The purpose of the study was to investigate motivational factors of senior learners to enrol in the English language course at Third Age University. In general, a language course is viewed by many seniors as an opportunity to stay mentally and socially active but many of them drop out of the course very soon. The subject of the study were 68 seniors who have been out of their professional life for some time and decide to take part in the language course. Our focus was on primary and secondary motivational factors; the former create a need and want to take on the role of a learner again and the latter make them attend the course and stay active in language learning effort. Motivational factors are being shaped via the whole life of a senior and their intensity is influenced by personal traits, life experience, and cognitive, affective and social needs. Primary motivational factors such as cognitive and social needs play a key role in decision making to enrol in the language course and attend it on regular basis. Secondary motivational factors such as teacher’s personality and skills, learning environment and social relations among senior learners emerge during the course and can influence senior´s willingness to continue or drop out the course. A questionnaire was developed covering primary and secondary motivational factors in 25 statements. Seniors were wanted to mark on a 4-point Likert-scale from 1(strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). The results indicated importance of both groups of motivational factors in successful language learning in senior age. Due to increasing number of senior language learners, university teacher training programs should prepare trainees to be able to teach this specific group of learners.
Keywords: senior learner, communicative competence, teaching and learning English, motivational factors, pre-service teacher training.
References:
[1] Homolová, E. “Jazyková edukácia seniorov”,Banská Bystrica, Belianum, 2018
[2] Špatenková, N., Smékalová ,L. “Edukace senioru”, Praha, Grada, 2015
[3] Savina,V.T. “Specificity of English-Language Teaching for Senior Learners within the Lifelong Learning Concept”, Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities/Social Sciences 11, Novosibirsk, 2015, pp. 2606-2611
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