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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 importance of the English language was also examined through regression analysis. The results show that the importance of the English language variable may be explained by two EE activities, and these two activities have an explanatory 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’ perceptions 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 internationally 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 +
