Màster de Lingüística Aplicada i Adquisició de Llengües en Contextos Multilingües, Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2014, Tutor: Francesc Xavier Vila
Little attention has been paid to central and peripheral languages (De Swaan 2001) in
the field of L2 motivation. Based on Gardner (1985), Decy and Ryan (1985) and
Dörnyei (2005), this exploratory study seeks to determine which factors may account
for L2 Catalan motivation in a foreign context. A total of 83 students learning Catalan
in a foreign university completed an online questionnaire about their motives to study
Catalan as an L2. Data was submitted to a factor analysis and the results showed that
there were five main factors that can account for the students’ motives: (1) positive
attitudes towards learning Catalan, (2) knowing through mass media due to the interest
in the Catalan society, (3) willingness to move to a Catalan-speaking territory, (4)
Catalan as an added value: instrumental purpose, and (5) language interest. Another set
of descriptive data was gathered in order to outline the profile of the L2 Catalan learner.
Then, T-test, correlations and ANOVAs were conducted to establish distinctions based
on the learning motives and personal- and course-related variables. Although significant
differences were unveiled for the first, the third and the fifth factor, more nonsignificant differences were found. Thus, the results suggest that L2 Catalan students abroad have a similar profile.