Adult Language Learning: The Effect of Background, Motivation and Practice on Perseverance

Abstract

This longitudinal study undertaken in 1993/94 aimed to evaluate the WLPAN method of intensive language teaching by studying an academic year's intake, comprising 74 students, at Cardiff University's Centre for Teaching Welsh to Adults. Using questionnaires and interviews with students and tutors, factors affecting students' ultimate ability to speak Welsh were examined. These factors included students' motivation, their background in the Welsh language and/or foreign languages and attitudes of fluent Welsh speakers when learners attempt to practise language skills outside the classroom. Motivations associated with integration and the culture of the target language figured prominently. Students commended the intensive method. This was supported in the literature on adult Welsh learners. Overall the results provided little evidence of association between successful outcome and antecedent factors examined, for all of which a relationship was plausible. Only two associations were significant; using Welsh in subsequent investigations was associated with both anticipated, and actual, frequency of opportunity to practise. However, of all the possible relationships examined, these are the ones for which association would be practically inevitable: it would be difficult to draw a clear distinction between 'practice' and 'use' in the context of a course that emphasised the spoken language.