Motivation, self-confidence, and group cohesion in the foreign language classroom

Defining the motivational basis of second and foreign language acquisition has been at the center of much research and controversy for many years. The present study applied social psychological constructs to the acquisition of English in the unicultural Hungarian setting. A total of 301 Grade 11 students from the region of Budapest answered a questionnaire assessing their attitude, anxiety, and motivation toward learning English, as well as their perception of classroom atmosphere and cohesion. In addition, their teachers rated each of the students on proficiency and a number of classroom behaviors and evaluated the relative cohesion of each class group. Factor and correlational analyses of the results revealed that xenophilic (M=4.22on a 1–6 scale), sociocultural (M=3.96), instrumental (M=3.78), and media-use reasons (M=3.79) were most strongly endorsed by the students whereas an identification orientation (M=1.8l)was rejected. Factor analysis of the attitude, anxiety, and motivation scales confirmed the existence of attitude-based (integrative motive) and self-confidence motivational subprocesses and revealed the presence of a relatively independent class- room based subprocess, characterized by classroom cohesion and evaluation. Correlational analyses of these clusters further revealed that, while all subprocesses were associated with achievement, self-confidenceand anxiety showed no relationship to classroom atmosphere. We discuss these findings in the context of current theories of second and foreign language acquisition and with reference to their applied implications.

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