Attitudes of mexican american students towards learning english as a second language in a structured immersion program Uribe Martínez, Diego Gutiérrez Pérez, José Madrid Fernández, Daniel Mexican american strudents Attitudes Structured english inmersion Learning english second language This study involves the examination of the attitudes of a group of Mexican American students towards learning English as a second language in a structured immersion program. It also analyzes the extent to which these attitudes differ in relation to the variables of gender and performance in English. Participants were 110 students (girls, n = 56, boys, n = 54) in grades 8-12 in the Compton Unified School District (California, USA). One noteworthy finding of this study is the appearance of a general factor that defines the homogeneous structure of the instruments used in the assessment of student attitudes toward second language learning. In addition, a further factor, which the authors have termed “pressure to learn English” was also identified. This factor is manifested in a high average correlation of all variables. It reveals the motivation to learn a second language in the context of vital necessity where learning English is a key element for the integration in a territory in which the use of Spanish is prohibited by law. 2013-06 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Uribe Martínez, D.; Gutiérrez Pérez, J.; Madrid Fernández, D. Attitudes of mexican american students towards learning english as a second language in a structured immersion program. Porta Linguarum, 20: 205-221 (2013). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/29104] 1697-7467 D.L.: GR 43-2004 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/29104 10.30827/Digibug.29104 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Universidad de Granada