engleski

Attitudes and motivation of young EFL learners: A longitudinal perspective

The chapter presents a longitudinal study carried out as part of the ELLiE project (Enever, 2011). It focuses on the attitudes and motivation of 173 Croatian EFL learners whose affective development was followed during four years: from grade one (age 6-7 years) to grade four (age 9-10 years) of primary school. First, the socio-educational context (at the national policy, school and class levels) in which the participants were learning EFL is described. This is followed by a detailed description of the sample and the instruments (smiley questionnaires, interviews, school principals and parents questionnaires, classroom observation schedules) used in the study. Since the study applied a mixed-methods approach, both the quantitative and qualitative findings are presented in the results section. The quantitative data is presented graphically. The qualitative results rely on content analysis of the participants' responses during individual oral interviews, and are illustrated with a selection of the young learners' authentic replies. The chapter provides a rich picture of the attitudinal and motivational development of the participants over the followed period. Thus, the broader educational context, the immediate learning environment as well as the out-of-school variables relevant to the participants' EFL learning is taken into account when discussing both quantitative and qualitative results and when drawing conclusions of this longitudinal study.

EFL, young learners, affective development

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