Page 121 [121]
STUDY Two
language and culture does not occur in person but through the Internet and
media. As a result, indirect contact with the target-language culture may be
achieved through engagement in EE activities. In addition, through reading,
be it online or paper-based, students also have the opportunity to gain access
to the target-language culture by consuming recent news or reading novels
and short stories in English. Therefore, it may be concluded that intercultural
orientation may be affected by engagement in EE activities.
Finally, the impact of EE activities on participants’ perceptions of the im¬
portance of the English language was also examined through regression anal¬
ysis. The results show that the importance of the English language variable
may be explained by two EE activities, and these two activities have an explan¬
atory power of 16% at the p<.05 level of significance (see Table 32).
Table 32. Results of regression analysis regarding the perceived importance
of the English language
EE activities B SEB ß t
EE reading online .21 .04 31 5.88
EE listening to music .22 .07 177 3.22
R? .16
F for change in R? 30.876
Note. B stands for regression coefficient. *p<.05
SE B — standard error associated with the coefficient
B — standardized coefficient
R? — stands for the proportion of variance in the dependent variable explained by the
independent variables
Regarding the importance of the English language, it may be concluded that
reading online and listening to music have an impact on participants’ percep¬
tions of the global importance of the English language. Online reading, i.e.,
the consumption of news and content in general, may provide students with
the impression that the English language is an important language, as a great
deal of content is either available exclusively in English or for a relatively long
time in English only; only later, if at all, are these materials translated into
Hungarian. In the case of music, it also speaks for itself that most internation¬
ally popular songs are in English. This demonstrates the global dominance
and status of the English language, which Crystal (2003) already pointed out
in the early 2000s and which Csizér and Lukacs (2010) also emphasize.
* 119 +