regional language background, second language acquisition, attitude, motivation
Abstract
The study examines rural vocational high school students from two linguistic perspectives: it assesses their knowledge of native provincialisms and their attitudes and motivations to learn English. The primary tools of the study were questionnaires: a self-edited questionnaire of provincialisms which were selected from the 99 authentic provincialisms from the Atlas of Hungarian Dialects from around the research area, an AMTB test adapted to the Hungarian language, a self-edited attitude test; and in addition, some interviews help understand the quantitative data. The results provide additional information on the discourse on students′ regional language background and foreign language learning motivations. The final chapter of the study examines the possible connections between the two studies based on the conclusions of the international literature. Although the preliminary hypothesis was not entirely confirmed in the narrow sample, the study raises attention to an important, timely, but previously unresearched area among Hungarian native speakers.