Differences in Motivation Between Pupils in Regular and Bilingual Secondary School Programmes

Abstract

Motivation is considered to play an important part in second language acquisition. Many bilingual programmes in Dutch secondary schools select only highly motivated students to participate. This study aims to discover the difference in motivation, in the terms of Self Determination Theory, between students in these bilingual programmes and those in regular secondary school programmes. Results show that the bilingual students start out significantly more motivated than their regular counterparts, but that this difference disappears over the years.