Foreign language certification and its influence on the motivation for English learning: an initial overview of the contrastive study of Spain and Iceland

Abstract

The main goal of this paper was to analyse the extent to which the foreign language certification has influenced the motivation for foreign language learning among Spanish undergraduates (students of Elementary Education Degree at the Centro de Magisterio La Inmaculada affiliated with the University of Granada) and Icelandic undergraduates (School of Education, University of Iceland). The decision to work with these two groups came from a generalized opinion according to which the undergraduates from Nordic countries have a high proficiency level in English despite the fact that there is not an explicit rule about having to provide an official foreign language certificate such is the case in Spain. Therefore, we believe that the reasons that underlie the motivation for English learning for these two groups are different. To prove it, we adapted MAALE questionnaire (Minera Reyna 2009, 2010) as the main tool for data collection and carried out the research during two weeks of December of 2019 (Granada) and February of 2020 (Reykjavik). The preliminary results partially corroborated our main hypothesis: Spanish students attach great importance to the reasons that can be defined as instrumental, especially to those related to the compulsory foreign language certification, unlike the Icelandic group.