Due to world globalization, the concept of learning foreign languages (in advance FL) is acquiring an always more important role. The increase of the interest of learning FL is apparent in the curricular modifications of the school systems which is moving the teaching of FL to earlier ages and offering an always wider range of possible FL. Spanish is one of the languages, which has shown an increase in popularity among Slovenian students in the last two decades. Why Spanish has become so interesting for Slovenian students of primary and secondary schools represents the central question of the present master's work.
The beginning of the theoretical part begins with the presentation of the role of FL in general, continues with the demonstration of the language situation within the European Union and ends with a detailed presentation of the FL teaching in Slovenia. The next chapter includes the elaboration of the concept of motivation for learning FL, according to different Slovenian and foreign researchers. This part begins with the presentation of the definitions and typical characteristics of motivation, continues with a summary of the theoretical evolution up to the present time and ends with the presentation of the fundamental types of motivation for learning FL, that also forms the theoretical basis for the analysis of the survey presented in the last part.
The empirical part includes an analysis of survey carried out among Slovenian primary and secondary school students, with the objective of determining the type of the initial and current motivation for learning Spanish as a FL. The analysis is based on two types of motivation: intrinsic motivation (integral) and extrinsic motivation (instrumental). This analysis is followed by the investigation about the existence of statistically significant differences in the type of motivation for Spanish language according to gender and the school attended by respondents. To obtain a wider perspective of the presented concept, the master's thesis concludes with a comparison of our results with the results of two related Polish researches which also investigate the type of motivation for learning Spanish and German language.
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