Factors that Influence The Learning of The Spanish Language of English Program Students in Satri Suksa Roi Et School

Abstract

Especially in the last ten years, Spanish has become a more popular language among secondary and high school students in Thailand. This study aims to investigate the motivations, i.e., the internal and external factors that influence secondary and high school English program students who choose to study Spanish as a foreign language. Thirty-six English program students from Satri Suksa Roi Et School who were studying Spanish as a foreign language participated in the survey. The findings showed that their motivations of learning Spanish, both intrinsic and extrinsic, is moderate (58%). In comparison, the intrinsic motivations play a more important role than the extrinsic (61.8% vs. 54.2%). The most important internal factors that influence the students are that they want to communicate and read in Spanish and that they think that Spanish is one of the most important languages in the world. The external factor that is most often selected is that they would like to travel to countries where people speak Spanish. In conclusion, both secondary school and high school students are interested in studying Spanish because they would like to be able to communicate in Spanish and they recognize that it is one of the important languages in the world. However, according to the results, some external factors, related to Hispanic culture and media (including social media) in Spanish, were not so important as we expected.