Inequality in education in the Czech Republic was a taboo topic before the transformation of 1989. The socialist ideological postulates were threatened by the possibility of a negative analysis of educational results. Due to this fact the level of inequality in education was among the highest in Europe at the end of 1980s (Boguszak, Matějů, Peschar, 1990).

Little attention was paid to the problems of equal educational opportunities in the Czech political, public and academic discourse during the early years of the transformation, especially due to the historical circumstances. The call for equal opportunities was perceived negatively because of the egalitarian touch once characteristic of the communist era (Matějů, 2006).

My dissertation draws on the claims defended in recent sociology that learning success is significantly influenced by social environment (Giddens, 1999; Keller, Tvrdý, 1995). In this respect the question of inequality in foreign language education is raised.  External factors such as social class, motivation and attitudes, as two major social psychology phenomena related to success at foreign language learning, are researched. Based on these concepts it is concluded that the process of foreign language learning is considered strongly influenced by opportunities for learning and by the process of constructing foreign language learner´s identity (Block, 2008; Norton, 2000).

The research follows the qualitative paradigm using the narrative approach (Polkinghorn, 1995; Chase, 2005) and an in-depth interview as the main research method (Kaufmann, 2010; Kvale, 1996). The research design of biography and case study is used; two individual case studies are presented, with the impact of showing diversity and motivation complexity of foreign language learning. The research takes place in the university environment; students of technical faculties were the object of the research.

The question of inequality in the specific context of the process of foreign language learning has been researched through individual learners´ biographies (Benson, Nunan, 2005; Clandinin, Connelly, 1990). My research approaches learners´ within their own social space, relying upon  sociocultural theories in the field of second language acquisition and Bourdieu´s concept of social, economic and cultural capital of an individual (Bourdieu, 1998). The biographies have been analysed using Polkinghorn´s narrative analysis together with the constructionist approach to the way of story making (Silvermann, 2003). The process of data configuration has been treated as an active construction of a story by a researcher and her influence on the interpretation of data and conclusion making (Polkinghorn, 1995), and reflexivity (Bourdieu; Wacquant, 1992).

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