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Maintaining the Momentum of Students of Spanish from High School to College

This article is part of a large-scale project on the study of Spanish in high school that reports on an investigation of the low college enrollments in Spanish courses of students who study Spanish in high school. An online survey was administered to 631 high school students studying Spanish and 19 Spanish teachers, and the results revealed that only 39% of the students intended to continue studying Spanish in college. A comparison of ranks was utilized to determine the strongest factors influencing their decision whether or not to study Spanish in college, and the data indicated that the most influential factors were extrinsic and instrumental: the possibility of obtaining good grades, being able to use Spanish in their everyday life, and career benefits. A descriptive analysis from SPSS also showed that there were differences based on gender, graduation plan, year of study, grade level, and ethnicity. Additionally, there were significant differences between the students' responses and teachers' perceptions, which suggests that there could be a difference between instructional goals and student motives. The article concludes with recommendations for maintaining the momentum for studying Spanish in order to produce more lifelong learners of Spanish.