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