Other studies of subject choice

In this section, I will compare the results of the present study to those of other studies of subject choice. The studies which I compare my findings to, are the same ones I presented in Ch.1, Introduction. I will not comment on reasons reported for choosing not to study English, as no analogous issues are in focus within the studies I will compare mine to. In addition, I will not comment on the significance of various external influences on subject choice as the present study indicates that such explanations are relevant only for explaining a choice not to study English. I will however briefly mention that as was suggested by Rodeiro (2007), the present study too found that the most important external factor affecting subject choice was the requirements of higher education. In my case, of course, this factor deflected students away from English and onto other subjects, usually Natural Science and Mathematics subjects.

7.7.1 Comparison with the present study

Generally, the studies of subject choice which I have examined (see for example Christensen 1980; Ibsen & Lie 1990; Ramberg 2006; Rodeiro 2007; Schreiner 2008) conclude that in addition to the influence of some external factors such as university requirements, student motivation can more or less be summed up by the following three factors:

- interest - usefulness - ability

As the reader should remember by now, respondents of the present study are particularly insistent that their choice to study English programme subjects was determined by the perceived usefulness of English, and belief in own language abilities. In other words, two of the three explanations listed above appear to have been of great importance for most students when they decided to study English.

Next, there is the matter of interest. In most of the studies of subject choice which I reviewed in Ch. 1 (see for example Ibsen & Lie 1990; Ramberg 2006; Rodeiro 2007), interest emerges as the most important factor for explaining a particular subject choice. I will now examine how well this translates to the present study. According to the data gathered for the present study, interest plays a secondary importance for subject choice, particularly when compared to usefulness and ability. Especially the straightforward interest factors examined in the survey, such as interest in English language fiction, interest in particular English-speaking cultures, or interest in the topics of the curriculum, are not rated as significant for a subject choice by the average student. However, the data does in fact show that nearly 70 % of the relevant respondents agree or strongly agree that an interest in languages was crucial for their choice to study English. This finding was somewhat surprising because, as mentioned in Ch.5, there are very few Norwegian students who elect in-depth studies of languages apart from English. As it was not my impression that the average Norwegian student is particularly interested in languages, an important question is how this reported interest should be interpreted.

I believe that the fact that 70 % of respondents agree that they chose English because they are interested in languages, must be viewed in light of the value these students ascribe the study of English. From their response, it seems that the average student elected one or more of the English programme subjects because she wanted to enhance her ability to

communicate, and work, in the English language. The reason why I believe this to be the case is of course that most students report to have elected English first and foremost because it will be useful for future studies and work, and because they wish to learn the language better. From these responses it seems feasible to assume that their interest in languages has something to do with communication and/or language production.

Interestingly, the two other studies I am familiar with which have examined the choice to study languages in a Norwegian context (Christensen 1980, Ibsen & Lie 1990), reach the same conclusion. Both of these studies claim that according to their respondents, interest was the most important factor for explaining a chose to study English. However, as in the present study, they too conclude that this interest does not originate from a liking of English language literature or culture, nor from a fondness for grammatical or linguistic aspects of language learning. Their data suggests, as does mine, that what students like most about learning English is the prospect of becoming apt at communicating across language barriers.

To conclude, I believe that the results of the present study generally agree with the results of the other studies I have examined. The main results and conclusion of these other studies appear to be more or less identical to the results here presented. It is interesting to see that studies from the 1980s (Christensen), the 1990s (Ibsen and Lie), the 2000s (for example Rodeiro 2007 and Schreiner 2008) and in the 2010s (the present study) report very similar results when it comes to why subjects are chosen. It seems that regardless of time passing and curriculums changing, the ways students choose to explain their subject choice has remained constant over the past 30 years.

7.8 Summary

In this chapter I have discussed the findings of the present study in light of some of the theories which were presented in Ch.3 Theory. Expectancy-Value theory appeared particularly well suited to explaining the results pertaining to student who chose to study English, while The Process model of L2 motivation (Dörnyei & Ottó 1998) provided grounds for examining the reasons for choosing not to study English.

In the sections immediately above, I have commented on the validity of the present study. I have presented some possible challenges to the validity of my study, but concluded that they are not serious enough to compromise the results which have been presented in this

thesis. The fact that most of my findings are in agreement with the results of other studies of subject choice furthers my confidence that the present study results are valid.

In the next chapter, Ch.8 Conclusion, I will provide suggestions for further research and outline some implications of the results of the present study.

8. Conclusion