The objective of this paper is to present and discuss the results of an empirical survey that took place in 2008 involving students of Spanish from a Center of Foreign Languages Studies (Centros de Estudos de Línguas) sponsored by the State of São Paulo. The goal of the survey was to understand and measure, as far as possible, the degree of student´s motivation in the classroom as well as its underlying causes. Taking into account that until now these Centers are responsible to enforce the law that made mandatory the teaching of Spanish for high school students (as far as public schools in the State are concerned), we considered appropriate to publish these results so that the debate engendered by it could contribute to a motivating, and therefore more efficient, foreign language education. The survey, that included quantitative and qualitative information, was based on a sample of 161 students. The results suggested that i) the students were motivated during Spanish classes; ii) the main causes of motivation reported by students were the professor´s personality, the effort put in practice, the content , the autonomy in the choice of the language and the pleasure related to learning a foreign language; iii) one of the main causes of demotivation appointed by the survey was the absence of knowledge about cultural aspects related to the language being studied; iv) the activities described as the most motivating were, in this sequence, games and amusing activities, videos/films and songs; v) the activities considered the least motivating were seminars, oral exams/tests and composition.
motivation; Center of Foreign Languages Studies; Spanish
