Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1995. / Title from title page screen, viewed May 9, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Janice Neuleib (chair), Ronald Strickland, Heather Graves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 216-228) and abstract. Also available in print.

With globalization and the growth of the World Wide Web, it is increasingly important for non-Anglophone students to acquire a functional level of English before graduating from secondary school. However, Francophone students in the province of Quebec who are learning English as a second language (ESL) face particular challenges that hinder their development of English proficiency, not the least of which is motivation. This quasi-experimental case study explores the effects of an eTandem project with Anglophone peers on the motivation of Francophone ESL learners in secondary school. The results indicate that Francophone students who completed the eTandem project showed greater motivational intensity, greater desire to learn the target language, and less anxiety. It also appears that technical problems, scheduling issues and anxiety contributed to the majority of Francophone students discontinuing the project. Recommendations are made to integrate eTandem projects into Quebec’s ESL curriculum and to address the anxiety issues of students in class.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: Elaine K. Horwitz and Lisa S. Goldstein. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

In the Florida Public Schools' Curriculum, there lacks a requirement for completion of foreign language credits in order for a student to graduate. However, many colleges and universities, as well as scholarship programs like the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship, require students to take a minimum of two consecutive years of a foreign language. In many schools, there is an abundance of Level 1 and Level 2 foreign language classrooms, but in the upper levels there seems to be a scarcity of students within those programs. Why is it that these few students are motivated to continue studying the language, even though it is not required of them? This study serves to show the variety of motivations felt by high school students during the 2007-2008 school year. After conducting several focus groups at Oviedo High School in Oviedo, FL, with Spanish 3 and Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish students, the researcher analyzed the variety of reasons given candidly by the students. Through the conversations with these students, a better understanding of the motivations of high school students can be attained. Through this understanding, educators can target other areas that might motivate students, and thus work to increase enrollment in classes and to ensure that students can see the benefits of learning a second language with fluency.

Many pupils all over the world might experience foreign language anxiety which has a majorimpact on pupils’ development. Because of this, and because of personal experiences of thesubject, the aim of this thesis was to investigate teachers’ experience of foreign languageanxiety and motivational factors regarding Swedish pupils in grade 1-3. This study investigatedhow the teachers notice pupils who have foreign language anxiety and how they manage towork with them to make them motivated. The focus has been on the oral parts of the Englishsubject. The study was conducted by interviewing six teachers from different schools inSweden. Semi-structured interviews were made with teachers who had experience of the subjectto develop a deeper understanding of their experience and working methods. To analyze theresults, cognitive motivation theory and Skinners behavioristic theory have been used assupport. The results showed that foreign language anxiety is a common challenge in school andthat it can depend on what grade the pupils were in. Some of the participating teachers find itdifficult to manage to work with these pupils since they do not specifically know how to adaptthe teaching to the pupils so they will be able to overcome their anxiety. However, the resultshave showed that the teacher-pupil relationship and the classroom environment play a big rolewhen it comes to foreign language anxiety. / <p>Engelska</p>

Researchers have conducted many studies to examine the academic, social and general self-concept of pupils of differing ages and in varied settings. Yet, not very much is known about the varied facets of self-concept of bilingual pupils and the monolingual who have specific literacy difficulties (SpLD). Furthermore, the influence of learning a second language on the self-concept or the motivation to learn a second language in the Arabic- English pupils in the Middle Eastern region has also not been addressed by any researchers. So, the main focus of this study was to examine the self-concept of bilingual (Arabic-English) and monolingual pupils who have specific literacy difficulties. The motivation to learn a foreign language and its impact on the pupils' English and general self-concept was also studied. This study used a mixed methodology design using a systematic survey followed by purposive case studies. Established measures were used to examine each facet of the self-concept moving from the literacy in both English and Arabic (reading, writing and spelling) to the maths self-concept and to a more general self-concept, academic self-concept and school self-concept. Furthermore, this study also examined the non-academic self-concept such as athletic self-concept and social self-concept among a group of bilingual (Arabic-English) and monolingual (Arabic) who have SpLD. The study was conducted in Oman in a bilingual private schools and monolingual state schools which included 99 pupils. A Foreign Language Learning Orientation Scale/ intrinsic – extrinsic motivation was also designed to measure the motivation to learning English as a second language. In phase two, this study examined the consistency between the pupils’ and Arabic and English teachers’ interview reports and the pupil's questionnaire for 6 bilingual pupils who had SpLD. This study compared 4 groups (monolingual SpLD, bilingual SpLD, monolingual typical literacy level and bilingual typical literacy level). The quantitative results showed differences between the four groups in terms of the self-concept. There were no differences in terms of the self-concept between the monolingual SpLD and bilingual SpLD in any facets of the self-concept. However, there were a significantly lower Arabic handwriting self concept, Arabic spelling self-concept and general school self-concept for monolingual SpLD pupils in comparison to their peers who had typical literacy level. Also bilingual pupils with SpLD showed significantly lower English reading self-concept, English spelling self-concept, and the general school self-concept than for the bilingual typical literacy pupils. The last comparison showed that there were significantly lower Arabic reading, Arabic handwriting, and Arabic spelling self-concept for the monolingual typical literacy levels in comparison to their bilingual typical literacy peers. In terms of intrinsic extrinsic motivation there were no significant differences shown between the SpLD bilingual and the bilingual typical literacy levels groups. According to the case study analysis there was a general inconsistency between the pupils’ interview and their questionnaire reports for their general, English and Arabic self-concept and the intrinsic and the extrinsic motivation for learning a foreign language. In many cases the pupils were negative about their literacy self-concept according to the questionnaire, but they perceived themselves more positively in the interview. In general, there was a tendency for both quantitative and qualitative results to indicate positive social self-concept for the bilingual and monolingual pupils who had SpLD and the 6 case studies. It was concluded that as research into self-concept of the bilingual (Arabic- English) is not well developed, more research is need in this area, especially in the Middle East using the same methods from this study. It is concluded that it is important for language assessors to consider assessing the literacy difficulties in two languages when the pupils are bilingual.

Previous research using future time perspective or possible selves frameworks provided evidence that learners with definite and elaborate goals, and future self-guides are more motivated in school tasks (Reeve, 2009; Yowell, 2000), exert more effort, demonstrate persistence, and show greater performance (De Volder & Lens, 1982; Lens et al., 2002; Simons et al., 2000), and learners with positive possible selves were better able to face failure, demonstrated better performance, had higher levels of self-esteem, showed more persistence on tasks, and depicted greater motivation (Cross & Markus, 1994; Oyserman et al., 2004; Unemori et al., 2004). The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of future orientation constructs, future time perspective and possible selves, on Turkish college level learners' motivation to learn English and their identity construction, and how future projections of themselves as L2 users (the ideal L2 self, the ought-to L2 self, and feared L2 self) impacted their motivation to learn English and their identities. A total of 299 Turkish graduate students studying in the United States participated in the study. Also, this study examined the extent to which adding a measure of the feared L2 self construct contributed to explaining motivation to learn English and identity construction. The data were collected via surveys and interviews, and they were analyzed quantitatively, using qualitative data for triangulation. Findings suggested that the L2 motivational self-system (Dornyei, 2005, 2009) contributed to explaining Turkish learners' motivation to learn English and their oriented identities. Also, adding a feared L2 self variable to measures of the L2 motivational self system could help explain learners' identity construction but not their language learning motivation. In addition, future time perspective connectedness and value were not useful in explaining the L2 motivation, but future connectedness was found to be related to the ideal L2 self and feared L2 self, and valuing the future goals was related to the ought-to L2 self. Qualitative data showed that learners presented combination of several identities, including national and oriented. They imagined themselves as professional and successful English users, and their L2 related worries included losing their native language and being seen as "assimilated" or as "showing off" individuals. / text

Orientador: Linda Gentry El Dash / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudo da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-18T01:11:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Taves_Leila_M.pdf: 981213 bytes, checksum: 244a07090e9545a836fbe045408e0254 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: O principal objetivo deste estudo é verificar quais as percepções de estudantes de Ensino Médio em duas escolas particulares no Estado de São Paulo acerca da aprendizagem do Inglês como língua estrangeira em contextos informais, isto é, fora da sala de aula. Os diferentes pontos de vista desses estudantes foram identificados através do uso da Metodologia "Q". A partir de discussões em grupos focais, foram selecionadas 57 afirmações sobre o tema proposto para compor a Amostra "Q". A Distribuição "Q" foi, então, feita por 65 participantes e foram identificados cinco pontos de vista distintos. Os sujeitos do primeiro ponto de vista, os "Valorizadores da Prática", são pessoas que acreditam na prática da língua de variadas maneiras. Os sujeitos do segundo ponto de vista, os "Valorizadores da Comunicação", acreditam que é através da comunicação em viagens para fora do país que se aprende Inglês. Os sujeitos do terceiro ponto de vista, os "Valorizadores da Autonomia", valorizam sua própria autonomia e rejeitam veementemente atividades de caráter obrigatório. Os sujeitos do quarto ponto de vista, os "Externamente Motivados", necessitam de um encorajamento externo e, portanto, valorizam a educação formal e o compromisso com a escola. Os sujeitos do quinto ponto de vista, os "Valorizadores do Esforço", creem principalmente no esforço pessoal e na força de vontade para a aprendizagem da língua. Concluímos que os "Valorizadores da Prática" e os "Valorizadores do Esforço" valorizam o uso de Estratégias de Aprendizagem, enquanto que os "Valorizadores da Autonomia" e os "Externamente Motivados" se apóiam em questões de Motivação. Os "Valorizadores da Comunicação" percebem tanto o valor das Estratégias, como também o da Motivação para a aprendizagem da LE Inglês fora da sala de aula / Abstract: The main objective of this study is to verify perceptions of High School students in two private schools located in São Paulo about learning English as a foreign language in informal learning contexts, i.e. outside the classroom. Five different points of view were identified through the use of "Q" Methodology. The 57 statements making up the "Q" Sample were extracted from discussions in focal groups. "Q" Sorting was conducted by 65 students, and five distinct points of view resulted from the factor analysis of the answers. The "Practicing Learners" are students who believe that there are many ways to learn English outside the classroom, for seeing practice in various different forms leads to learning. The "Communicative Learners" feel English can be learned by speaking it while traveling abroad. The "Autonomous Learners" value their autonomy and reject activities they are required to do. The "Externally Motivated Learners" value the responsibilities and motivation furnished by formal education and their commitment to school. The "Hardworking Learners" recognize the importance of personal effort and willpower in learning the language. We concluded that the "Practicing Learners" and the "Hardworking Learners" value the use of Learning Strategies, while the "Autonomous Learners" and the "Externally Motivated Learners" are more influenced by Motivation. The "Communicative Learners" feel a need for both Learning Strategies and Motivation to learn English as a foreign language outside the classroom / Mestrado / Linguistica Aplicada / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada