After a brief review of the research concerned with the relationship between students' attitudes and second-language learning the present paper attempts to answer the question, "Do attitudes, in and of themselves, relate directly to second-language acquisition, or do they play an indirect role in providing a basis for the motivation to acquire a second language?" Data were collected from three different samples of 11th grade students. The first group is composed of Anglophone students studying French in a relatively monolingual setting, while the second group represents Anglophone students in a bilingual (English/French) setting, and the third group, Francophone students studying English in a bilingual (French/English) milieu. Measures of a number of attitudes, motivation, classroom anxiety, and language aptitude (I.Q. in the case of the Francophone sample) were subjected to a series of correlational analyses which also included five variables representing possible linguistic and non-linguistic outcomes of second language programs. Both first order and semi-partial correlations were used to demonstrate that the major role of attitudes in the process of second language acquisition appears to be one of providing support for the motivation required to sustain the student in formal second language programs. (Author)