The Necessity to Learn Foreign Languages and English Has Become a Priority

In these last decades, the requirements that this globalized world demands has led to the necessity to learn foreign languages and English has become a priority, not only on the work field but also in the academic area, be them compulsory schools, or university. Thus, developing countries like the one I am from have to cope with certain constraints that this change has brought with it. Unlike Europe and other countries where English is not the mother tongue, in which a high level of literacy and speaking skills in English are achieved, in Latin America it is not. Based on this need many countries have been constantly changing their educational policies to overcome the burden and responsibility with their populations to guarantee levels of achievement in English in schools, which in general have had bad results. In the particular case of Peru, a country which has an immense cultural variety due to the mixture of people from different cultural backgrounds, English seems to be inaccessible for at least half of the population. Therefore, lately there has been an interest from universities and some occupational institutions to create their own language schools knowing that the average student to learn English will be a young adult university student aged 17 or more with some, little, or no prior knowledge of English. In Cusco, the fifth largest city of Peru, a place where the tourist business is the main economic income, people have more exposure to speaking English, compared to the rest of the country. Nevertheless it has been observed that there are two main types of learners, the one who does not have any formal knowledge of the language, who speaks empirically through experimenting with tourists, and the other who enrolls a language school; most of them do not achieve a good command of the language. It is true that the one who enrolls a language center is usually someone who has high expectations. They are in majority university students, college students among others interested in learning English, many of them even wanting to pursue a career in English. So, it is a matter of concern to see that after 24 months of instruction (the regular period marketed to learn English), they do not achieve more than a B2 level in the European Framework standard, and the most concerning issue is that from the 100% of students who enroll a language school for basic English just a 10% carry on with upper intermediate levels, and about a 1.5% wish to study advanced levels, and the one who had expected to pursue a career in English sees their dream vanish since there is no department of English in almost all universities of the country. This same situation is observed in all parts of Peru. Taking these facts into account, it’s a matter of concern to answer the following questions: What motivates students stay and fulfill their language studies? Does motivation play an important role in both teachers and students within this process? What are the factors that influence the continuous decrease in the number of students wanting to follow with advanced studies of English? Is there a linguistic barrier? What other factors determine students’ desertion from their language studies? Are they perhaps social, economic, academic and or cultural factors? This essay aims to briefly discuss these questions; but will publish them little by little or if you want to have the coomplete work; contact us...