Motivation and Attitudes in Foreign Language Learning: A Comparative Study of Croatian and Erasmus+ Exchange Students

Motivation, as one of the internal key features of successful foreign language achievement, is considered in this study as a variable correlated with complexity of emerging internal, external sociocultural and dynamic factors. Taking into account motivation components and attitudes toward learning the language a comparative study among junior and senior Croatian learners and Erasmus + exchange students, who are spending a semester at the University of Split in the academic year 2015/16 and are attending a Business English course, is conducted as a basis for understanding the implications and correlations between attitudes and motivations to study English. The study will look into integrative and instrumental reasons for learning the language, attitudes toward the target language and dynamic social processes to find underlying links between these factors and language proficiency. Our institution's involvement in Erasmus + exchange programs, as the main cause of higher occurrence of foreign students, offers an exceptional opportunity for a focus at a broader reference group encompassing not only domestic students but also international Erasmus + students arriving from geographically different areas and countries of the EU. The authors have adopted a three-part questionnaire validated by Mihaljević Djigunović and Bagarić in 2007, hoping that the results will give an interesting insight into interlinking motivation, attitudes and language proficiency.