Profiling university foreign language students in Singapore: motivations and perceptions of Spanish learners

2024 marked the tenth anniversary of Spanish being offered at the Ministry of Education Language Centre (MOELC), while 2025 celebrated a decade of the Spanish Programme at the Centre for Language Studies (CLS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Despite these milestones, little research has examined Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL) education in Singapore. This exploratory study addresses the gap by profiling university students learning Spanish, focusing on their linguistic background, their motivations and deterrents towards foreign language (FL) learning more broadly, and their perceptions of the Spanish language and its cultural context. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this research seeks to deepen the understanding of Singaporean learners, providing valuable socio-demographic and psychographic data for teaching Spanish FL in this particular multilingual and multicultural context.