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EXTRAMURAL ENGLISH ACTIVITIES AND INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES they are encouraged to do so by their teacher. Black (2009), for instance, points out that research has shown that EEL learners in the USA are developing and improving their foreign language skills by using different technological tools, such as smartphones, personal computers, and the Internet, to communicate and share information and content in English with others. Such activities cater not only to the notion of functional practice advocated by Bialystok (1981) but also provide an environment for L2 learning through digital environments (Barton—Potts 2013). This is particularly true for social media (e.g., blogs, vlogs, Facebook, etc.) and video games where learners of English are, in fact, real users of English when engaging in different EE activities, as they consume and compose content and interact with others in English. Learners of English use English as a lingua franca when interacting with friends and other people with different L1s (Crystal 2003, De Wilde et al. 2019, Djigunovic 2018, Sauer—Ellis 2019, Sayer—Ban 2014, Sundqvist—Sylvén 2014, Sylven-Sundgvist 2012). Such interactions are important sources of extramural English and may motivate learners to invest more effort into learning English. As a consequence, friendship orientation and intercultural contact were chosen to be a component of this investigation because they are hypothesized to have an impact on EFL learners’ L2 learning motivation in the extramural context, and there is virtually no such recent empirical investigation in the EE context. 2.3.2.5 Perceived importance of the language As Hungary is a relatively small country and the Hungarian language is spoken by around 13 million people as the L1, the perceived importance of the given L2 may play a significant role in the L2 learning motivation of Hungarian people (Csizér—Lukacs 2010). Speakers are most likely to learn English as they consider it an important asset in today’s globalized world. Widdowson (1997) also highlights that English as an international language has gained more significance than smaller local languages. Weger (2013: 89) pointed out that through English language products, learners have the opportunity to “gain access to international communities.” However, even though, in most cases, the English language is not directly accessible in the learners’ immediate environment, i.e., it is not spoken (Ryan 2006), it is often available through English-language media products. Csizér and Lukacs (2010) reported that Hungarian learners are aware of the global and international role of English and the regional importance of German. This increased importance of the English language is exemplified by the number of Hungarians living in the United Kingdom, too. The number of Hungarian people residing and working in the UK in 2015 was around 86,000 (Moreh + 42 +
