La motivation pour la langue étrangère à l'école primaire : apprentissage en autonomie à l'ordinateur

The widespread availability of web-based games for learning English provided the impetus for this empirical study of the effectiveness of such activities for motivation and acquisition in young learners in a French primary school context. Eighteen pupils aged 7 to 11 in an experimental EFL class participated in a study of autonomous learning by computer, using measures of lexical recognition, oral interaction, and motivation. The group working on web-based EFL games outperformed a control group using webquests in French on some measures, with the best results obtained by learners with special motivation for computers and those with low self-efficacy for learning English but strong affiliation for the teacher. The results support further research into the utility of web-based games in the EFL classroom and the relationship between motivation and learning in the primary second language classroom.