Affective factors are undoubtedly considered to be vital in second language acquisition. Among these factors attribution theory is of primary significance, as it affects learners’ final achievement. It indicates that people attribute various causes in their lives to their success and failure. With the employment of attribution theory, this study examines Polish secondary school adolescent students’ attributions for success and failure in second language learning. The main purpose of the study is to investigate, whether Polish secondary school students’ attributions have an impact on their achievements in second language acquisition. In order to conduct the study, the researcher administered attribution questionnaires to the students and an achievement sheet to the teacher to fill in with students’ semester grades in English. Then the data obtained from the questionnaires and the achievement sheet were correlated. The results show that successful students are more likely to attribute their success to internal facets such as ability and effort and unsuccessful learners attribute their lack of success to external factors, among which task difficulty or luck could be enumerated.
Communication, both written and oral, as the key to academic and professional success has received much scholarly attention in the academic communities of Western Europe and North America. However, in the Eastern European educational scene, teaching academic communication, especially academic writing, in institutions of higher education has been largely neglected for a long time. This research attempts to look at academic writing practices at two universities in Ukraine and Poland from the students’ perspectives. The survey conducted among students pursuing master’s degrees in education and pedagogy at both universities aimed to reveal their attitudes, beliefs and opinions in three domains: cognitive, social and affective. The results lead to some important inferences: students’ exposure to academic writing is insufficient; the potential of writing as a learning tool is not fully understood; students’ awareness of academic integrity is rather low. The tendencies observed across institutions are mostly similar with occasional significant differences.
There is much controversy surrounding the influence of affect on for-eign language aptitude. In most foreign language aptitude models and tests this factor is treated marginally or it is entirely absent. In research studies, much attention is devoted to individual factors defined in the context of positive psychology, but their relationships with cognitive factors are rarely analyzed. This paper is an attempt to present the role of factors other than cognitive in foreign language aptitude theory and research, selected reasons for their weak position, as well as pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research.
Affective factors are one of the two types of individual factors that influence success in the process of foreign language learning. They consist of personality traits, as well as positive and negative emotions. This emotional dichotomy is also reflected in the popular concept of comfort zone. The aim of this paper is to define the comfort zone in the context of distance learning language classes and to check if and how it is possible to implement this model in research in the field of glottodidactics. The results of empirical research on the perception and experience of the comfort zone during synchronous distance learning classes by philology students are presented and analyzed in order to draw conclusions on the impact of positive and negative emotions on the process and effects of the language distance learning.
The role of affective factors in the process of foreign language learning and teaching is undeniable. Still, despite growing interest in the role of attitudinal variables in foreign language training, the problem has not been much researched from the perspective of multidimensional cognition. Thus, the focus of the article is the architecture of foreign language learners’ cognition situated within a multimodal framework and shaped by particular socio-linguistic experience. It is postulated that the conceptual system of a foreign language learner is unique in being highly susceptible to processing in terms of affective parameters. This hypothesis is corroborated by the results of a pilot study which show that concrete words in the conceptual systems of foreign language learners are associated with affect more than in the case of native speakers.
Motivacija predstavlja psihološki proces ili stanje unutar pojedinca koje potiče, usmjerava i postojano održava dobrovoljno ponašanje i akcije usmjerene prema određenom cilju. Kao temeljna i cjeloživotna potreba kojom usvajamo navike, znanja, vještine i sposobnosti te razvijamo kreativne mogućnosti, zahtijeva određenu razinu ulaganja intelektualnog napora, koncentracije i upornost koji ukazuju na kvalitetu učenja, a kolika će ona biti ovisi o razini i vrsti motivacije, kao ključnog pokretača tog procesa. U ovom radu će se opisati intrinzična i ekstrinzična motivacija, koje su međusobno isprepliću i prožimaju i na različite načine potiču na promjene ponašanja i aktivnosti određujući smjer, intenzitet i trajanje motivacije. Intrinzična se motivacija temelji na individualnoj percepciji i psihološkim procesima koji se zbivaju unutar svakog pojedinca i predstavlja sve ono što nas iznutra potiče kako bi se zadovoljile brojne unutarnje potrebe kao što su fiziološke, psihološke i socijalne potrebe i postigao osjećaj unutarnjeg zadovoljstva. Ekstrinzična motivacija predstavlja sve one poticaje koji su rezultat vanjskih utjecaja i stimulansa koji dolaze iz socijalnog i često poslovnog okruženja, a koji se uvijek vežu uz neki oblik nagrade i pohvale. Motivacija kao jedan od afektivnih čimbenika ima veliku važnost za učenje stranog jezika koje znatno utječe na volju i spremnost studenata u prihvaćanju novih znanja. U ovom radu provedeno je istraživanje na uzorku od 120 redovnih i izvanrednih studenata 1. godine Elektrotehničkog odjela Tehničkog veleučilišta u Zagrebu, u razdoblju od siječnja do svibnja 2018. godine. Cilj istraživanja je pokazati utjecaj ekstrinzične i intrinzične motivacije na učenje engleskog jezika. Istraživanje je provedeno anketnim upitnikom na temelju kojeg će se korelacijskom analizom, izračunom relativnih frekvencija i t-testom utvrditi veza između razloga učenja engleskog jezika i potrebe za znanjem istog.
EN
Motivation represents a psychological process or condition within the individual that encourages, directs and continuously maintains a voluntary behavior and actions directed towards a specific goal. As a basic and lifelong need to acquire habits, knowledge, skills and abilities, and develop creative possibilities, it requires a certain level of investment of intellectual effort, concentration and perseverance. They determine the quality of learning and how much a person learns depends on the level and type of motivation, which is the key driver of this process. This paper will describe intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which are mutually intertwined and pervasive, and in different ways encourage changes in behavior and activity by determining their direction, intensity and duration. Intrinsic motivation is based on individual perception and psychological processes and represents everything inside us encouraged to meet many internal needs, such as physiological, psychological and social, and achieve a sense of inner satisfaction. Extrinsic motivation represents all the incentives that are the result of external influences and stimuli that come from the social and often the business environment, and it is always associated with some form of awards and approvals. Motivation, as one of the affective factors, is of great importance in learning a foreign language, which significantly affects the willingness and readiness of students to accept new knowledge. In this paper, a survey was conducted on a sample of 120 full-time and part-time students of the first year at the Electrical Engineering Department at the Zagreb University of Applied Sciences, in the period from January to May 2018. The research aimed to show the impact of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation on English language learning. The study was conducted through a questionnaire, based on which the correlation analysis, the calculation of relative frequencies and the t-test determined the connection between the reasons for learning English and the need to know it.
Academic writing, which necessitates a coordination of multiple higher-level cognitive skills, poses a challenge to graduate students. The heightened cognitive demands often cause negative emotions, such as stress, frustration, discouragement, but can also evoke positive ones, such as pride, satisfaction, and a feeling of accomplishment. This article reports the findings of a longitudinal qualitative study which aimed at exploring the emotions experienced by the participants, eleven students in an MA seminar, in the process of working on their theses, and the affective strategies they used. The data were collected through diaries kept by the participants over one academic year in which they recorded the emotions that accompanied them during the writing task. The data revealed a fluctuating and dynamic nature of the negative and positive emotions, out of which frustration and satisfaction were the most frequently experienced by the participants. Moreover, a range of affective strategies to control emotions and persist in writing were identified in the diary excerpts. The study illuminates the need to cater to the emotional side of graduate students’ thesis writing by providing them with support and appropriate training in self-regulation.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.