Factores que afectan la motivacion en el aprendizaje de espanol por parte de los aumnos de balac

Abstract

This research presents the factors affecting motivation in the learning of Spanish of students in the Bachelor of Arts in Language and Culture (International Program). Having a dual-objective, firstly, it aims to find out and analyze the motivating and demotivating factors that affect international program Bachelor of Arts in Language and Culture (BALAC) students learning Spanish. Secondly, it aims to find strategies to promote student’s motivation in their learning of the Spanish language. A questionnaire on motivation and semi-structured interviews was used as a research instrument to find out the different aspects related to motivation. The questionnaire was distributed to 96 university students from the first to the fourth year of the BALAC program, all of whom attending Spanish classes as a minor subject in the second semester of the 2018 academic year. Thereafter, a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews was conducted with 6 Spanish teachers and also 4 students from each year (16 selected students in total), considering their very high or very low levels of motivation. The results show that most BALAC students have a moderate level of motivation (48.96%). The majority choose to study Spanish at BALAC because of their personal interest in Spanish (19.44%). However, 19.10% of students choose Spanish because they think it is easier than other options offered in the BALAC curriculum which in a way reflects that a number of students choose to study a foreign language merely because it is obligatory to obtain the degree. Interview results among students with low level of motivation show that this group lacks of motivation in learning Spanish due to lack of personal interest, opportunity or necessity to use the language in the future. Among all the factors that affect motivation, the top three motivational factors are personal interest (25%), teachers (17.71%) and exam and grades (14.93%). Motivational sub-factors such as teachers with positive attitude who always pay attention to students, including student’s interest in traveling to Spanish speaking countries play an important role in keeping students motivated and wanting to learn Spanish. On the other hand, the top three demotivational factors contributing to students’ lack of motivation are language difficulty (21.29%), exam and grades (18.63%) and learning materials (9.89%). Demotivational sub-factors such as boring classroom activities, problem in vocabulary memorization and difficulty of the Spanish grammar result in student’s lack of motivation to learn Spanish at BALAC. Furthermore, the study shows the relationship between student́s previous experience with the Spanish language and their level of motivation as those with such experience tend to have a higher level of motivation. From 37 students with a very high and high level of motivation, 24 students (64.86%) are those with experience related to Spanish (29.73% are students with past experience in Spanish-speaking countries and 24.32% are those with previous experience studying the Spanish language before entering the program) while 35.14% represents other 13 students who never have had such experience. The analysis results of data obtained from the questionnaire and the interviews were compiled in order to find strategies to enhance the motivation of the BALAC students as well as to improve the quality of teaching of Spanish for the said program.