• Organisation

This study investigates how contact with the German language and its speakers affects language-related attitudes and motivated behaviour in a foreign language context, namely Hungary, by means of structural equation modelling. Questionnaire data were collected from 189 students of German, who were all between 13 and 14 years old and attended the final, eighth, grade of the primary school system. Our results revealed that students’ motivated learning behaviour was not only shaped by their attitudes towards the target language and its speakers, but also by the students’ experiences about speaking German with visitors to Hungary as well as the perceived importance of these contact situations. Students’ experience of direct contact with speakers of German was affected by their linguistic self-confidence whereas all the other contact- and attitude-related dimensions were socially constructed through the influence of the students’ immediate learning environment