In my master's thesis, I focus on the connection between social environment and learning a foreign language, namely English. I write about out-of-school exposure, which is an important part of informal learning of English as a foreign language. In the theoretical part I discuss to what extent English is present in every-day life in Slovenia, the Netherlands and globally. This part contains facts about important out-of-school effects that affect learning English: social environment, family background and media. I also write about the main differences and similarities of the Dutch and the Slovenian school system: when they start going to school, when they start with English lessons, how many English lessons they have per year, and the primary education English syllabus in both countries. There is also an overview of the main out-of-school factors that broaden the knowledge of English: watching TV, surfing the internet and non-dubbing of the TV shows. In the empirical part, I show the results of my research, which took place in May 2016 among 209 Dutch and Slovene pupils (ages of 11 and 12). A group of Dutch students the same age as Slovene pupils in the 6th grade took a standardized Slovenian national test of English from year 2015 (reading part, listening part and vocabulary part). They also answered a questionnaire about their out-of-school exposure to English. Slovene pupils took the same standardized Slovenian national test of English and answered the same questionnaire. Their results were compared to the results of the Dutch group. I made an interview with Dutch and Slovene teachers about their perspective on different out-of-school factors when learning English. My master’s thesis will help understand the importance of out-of-school exposure to English.
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