Learning English as a L2 language through oral competence. Using motivations, neuroscience and transversality to engage students into English knowledge

Abstract

[eng] English as a first foreign language in the Spanish education system is one of the subjects with the highest percentage of unsuccessful pass rates. In general terms, in Secondary Education, the level of English is low and the interest in it is increasingly residual. Although aware of the environment and the main source of the island's economy - tourism - there is a lack of awareness of the benefits of learning this language within the education system itself. Therefore, motivation in the classroom during English speaking classes is the turning point for benefiting the society which is developed in the school. Motivation needs to be justified in a specialised context and modernised in current educational ideas, as well as drawing on the theoretical background on motivation and, finally, addressing the transversality of the aforementioned concepts and others that emerge during this research. On the one hand, we find that every school (whether primary, secondary or higher education) creates a small society. This is a constant reflection of the real society, but with the distinction that it is more rapidly modifiable than the reality in which we live. The moral and social norms and values that are established at school shape the attitudes and ways of behaving and thinking of all those connected to the school - family, pupils and teachers - as well as others that are also added to these, such as the school's administrative and service staff. On the other hand, the English subject should form the basis of any knowledge established in school learning. Seeing this as the cross-cutting benefit of any tool to be used in everyday life, in addition to the health benefits it brings, which will not be covered in this paper in order to focus on methodological, conceptual and resource aspects.