Path to Fluency: Motivation in Puerto Rican Students to Develop their English Language Skills

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: The role of the English language in Puerto Rico has been a controversial topic for the past few decades. Even though English is taught in schools as a second language and is one of the official languages in the island, many people are not learning English. Many scholars claim that people are not learning English due to differing attitudes towards the language; however, most of this research presented by these scholars has been performed on adults. This study therefore looks into the different motivations that elementary Puerto Rican students have when learning English in schools. One hundred and five students were given a survey that asked about their different uses and exposure to English. I primarily addressed the following question in the course of this study: what motivates students to exert effort and seek opportunities to develop their English skills? Research results show that students’ efforts towards learning English in the classroom and the extent to which they use the language outside of the classroom are predictable by different motivations, such as motivations coming from external forces, motivations towards seeing English as an important instrument for their future, and the value they place in learning English. The exposure to English in students’ families was also highly correlated to how much effort students exert in learning English in the classroom.

Type of resource	text
Date created	June 2014

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/cq878yq7099

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Schindler, Kelly. (2014). Path to Fluency: Motivation in Puerto Rican Students to Develop their English Language Skills. (Unpublished Undergraduate Honors Thesis). Stanford University, Stanford CA. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/cq878yq7099

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education

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