‘Why do you learn English?’ ‘Because the teacher is short.’ A study of Hungarian children’s foreign language learning motivation

Abstract

This article looks at the attitudes and motivation of Hungarian children between the ages of 6 and 14: why they think they study a foreign language, how they relate to school subjects and what classroom activities they like and dislike. The long-term study was conducted in the ethnographic tradition where the teacher, syllabus designer and researcher was the author, and the inquiry was prompted by classroom needs. Three groups of children were involved for eight years each during the years of 1977-85, 1985-93 and 1987-95 in Pécs, Hungary. The first part of the article considers the literature on motivation from the perspective of child foreign language learning, whereas the second part looks into how the findings of the Pécs study may contribute towards a better understanding of the effects of specific pedagogic procedures on motivation.