Motivation and attitudes in EFL learning A case study of Italian high school students

In the last decades, the field of Second Language Acquisition has witnessed a growing interest in L2 motivation and attitudes, presenting us with major theories and their applications. As a consequence, scholars have been basing their research on one or more frameworks, in order to investigate the motivation and the attitudes of different learners towards different L2s. With the aim of contributing to the field, the present work analyses Italian students of English who actively chose their high school curriculum, which includes two other L2s. The three research questions addressed here tackled three different aspects of L2 learning: learners’ exposure to the language (both formal and informal); learner motivation; learner attitudes towards L2. After administering an online questionnaire and interviewing part of the sample, both quantitative and qualitative analyses were applied to the two datasets, giving the researcher both an overview and more in-depth information about individual learners. It emerged that learners are mostly motivated by an integrative desire, but many of them also display instrumental motivation; moreover, they demonstrated positive views on both the English language and its culture and speakers. The image they have of themselves as English speakers is someone they define as qualified and intelligent, successful and welcoming, but not weak, insecure, anxious or incompetent.