Search results for "Grammar school"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREIGN LANGUAGE ENJOYMENT AND GENDER AMONG SECONDARY GRAMMAR SCHOOL STUDENTS
2018
In the context of second language acquisition, foreign language enjoyment (FLE) is a relatively new concept. For that reason, none of the few research carried out in the field thus far has been focused on whether gender might be an important determinant of either a high or a low level of FLE. Thus, the purpose of the present paper was to examine the influence of FLE on learning English as a foreign language, as well as to investigate this relationship from the perspective of gender. The results of this study revealed that there are no statistically significant differences between males and females in FLE, while such differences are found in terms of the sources of FLE each gender perceives …
Polish Adolescents’ Perceptions of English and Their Desire to Learn It
2016
In the process of foreign language learning the way in which students perceive the language may have a strong facilitative impact on their language acquisition process, especially when this perception is positive (Despagne, 2010). Unfortunately, it has not yet been clearly established whether the relationship between perceptions and foreign language achievement can be explained by the moderating power of the student’s desire to learn the foreign language. For the purpose of this paper it is hypothesized that the learner’s perception of the foreign language is strongly related to the desire to learn it, leading to higher achievement in cases of positive perception. In order to corroborate th…
Correlates and Predictors of L2 Willingness to Communicate in Polish Adolescents
2014
The concept of willingness to communicate (WTC) in L2 denotes “a readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons, using a L2” (MacIntyre et al. 1998, p. 547). In the early model of L2 WTC, there are two main variables influencing its levels: perceived communication competence and communication anxiety (MacIntyre 1994). WTC is now considered a fundamental goal of second language education (MacIntyre et al. 2003) because it offers L2 learners “greater chances for L2 practice and authentic L2 usage” (MacIntyre et al. 2001, p. 382). Students taking the risk of initiating communication in a language they do not know well are likely to become more proficie…
Gender-dependent language anxiety in Polish communication apprehensives
2012
This paper analyzes the relationship between communication apprehension and language anxiety from the perspective of gender. As virtually no empirical studies have addressed the explicit influence of gender on language anxiety in communication apprehensives, this paper proposes that females are generally more sensitive to anxiety, as reflected in various spheres of communication. For this reason, language anxiety levels in communication apprehensive females should be higher, unlike those of communication apprehensive males. Comparisons between them were made using a student t test, two-way ANOVA, and post-hoc Tukey test. The results revealed that Polish communication apprehensive secondary …
Willingness to Communicate in a Foreign Language: Evidence from Those Who Approach and Those Who Avoid L2 Communication
2014
It is still unclear why some learners are willing to communicate in a foreign language while others are disinclined to do so. One of the most promising paths of inquiry in this respect is the study of willingness to communicate (WTC), focusing on the volitional process of initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication. That is the reason why the main purpose of this paper is to investigate the testimonials of Polish students with persistently low or high L2 WTC scores obtained during their 3-year secondary grammar school experience. The qualitative results of the study appear to demonstrate that, independently from the individual’s general predilections towards communication in the …
Language Anxiety Levels in Urban, Suburban and Rural Secondary Grammar School Students
2012
The main purpose of this study is to investigate language anxiety levels in Polish secondary grammar school students from urban (N = 223), suburban (N = 48) and rural areas (N = 122). The results show that rural students suffer from significantly higher levels of anxiety over the length of their secondary school education when compared to their urban and suburban peers. These results confirm the findings in the literature of the field, further demonstrating that social and educational deprivation of rural adolescents continues to prevail. However, this study also shows that the language anxiety levels of all the study participants significantly decrease towards the end of their secondary sc…
Perceived teacher support and language anxiety in Polish secondary school EFL learners
2011
The teacher’s role is vital, both in respect to achieving academic goals, and with regard to the regulation of emotional and social processes. Positive perceptions of teacher support can endorse psychological wellness, and help maintain students’ academic interests, higher academic achievement and more positive peer relationships. The teacher who shows understanding, empathy and consistency in their behavior helps students start forming an identity, which will assist them in coping with stress and anxiety directly connected with the foreign language learning process (language anxiety). The main aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between teacher support and language anxi…
Self-regulatory Efficacy and Foreign Language Attainment
2016
The foreign language learning process is lengthy and full of obstacles, while the most significant learning effects are quite delayed in time, and difficult to notice on a day-to-day basis. For this reason perseverance in self-controlling efforts may be of crucial importance to language success. It allows for a steady linguistic and cultural development of the student, allowing him to enjoy diverse, even contradictory opinions, leading to ultimate language success. The results of the research carried out with Polish secondary grammar school students (N = 621) demonstrate that only in reference to self-assessment of FL skills students with high levels of self-regulated efficacy significantly…
Forms of Social Support and Foreign Language Attainment: The Mediating Effect of Gender
2013
This chapter analyzes the relationship between adolescents’ social support network and L2 achievement, as mediated by gender. The main sources of social support for teenagers are their families, peers and teachers, with whom they interact most frequently. These three groups play a buffering role between stress and psychological well-being by helping teenagers cope with adverse challenges (Demaray et al. 2009). Empirical studies on social support demonstrate that gender is an important factor, with female adolescents perceiving higher levels of support from the three groups (Bokhorst et al. 2010). Also, in the situation of stress caused by the necessity to learn a foreign language as a compu…