Motivation and gender-related variation in EFL receptive vocabulary acquisition in Primary Education

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between the receptive vocabulary size and the motivation towards EFL of a group of (CLIL primary learners. The gender variable is particularly addressed here. Specifically, we aim at exploring (1) gender variation in EFL receptive vocabulary size, (2) gender variation in motivation towards EFL, and (3) whether there exists any relationship between motivation towards EFL and the scores obtained by males and females in receptive vocabulary. No significant differences in general motivation and in extrinsic motivation are reported, although females are more motivated. Significant differences are found in intrinsic motivation in favour of females. Also, females overcome boys in receptive vocabulary size but this difference is not significant. Finally, there exists a significant positive correlation between girls’ performance in the 2K VLT and their extrinsic motivation. Some reasons are provided for these results.