Motivaciones e intereses en el aprendizaje del español: un estudio sobre estudiantes surcoreanos de bachillerato y universidad

The concept of motivation is one of the most investigated topics in the field of second language (L2) teaching since the 1970s (Gardner and Lambert, 1972; Dörnyei and Ottó, 1998). There is some consensus that motivation can be classified in two ways: intrinsic and extrinsic, as well as integrative or instrumental (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Almarza, 2014; Aleksandrova and Dorofeev, 2017). However, some authors focused on L2 teaching and learning among Asian students indicate that this concept also appears as required motivation (Warden and Lin, 2000; Xu and Case, 2015). The main objective of this research is to understand the types of motivations expressed by South Korean students towards learning Spanish as a foreign language (ELE). In particular, it compares high school students specializing in L2 with undergraduate students majoring in Hispanic Philology. To achieve this, a survey was developed and distributed at the beginning of two academic courses. By employing a mixed-methods approach, it has been concluded that South Korean students learning ELE in both groups primarily exhibit integrative and instrumental motivation, in that order. Additionally, the existence of imposed motivation among the respondents has been verified.