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Age‐Related Differences in the Motivation of Learning English as a Foreign Language: Attitudes, Selves, and Motivated Learning Behavior
Author(s) -
Kormos Judit,
Csizér Kata
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2008.00443.x
Subject(s) - psychology , foreign language , construct (python library) , language acquisition , mathematics education , english as a foreign language , programming language , computer science
Our study describes the motivation for learning English as a foreign language in three distinct learner populations: secondary school pupils, university students, and adult language learners. Questionnaire data were collected from 623 Hungarian students. The main factors affecting students' second language (L2) motivation were language learning attitudes and the Ideal L2 self, which provides empirical support for the main construct of the theory of the L2 Motivational Self‐System (Dörnyei, 2005). Models of motivated behavior varied across the three investigated learner groups. For the secondary school pupils, it was interest in English‐language cultural products that affected their motivated behavior, whereas international posture as an important predictive variable was only present in the two older age groups.