Original scientific paper
MOTIVATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING ENGLISH AND GERMAN AS FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN YOUNGER SCHOOL-AGED LEARNERS
Manuela Karlak
orcid.org/0000-0001-8782-7876
; Faculty of Education, University of Osijek, Osijek, Croatia
Dajana Šimić
Abstract
Research so far has pointed to the significance of motivation in second language acquisition as well as to the possibility that the level of motivation may vary depending on the target language, which is primarily brought into relation with the social dimension of motivation. The aim of this paper was to explore motivational differences in younger Croatian school-aged learners, who simultaneously learn English and German as foreign languages, with respect to: the level of motivation, the level of foreign language communicative competence they would like to acquire, out-of-school exposure and reasons for learning the specific languages. Research findings point to significantly higher values of all the variables in English in relation to German. The results also show some interesting qualitative differences with respect to the reasons for learning the two foreign languages, reflecting powerful global and social impacts on motivation and foreign language acquisition, whereby multilingualism is stressed as an important mechanism which enables the learners to cherish multiple coexistent identities.
Keywords
motivation; English and German as foreign languages; out-of-school exposure; reasons for learning
Hrčak ID:
189470
URI
Publication date:
7.7.2017.
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