data in the form of attitude and motivation especially in EYL context. To obtain data from the participant of education processes, The novel approach, metaphor analysis, can cover a complex construct of affective and cognitive components because it integrates visual, oral, and written language (Fábián, 2013).
The present research applies Elicited Metaphor Analysis proposed by Lakoff (1993) in (Jin et al., 2014). It requires the research participants to provide three key elements that each consists of a target domain (abstract topic), a source domain (concreate image), and an entailment (reason). For example, learning English online (as target domain) is a running rabbit (as concreate image) because I have to make extra effort to catch it (as reason of the metaphor). This method of analysis may project individual's identity even though they are still at an early age (Nguyen, 2016). The research participants, first graders in primary school, will be assisted by using various pictorial cards of possible answers to develop their creativity and imagination in making their own metaphor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown policy keeps changing from month to month. Therefore, interview will be still carried out one-by-one depending on the applicable and by applying health protocols. Its elaboration will be explained further in the next chapter.
Next, dealing with young EFL learner attitude and motivation, previous researches have been conducted and have obtained various findings. In European context, (Mihaljević Djigunović, 2012) studied the attitude and motivation of young FL learners and found that it correlated strongly with language learning achievement. (Petrides, 2006) also mentioned that attitude and motivation had significant relationship to foreign language performance. (Jin et al., 2014)found that most of young EFL learners in China had positive attitude and motivation toward English learning. (Alemi et al., 2017) found that young learners have positive attitude, interaction, and motivation to language learning. (Cave et al., 2018) confirmed that motivational partnership significantly increased both student motivation and self-efficacy. They also found that motivational partnerships may provide promising effects in ESL and other L2 context. This is replication research from research conducted by (Jin et al., 2014) in China. Regarding many similarities, there are major differences that include the research variable, research subjects, and educational policy concerning the early age for implementing English learning. However, the present research applies the same steps in applying the Elicited Metaphor Analysis.
Based on the previous studies on motivation, this aspect is critical to the success of the implementation of English learning. However, the results were obtained from the investigation on offline English learning. On the other hand, the present worldwide case requires more discussion on the online ELT to guarantee that the learning outcome between the online and offline ELT will be the same or even better. Will the online English learning, where presence is missing, result in a worthwhile educational experience for young learners? Thus, in terms of cross-sectional research, that collect the data from many students in one specific time, the present research aims to observe the online English learning using metaphor analysis. There are few findings on young learners' motivation area in Indonesia, especially during this corona outbreak where teaching and learning activities are continuously implemented online in the last 2 years to date. Moreover, based on preliminary research conducted by the researcher, the present research is responding to the unpreparedness of teachers and students in EFL area to face significant learning changes due to policies during the pandemic. Based on the above issues, this research aims to answer these two main problems (1) What attitude do Indonesian young EFL learners have toward online English learning?; (2) What motivates Indonesian young EFL learners to have online English learning?

METHOD
In regard to the issue being discussed, the present research applies qualitative approach in case study design. (Cohen et al., 2007) added that case study will be valuable when the researcher does not strictly control the events. In other words, the researcher would also take the contextual conditions of the events as relevant factors to the research focus while interpreting the findings (McKay, 2005). Thus, the research findings will be rich since participants are free to express their perception. In this case, multiple steps of analysis will later be used to validate the findings. Aiming to find out young learners' attitude and motivation on online English learning, this research involves 8 first graders as the main research subjects. By considering the key Permatasari, Rachmajanti, Astuti, Revealing Attitude and Motivation… 184 point of this research towards English young learners, the first graders are the most appropriate population to represent the young learners as intended in this research since this grade is considered as the crucial and first start in developing attitude and motivation.

Instruments
The key instrument in this research is an interview guide in the students' L1 which is developed mainly to investigate young learners' attitude and motivation towards the online English learning. To strengthen the data obtained from the student interview, an interview guide focusing on teacher's and parents' observation regarding on their students' and children's attitude and motivation during the online English learning sessions is also developed as well, whether it may cause particular impact on students' performance. Moreover, document analysis is also developed to validate the findings.

Analysis
Metaphor analysis will be utilized to synthesize and interpret meanings behind the collected data in this research. The stages of metaphor analysis consist of transcribing the obtained metaphors to English language, coding the metaphors based on its theme, classifying the metaphors based on two classifications consisting of students' attitude (positive, negative, or neutral) and the pattern of students' reason of motivation (perception, achievement, objective, and emotion), presenting the two classifications in tables, and providing descriptive explanation for them. To ensure the validity of the research data, triangulation technique is involved. As stated by (Dörnyei, 2007), qualitative research is actually interpretation of insider perspectives to view social phenomena. To ensure the trustworthiness of the data, various data sources are used to prevent the possibility of biases in the research. Hence, the researcher also observes the case based on two methods of analysis: interview and document analysis.

FINDINGS
As what has been elaborated in the previous chapter, the interviews were done in the L1 of the research participants. Hence, the data obtained from interview session have been transcribed and translated from Bahasa Indonesia to English language and are presented below. Learning English online being in a school it's all the same, I need to prepare everything by myself.
Based on Table 1, Elicited Metaphor Analysis has proved to reveal students' feelings and thoughts better than the standard interview session that is commonly used to adult participants. Research on young learner should not be neglected due to their young age as they basically are able to express their perception through appropriate approach (Taman et al., 2021). However, the collected source domains and its entailments in Table 3.1 are the best metaphors that the students could make as some students needed extra chances to develop their imagination. Thus, when a student faced difficulty to express him/herself, the researcher gave him/her extra chance to make another metaphor.

Students' Attitudes toward Online English Learning
The spoken metaphors, consisting of target domain, source domain and its entailment, are classified into positive, negative, and neutral metaphors. It is determined by indicating that both source domain and its entailment belong to a certain classification criterion. It basically aims to indicate students' attitudes toward online English learning.
Positive metaphor characterizes that the students enjoy doing online English learning and/or have pleasant and meaningful experience. Negative metaphor describes that the students dislike doing online English learning, which is expressed by unpleasant, stressful, or even harmful expressions. Neutral metaphor elucidates students' personal and objective views towards online English learning, and they may describe opinion of learning process or learning objectives. The interpretation of students' attitude is based on both metaphor and its reason. Student 2 Nindy is high achiever from 1A who utilized cell phone while learning English online. She mentioned that learning English online is like 'eating candy' because she loves to study. 'Eating candy' is positive phrase because it has good flavour and it is kid's favorited. Supporting by the reason that she loves to study, Nindy has positive attitude toward online English learning. Unfortunately, when the researcher asked her about which English learning she prefers to have, she said that learning English in class with friend is better. In this case, Nindy can put herself in any learning situation regardless of her young age. Her passion for learning can suppress the obstacles she experienced in an unpreferable situation so that her positive attitude remains the same.
On the other side, student 3 Zizil is low achiever in English subject from 1A who utilized laptop to engage in online English learning. At first, she got difficulty in making her own metaphor even after listening to many examples from the researcher. After reminding her of the atmosphere of learning English at home and showing her the pictorial cards again, Zizil chose 'tasting lemon' as the best metaphor to illustrate online English learning. 'Tasting lemon' is negative phrase as lemon has sour taste and many kids cannot resist its sour taste when they try it for the first time. Zizil has negative attitude toward online English learning, and it is supported by her preferences for offline learning at school.
Student 5 Meli is low achiever from 1C and got difficulty in expressing his thought. The researcher had provided him many examples, but he could not mention any words even from many pictorial cards in front of him. Then, the researcher asked him to point out one picture in the pictorial cards using his own finger. First, he chose lemon as he did not prefer to have online English learning too. After having some thoughts, he changed his mind and chose 'being in a desert' as his metaphor. The researcher noted it as the best metaphor of him because Meli provided a reason to support that phrase. He said that learning English online is like being in a desert because it is so boring that he wants to do all learning activities in the school. Hence, 'being in a desert' is negative phrase because it must be unpleasant for kid to be alone in a desert. This indicates that Meli has negative attitude toward online English learning.
Student 7 Najwa is a high achiever from 1C and has negative attitude toward online English learning. Although initially she said that she enjoyed to study through her cell phone with her mama at home, but then she firmly answered that she preferred to do it at school as she can study together with her friends. Hence, under the direction of the researcher, Najwa chose 'being in a cave' to illustrate online English learning in which this is negative phrase because being alone in a cave must be really stifling for kids. It is also supported by her reason that mama always scolds her when she made mistake during the learning process.
In the classification of neutral metaphor, student 1 Inay, a high achiever from 1B, mentioned that learning English online is like watching television because she can only see everything through the screen. 'Watching television' is considered as neutral phrase as it is her objective opinion toward the learning process. Nevertheless, Inay, who has neutral attitude toward online English learning, also wished that she can always attend to school instead of studying alone at home.
Students 4 Aska, low achiever from 1B, had a hard time when the researcher asked him the reason underlying his own answer. Hence, in addition to provide him many examples, the researcher asked him to point out a picture that represents his attitude towards online English learning. Under the guidance, he told the researcher about his experience during online English learning. Then, he stated that it is like a 'lightning' because he often surprised when it went to blackout. Aska's metaphor is considered as neutral attitude because it reflects his opinion toward the technical problem that he had during the process of online English learning.
Student 6 Feli, low achiever from 1D, utilized cellphone during online English learning and is accompanied by her mama. After providing her many examples, she mentioned that learning English online is like 'noodle' because her mama always cooks her noodle at the end of the online learning. 'Noodle' is considered as neutral expression because Feli is telling the research her experience in the learning process. Thus, Feli has neutral attitude toward online English learning because she has neither good nor bad impression on it.
The last student is student 8 Kenzie who is a high achiever from 1D. Kenzie confessed that his little brother often bothered him when he did online learning with mama. Even so, Kenzie illustrates the online English learning as 'being at school' because he still must prepare his books just like what he does in offline learning. So, 'being at school' in considered as neutral attitude because its Kenzie's objective opinion toward his own experience.

Students' Reasons/Motivation in Online Learning English
The analysis of students' motivation toward online English learning is based on the entailments. The entailment itself is the reason underlying the metaphor that the students make. In other word, when a student has a positive attitude, the entailment he/she makes will reflect his/her motivation toward learning English online. Meanwhile, many foreign language learners may not have certain attitude toward the target language, but it does not mean they are unmotivated. There is probably particular thing within the language learning process that they find it interesting, for instance the teacher, the learning material or even the language itself. This is called intrinsic motivation which keeps them being involved in the learning activities. However, the present research will elaborate more on the motivation of students who have positive attitude toward online English learning.
Students' reason of their motivation will be classified into perception, achievement, objective, and emotion. If an entailment leads to opinion, thought, point of view, or belief, then it will be included in the classification of perception. If an entailment leads to what outcome the students want to achieve while having online English learning, then it will be included in the classification of achievement. If an entailment leads to students' objectives, purposes, or goals of having online English learning, then it will be included in the classification of objective. Next, if an entailment shows affective factors toward online English learning like mood, emotion, or feeling, then it will be included in the classification of emotion.
Unfortunately, there is only one student having positive attitude toward online English learning i.e., student 2 Nindy. Therefore, it will not be presented as a table but excerpt instead. Moreover, it will be presented in the form of dialog between Nindy (N) and the researcher (R) because Nindy tends to give short answer on the interview questions. Then, how Nindy build her motivation can be seen in the following Excerpt 1.

DISCUSSION
Based on the findings, on students' attitudes toward Online English Learning, there are only 1 student creating positive metaphor, 3 students creating negative metaphors, and 4 students creating neutral metaphors. This indicate that the online English learning process does not attract too much students' interest since only 1 student seeing this online-platform-based activity enjoyable. The data also provides us the reasons why 4 students have neutral attitudes, and the rest 3 students have negative attitudes. In general, the finding of this research is contrary to that of (Mihaljević Djigunović, 2012) who mentioned that children commonly have positive attitude to learn new language especially the language with which they can make more exploration in their life. There are some cases in which this general belief could be wrong, like what is discussed in this research. In offline learning setting, English teachers are usually able to freely and creatively create learning media that can attract students' attention, such as circular cards where the students can directly touch it and try to play with it. Regrettably, in online learning setting, students are limited to audio visual media that they can see only through their own screens. In addition to limitation in the development of learning media, there could be other factors that influence the reason why learning English is not able to create students' positive attitude. These factors will probably be answered in the next sub-chapter that elaborates teacher's and parents' perceptions.
Furthermore, the reason of why attitude is elaborated first is that because it makes up motivation. Theoretically, students' attitude and effort are component to increase students' motivation (Petrides, 2006). Therefore, there should be improvement in teaching strategies and media that are user friendly for teaching English online especially for grade 1 students. As what student 5 Meli said that the current English learning is so boring. In this case, 21st century students are different from 20th century students who can immediately form a positive attitude toward language learning just because of an interactive video. Particularly in online learning setting, a media where they can interact actively is highly required; for example, using the Kahoot! and Oodlu website and the like. In the case of Nindy as a high achiever from 1A, she had a very fast comprehensive level like most of her friends at the same class level. This is evidenced by how quick she was in answering the questions and giving reasons for it. Nindy showed that in her cognitive stage, she has been able to construct a metaphor and the reason that underlies it. Because metaphor is cognitive device used to connect concrete and abstract ideas (Saban et al., 2007). In other words, this method seems to be more effective in revealing young learners' feeling and thoughts. It further supports the ideas of (Kalra & Baveja, 2012) that metaphor analysis help someone to reflect and assess their own belief and personal theory and (Gatti & Catalano, 2015) that metaphor analysis enables us to uncover someone's personal and emotional perspective.
In this case, Nindy mentioned that online English learning is like eating candy because she likes to study. It has been discussed previously that eating candy is positive phrase because most of kids like candy for its sweet taste. It, as the same time, reflects Nindy's positive attitude toward online English learning. To Nindy, her fondness for the sweet taste of candy is like her fondness for studying in which also reflects her motivation. The entailment 'because I like to study' belongs to the classification of emotion. It implies that these affective factors, in this case Nindy's positive and happy feeling, relate strongly to her motivation toward online English learning.
This finding is consistent with (Jin et al., 2014) who found that young EFL learners in China also tend to create positive metaphors associated with their favorited food. They also showed that affective factors, reflected from students' metaphors, are fundamental in increasing their motivation. Hence, for young learners, receiving praise from their parents or teachers for their learning progress may create positive motivational contexts because this kind of social motivation, at the same time, will grow positive feelings. In Nindy's case, she may also have resultative motivation because she claims to enjoy learning. As a high achiever in English subject, Nindy must often get satisfactory learning outcomes. Those achievement then actually become motivation for her to progress better and better.
Even so, Nindy still hopes that she can carry out learning offline since studying together with many friends in class is certainly more fun than studying alone at home. Apart from the fact that English requires verbal interaction, (Ibrahim & Al-Hoorie, 2019) found that a student's positive motivation can affect the motivation of other students.

Teacher's and Parent's Perception toward Online English Learning
As the first grade English teacher, Miss Esthi stated that there had been a significant change in student scores since online English learning took place. Students tend to get perfect scores although most of them do not have positive attitude and motivation toward online English learning. This finding contradicts with (Mihaljević Djigunović, 2012) who stated that the attitude and motivation of young FL learners correlated strongly with language learning achievement. Djigunovic's finding is refuted in online learning setting in which it is influenced by many factors. In other words, the present research proved that high academic achievement does not always reflect students' positive attitude and motivation. The absence of teacher supervision turned out to result in invalid student scores. Daily assignments which are often done through Google Forms have many gaps as recognized by Miss Aini and Miss Yulia, as parents, they often help their children in completing assignments.
In addition, this is also contrary to the findings of (Petrides, 2006) who states that attitude and motivation have a significant relationship toward young EFL learner's performance. As what Miss Esthi said regarding student scores, online English learning is very ineffective for first graders because teacher cannot measure their performance. According to the curriculum, student assessment will cover basic competence 3 which is knowledge and basic competence 4 which is skill. Online learning allows the teacher to assess student's knowledge but not their skill especially communication skill. Offline learning for English subject is still required to make sure that the students have already comprehended the learning material. Thus, must admit that there are several aspects of offline learning that cannot be done through online meetings, one of which is an assessment of basic competence 4 as mentioned by Miss Esthi.
In addition to academic matters, parents consider that the development of student character is unsatisfactory because they tend to be undisciplined when carrying out some subjects that are conducted online, including the English subject. This finding apparently supports (Cave et al., 2018) who found that once students are motivated, they tend to improve self-efficacy too. In this case, instead of developing self-efficacy or motivation, the students tend to rely on their parents in completing the tasks assigned to themselves like what Miss Aini and Miss Yulia mentioned in the results of interview. In other words, they lose their independence in learning and the opportunity to have a student-centred learning experience as mandated by Curriculum 2013. This clearly causes a loss because at the current stage of development, first graders should actively interact with friends and teachers for academic and social purposes so that their language skills increase (McKay, 2005), as also stated in basic competence 2 of curriculum 2013.

Has the Online English Learning Meet the Objectives of Teaching English for Elementary School Students?
Finally, based on the findings on lesson plan analysis, the whole learning process seems not applicable to be implemented through online learning although it is stated that the learning objectives can be achieved by following those teaching steps. This finding also confirms the phenomena of why most of students have negative attitude and low motivation toward online English Permatasari, Rachmajanti,Astuti,Revealing Attitude and Motivation… 188 learning. In addition to monotonous assignment pattern, the learning tasks lack of fun and challenging activities. The use of games, music or cartoon is important and absolutely gives benefit to teach young EFL learners as it will increase their integrative motivation (Yaghoubi, 2013). However, such fun tasks cannot be found within the existing lesson plan. Even though the current teaching practice uses technology, the finding of this research contradicts (Alemi et al., 2017) who found that technology has a significant influence on students' attitudes and motivation. This may be due to the lack of innovation in curriculum development in accordance with the COVID-19 outbreak emergency. However, this condition requires a lot of understanding because the pandemic occurred suddenly on a large scale. It is burdensome when educational practitioners are required to use various platforms and make immediate teaching and learning plans to maintain and ensure the teaching quality (Pu, 2020).
The finding also confirms parents' statements in which students rely too much on their parents in finishing their assignments as most of assignments from the textbook are submitted via Google Forms. Difficulties in technical operations may be one of the things that trigger students' dependence on parents. Parents here play a very crucial role at home because in addition to guiding academic matters, they are also required to direct the attitudes of their children toward the learning process. Yet, teachers' role is absolute because they should be the one who promote students' motivation and transform their attitude (Mercer, 2016). In addition, they are the ones who decide to develop a teaching plan that suits the needs and conditions of students.

CONCLUSIONS
Metaphor Analysis proves to be able to explore young learners' feelings and thoughts and provides wider data than a standard interview does. First graders, with their imagination, are able to make creative metaphors that reflect their attitudes and motivations towards online English learning. Nevertheless, in contrast to common knowledge, this study found that young EFL learners lack the attitude and motivation toward English learning which is carried out online. First graders are mainly in cognitive and social development. Therefore, they need academic and social interaction at school in order to obtain worthwhile foreign language learning. Based on the findings, student's positive attitude and motivation toward online English learning are mostly influenced by affective factors such as good mood, emotion or feeling. However, offline learning at school is still top preference for students because after all studying with friends at school is more fun than studying alone from home. The implementation of learning English always encounters obstacles which may be the reason why most students have low motivation. As revealed by the English teacher of first grade, although the online media has been developed to the maximum extent, there are still doubts about students' understanding of the learning material. In addition, technical constraints such as different quality of students' devices and internet networks are also the reason why online English learning is not very effective to be implemented in the first grade. In the home context, when carrying out online learning, students tend to become dependent on their parents which results in the loss of the element of student-centered learning as mandated by Curriculum 2013. In conclusion, the current curriculum for online English learning and the existing obstacles, have not been able to provide a worthwhile educational experience in accordance with the objectives of teaching English for elementary school.