The mixed-method study presented in this paper investigates the changes in direct and indirect intercultural contact and language-learning attitudes and effort of international students in the United Kingdom. Seventy international learners of English were asked to fill in a questionnaire three times during one academic year in an international foundation program. An additional 10 students and two of their English language tutors were interviewed at the end of their study period. We analysed variations in language-learning motivation as well as in the frequency and type of contact the learners experienced at three distinct points of time during the international study programme. The results indicate that whereas written and media contact increased in frequency during the academic year, the participants engaged in less frequent spoken contact at the end of the period investigated. The qualitative and quantitative data show that contact experiences, socio-environmental factors and learner internal variables have a dynamic impact on each other and they together can play an important role in the language-learning experiences of international students.

A recent interest in English Medium Instruction (EMI) has led to the flourishing of studies that examine motivation in EMI classrooms. Some of these studies tend to compare language learning motivation of students who are and are not enrolled in EMI programmes (see e.g. Doiz, Aintzane, David Lasagabaster & Juan Manuel Sierra. 2014. CLIL and motivation: The effect of individual and contextual variables. The Language Learning Journal 42(2). 209–224; Sylvén, Liss Kerstin & Amy S. Thompson. 2015. Language learning motivation and CLIL: Is there a connection? Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education 3(1). 28–50), showing that EMI learners are typically more motivated than their peers in non-EMI contexts. This has led to the common perception that learners enrol in EMI primarily to improve their English. Yet, there is a dearth of comprehensive studies exploring learners’ reasons behind their enrolment in EMI programmes and how these change throughout their studies. To address this gap, 247 university students from a range of universities across China filled in the questionnaire, which included scales pertaining to reasons for choosing an EMI programme. The data were analysed in SPSS. The results show that enhanced future job opportunities, opportunities for contact with an international community as well as potential gains in learning content and language specific vocabulary are the most strongly endorsed drivers that motivate EMI students to undertake their studies in English. They also tend to pursue their ideal visions of themselves as bilingual professionals and derive pleasure from EMI classes. To a lesser extent, students are motivated by what is expected of them and the actual pedagogy in the language classroom. Their motivation tends to stay stable over their years of study. However, the survey also revealed that not all students are equally motivated and resolved to continue with EMI studies. The findings highlight that, whereas students tend to be strongly motivated, there is a potential to improve the delivery of EMI courses.

A foundation of second language motivational theory has been that motivation contributes to explaining variance in language learning proficiency; however, empirical findings have been mixed. This article presents an innovative approach to exploring L2 proficiency and motivations of teenage English language learners in Madrid, Spain (N = 1773). Participants completed a multiskill English language test, plus an eight-scale questionnaire operationalizing constructs from Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2005). Data were analysed using Latent Variable Mixture Modeling, a person-centered profiling approach. Results indicated five distinct classes of students, characterized by differing motivation-proficiency profiles. The importance of this study is that the analysis does not assume a homogenous relationship between motivational traits and proficiency levels across the learner sample; whilst there is undoubtedly a connection between the two areas, it is not a straightforward correlation, explaining to some extent discrepancies in previous findings and laying groundwork for further, more nuanced, investigation.

Socio-economic status (SES) has been consistently shown to influence students’ educational achievement, but to date, few studies have investigated the role of SES in language learning motivation. This study aims to examine to what extent two indicators of SES, school location and parents’ education, affect motivation of Polish 15-year-olds to study English. The questionnaire, completed by 599 participants, was based on Motivational Systems Theory [Ford, M. 1992. Motivating humans: goals, emotions, and personal agency beliefs. London: Sage Publications.] The results indicate that both school location and parents’ education affect language learning motivation. Students from rural schools and those whose parents have a lower level of education tended to be less motivated than their peers from cities and those whose parents have higher levels of education. The differences concerned the goals the students adopted, their personal agency beliefs, emotional arousal processes, ideal L2 selves and self-regulation. This study highlights the need to raise teachers’ awareness of the issue. From the methodological perspective, it stresses the necessity to ensure sample representativeness in terms of students’ SES when conducting research on affective factors in language learning and calls for more research involving participants from lower SES backgrounds.

Despite the fact that motivation is one of the most important individual differences (Dörnyei, 2005), there have been few attempts to examine what impact it has on studying English in Poland. This study aims to find out the general motivational properties of Polish students aged 15e16, focussing on the role of language learning goals, self-constructs, the influence of parents, peers and language learning anxiety. The second aim is to investigate which variables contribute significantly to students’ self-regulated behaviour. To answer these questions, the researcher used a mixed methods approach, in which 236 students enrolled in compulsory education in southern Poland completed a motivational questionnaire and nine motivated learners participated in an interview. The quantitative data from the questionnaire was analysed using SPSS and the interviews were transcribed, coded and analysed qualitatively. The findings suggest that the students endorsed a number of language learning goals, such as knowledge orientation, international orientation and instrumental orientation. The role of parental encouragement, peer group pressure and language learning anxiety was limited. Although the questionnaire pointed to moderate levels of self-constructs, this was different for motivated learners who reported positive self-evaluations. Regression analysis showed that motivated behaviour, intrinsic motivation and the ideal L2 self influenced self-regulation