Aspects of motivating adult students of English at an adult high school

Abstract

The purpose of this MA thesis is to find out how the length of the break influences adult students’ motivational intensity, L2anxiety and group cohesion in the process of learning English at Tartu Adult High School. In today’s fast changing world adult education is becoming more and more important because the number of adult students is growing. Adult high schools give a second opportunity for those grown ups who, for some reason, have quit their studies but have now reached a decision to graduate basic school or high school. As there are mature students with various length of break between their previous and present schools, it is relevant to investigate how this factor influences their motivation to study English as an L2 at Tartu Adult High School. The thesis is divided into two chapters. The first chapter presents a literature overview of the interpretation of motivation in the main contemporary theories starting from the beginning of the 20th Century and finishing with Dörnyei and Ushioda’s viewpoints on it. For the reason that the aim of this research is to study adult students’ motivation to learn English as an L2, the main principles of adult learning are also explained at the end of this chapter. The second part of Chapter 1 focuses on Dörnyei and Ushioda’s L2 motivation, L2 anxiety, group cohesion and Dörnyei’s L2 self-system.