Adult foreign language learningaffective factors, out-of-class language use, willingness to communicate and engagement.

Resumen

The research field into factors affecting foreign language learning of the entire adult population at non-university ages is characterised by its scarcity of publications. This circumstance motivated the development of various studies in adult learners at Official Language Schools in Spain into the factors that affect their learning of a foreign language; affective factors, such as positive, negative, or ambivalent emotions, their out-of-class foreign language use, their willingness to communicate and their engagement in their learning among others. From 2018 to 2023, 1774 students and 206 teachers from more than 20 Official Language Schools in Spain participated in the piloting of the tools used for data collection and in the studies presented in this article-based thesis. The studies carried out were of a quantitative nature, through questionnaires analysed with the statistical program SPSS and of a qualitative nature, through individual semi-structured interviews analysed with the program ATLAS.ti. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of the factors that affect all-age-ranged adult students learning of several foreign languages, not exclusively English, in the teaching-learning context at Official Language Schools.