Abstract:

The purpose of this article is to present the motivational sources that an eleventh-grade student from La Giralda and De Salerno schools in Bogotá, Colombia can find within their family, school, and social context, to begin higher education studies, which are related to learning English as a foreign language. Once this is done, a series of dissertations are carried out on the conditions of these sources and the way in which they could be strengthened. In the aforementioned contexts, people could find elements that encourage or deter them from opting for this type of higher education. In order to carry out this dissertation, a descriptive research model is followed, with the objective of having an approach that allows generating consultative approaches, through information collection instruments such as surveys and interviews, since these allowed obtaining information sufficient, systematic and detailed to identify the relationships between the agents of the context and the option of studying a higher education career related to English as a foreign language.

The first of them was the family as a factor that influences the decision-making exercise of young people, especially due to the socio-emotional relationship, which can drive the student when defining his/her personal fulfillment. There is also the school, as a mediating social structure of the formal teaching-learning process, because it is an important space for socialization in which the meeting with peers takes on significant importance. Within the educational institution, recreational spaces are also generated, where students have the possibility of expressing themselves freely with their peers, forming patterns of acceptance in their social ties. A third environment to study within this research was the Neighborhood, an important and significant context in the life of any young person, since it is in this space where the young person has the perception of "freedom", and feels that they have the possibility of being like is, without the restrictions imposed by the adult world of school or family. There friendships and enmities are generated, a common reading of the world is shared, of expectations (such as being part of the gang), of what is important (such as being a member of the Urban Tribe), of what is essential (how he/she looks), and of a degree of maturity, (such as learning the value of loyalty and being carried in the right direction).

The different contexts surrounding the eleventh grade students from La Giralda and De Salerno schools, immersed within Bogotá society, showed a great burden of discrimination and exclusion in the face of the educational opportunities that surround these young people, in comparison to those from other areas of the city, which under similar social and cultural situations, do not carry stigmas as deeply rooted in the popular knowledge of the city, as in the case of the Las Cruces neighborhood, the space where this research has been generated. The research made it possible to provide relevant information to both educational institutions, youth support networks and families, so that, in a conscious and effective manner, different life alternatives are promoted for these recently graduated young people who have a related future projection with street life, drugs, crime, and informality.

Keywords:

Motivation, context, English, higher Education.