Boys like games and girls like movies

Abstract

Abstract In many contexts learners are enriching their limited contact with the foreign language in the classroom with unlimited contact outside the classroom thanks to the easy and immediate availability of the Internet and digital media. This study aimed to document the characteristics of the contact with English that a large sample of Catalan-Spanish learners have outside the classroom, to explore possible age- and gender-related differences, and to examine the association between out-of-school contact and classroom grades. The responses to a survey showed the type of activities in which young and old adolescents and young adults engage. The analyses showed differences between the three age groups, as well as large differences in the choices of males and females. The analysis of the association between respondents’ English-classroom grades and the different activities showed that reading had the highest positive correlation, followed by watching audiovisual material with L2 subtitles.