Teaching and Researching Motivation

Cultivating motivation is crucial to a language learner’s success – and therefore

crucial for the language teacher and researcher to understand. The third edition
of Teaching and Researching Motivation refects the dramatic changes in the feld
of motivation research. With an increased emphasis on dynamic perspectives on
motivation and its relations with other individual, social and contextual factors,
this book offers ways in which advances in the feld can be put to practical use in
the classroom and in research.
Key new features and material:

• exploration of the motivation to learn languages other than English (LOTEs);

• principles for designing L2 motivational studies;
• discussion of emerging areas of research, including unconscious motivation
and language learning mindsets.

Providing a clear and comprehensive theory-driven account of motivation,

Teaching and Researching Motivation examines how theoretical insights can be
used in everyday teaching practice. The fnal section provides a range of useful
resources, including relevant websites, key reference works and an online
repository of tools and instruments for researching language learning motivation.
Fully revised by pre-eminent researchers in this feld, Zoltán Dörnyei and Ema
Ushioda, this is an invaluable resource for teachers and researchers alike.

Zoltán Dörnyei is Professor of Psycholinguistics at the School of English,

University of Nottingham. He has published extensively on various aspects of
language learner characteristics and second language acquisition, and he is the
(co-)author of over 100 academic papers and 25 books.

Ema Ushioda is Professor and Head of Applied Linguistics at the University

of Warwick. Her main research interests are language learning motivation and
learner autonomy, promoting qualitative approaches in particular, and she has
published widely in these areas.
Applied Linguistics in Action
Series Editor: Christopher N. Candlin

Christopher N. Candlin (1940–2015) was Senior Research Professor in the

Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, Australia and Professor of
Applied Linguistics at the Open University, UK. At Macquarie, he was Chair
of the Department of Linguistics; established and was Executive Director of
the National Centre for English Language Teaching & Research (NCELTR);
and was the frst Director of the Centre for Language in Social Life (CLSL).
He wrote and edited over 150 publications and co-edited the Journal of
Applied Linguistics. From 1996 to 2002 he was President of the International
Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). He acted as a consultant in
more than 35 countries and as an external faculty assessor in 36 universities
worldwide.
Applied Linguistics in Action is a series which focuses on the issues and challenges
to teachers and researchers in a range of felds in Applied Linguistics and provides
readers and users with the tools they need to carry out their own practice-based
research.

Teaching and Researching Speaking

3rd Edition
Rebecca Hughes and Beatrice Szczepek-Reed

Teaching and Researching Reading

3rd Edition
William Peter Grabe and Fredricka L. Stoller

Teaching and Researching Motivation

3rd Edition
Zoltán Dörnyei and Ema Ushioda

For more information about this series, please visit:

https://www.routledge.com/Applied-Linguistics-in-Action/book -series/PE
AALIA
Teaching and Researching
Motivation
Third Edition

Zoltán Dörnyei and Ema Ushioda

Third edition published 2021
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
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this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Pearson Education 2001
Second edition published by Routledge 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dörnyei, Zoltán, author. | Ushioda, Ema, author.
Title: Teaching and researching motivation / Zoltán Dörnyei and
Ema Ushioda.
Description: Third edition. | New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020049862 (print) | LCCN 2020049863 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages–Study and teaching. |
Second language acquisition. | Motivation in education.
Classification: LCC P118.2 .D68 2021 (print) | LCC P118.2 (ebook) |
DDC 418.0071–dc22
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049862
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049863
ISBN: 978-1-138-54345-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-54346-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-00674-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Goudy
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents

Series Editor Preface viii

Introduction to the Third Edition x

PART I
What is Motivation? 1

1 Exploring Motivation: Changing Perspectives 3

1.1 The Complexity of Motivation 3
1.2 Understanding L2 Motivation in a Changing,
Multifaceted World 10
1.3 The Motivation to Learn Global English Versus
Other Languages 11
References 12

2 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 15

2.1 Key Cognitive Theories of Motivation 15
2.2 Motivation and its Sociocultural Context 28
References 35

3 Motivation to Learn a Foreign/Second Language:

A Historical Overview 39
3.1 The Social Psychological Beginnings 40
3.2 Accounting for Cognitive Theories and the Classroom Reality 44
3.3 Focus on Time, Context and Vision 51
References 67
vi Contents
4 Current Approaches in Theorising L2 Motivation 76
4.1 Motivational Dynamics 77
4.2 Motivational Currents and Long-Term Motivation 81
4.3 Unconscious Motivation 87
4.4 Motivation, Multilingualism and Languages Other than English
(LOTEs) 89
4.5 Other Recent Theoretical Initiatives 93
4.6 “Small Lens” Approach and Student Engagement 97
Note 101
References 101

PART II
Motivation and Language Teaching 109

5 Motivation in Practice: Strategies and Approaches 111

5.1 From Theory and Research to Classroom Practice 111
5.2 A Framework for Motivational Strategies 114
5.3 Promoting Motivational Self-Regulation and Learner
Autonomy 123
5.4 Generating and Sustaining a Vision for L2 Learning 125
5.5 Engaging L2 Learners 127
5.6 Frameworks for Directed Motivational Currents 129
5.7 The Motivational Capacity of Technology 131
5.8 Researching Motivational Strategies 132
References 134

6 Motivation in Context: Demotivating Infuences 138

6.1 “Demotivation” Versus “Motivation” 139
6.2 Research Findings on L2 Demotivation 141
6.3 The Relevance of Fixed and Growth Mindsets 144
6.4 Critical Factors in the Broader Sociocultural Context 146
References 149

7 Teacher Motivation 152

7.1 Conceptualising the “Motivation to Teach” 153
7.2 The Motivation of L2 Teachers 157
7.3 Teacher Motivation and Student Motivation:
Exploring Their Interplay 163
References 169
 Contents vii
PART III
Researching Motivation 175

8 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 177

8.1 Inherent Challenges of Motivation Research 178
8.2 Linear Cause–Effect Relationships Versus Dynamic Interdependence 179
8.3 Group- Versus Individual-Level Measurement 182
8.4 Context-Sensitive Approaches to Understanding Motivation 184
8.5 Principles of Designing L2 Motivation Studies 185
8.6 Motivation Research and Impact on Society 191
8.7 How to Make Motivation Research Fruitful 192
References 194

9 Main Types and Methods of Motivation Research 197

9.1 Quantitative Motivation Studies 197
9.2 Qualitative Motivation Studies 213
9.3 Mixing Methodologies 223
9.4 New Directions in L2 Motivation Research 227
References 239

PART IV
Resources and Further Information 245

10 The Locus of Motivation Research: Linkages to Other

Topics and Disciplines 247
10.1 L2 Motivation and Related Disciplines in the Social Sciences 248
10.2 The Challenge of Relating L2 Motivation to Applied Linguistics
and SLA 252
10.3 Defning Target Aspects of L2 Communication 253
References 254

11 Sources and Resources 259

11.1 Relevant Journals and Edited Collections 259
11.2 Databases, Citation Indexes, Internet Resources and Discussion
Groups 261
11.3 Who’s Who in L2 Motivation Research? 264
11.4 Locating Motivation Measures and Instruments 267
References 269

Author Index 271

Subject Index 280
Series Editor Preface

Note from Routledge: Christopher Candlin and David Hall were founding editors
of the Applied Linguistics in Action series when Pearson Education Limited was the
series’ publisher. After David passed away in February 2014, Christopher continued as
general editor of the series for Routledge until his passing in May 2015. To honor their
invaluable work for and involvement in books that they commissioned for the series, we
are retaining their original series preface for this volume.
Applied Linguistics in Action, as its name suggests, is a series which focuses
on the issues and challenges to teachers and researchers in a range of felds in
Applied Linguistics and provides readers and users with the tools they need to
carry out their own practice-related research.
The books in the series provide the reader with clear, up-to-date, accessi-
ble, and authoritative accounts of their chosen feld within applied linguistics.
Starting from a map of the landscape of the feld, each book provides information
on its main ideas and concepts, competing issues, and unsolved questions. From
there, readers can explore a range of practical applications of research into those
issues and questions, and then take up the challenge of undertaking their own
research, guided by the detailed and explicit research guides provided. Finally,
each book has a section which provides a rich array of resources, information
sources and further reading, as well as a key to the principal concepts of the feld.
Questions the books in this innovative series ask are those familiar to all teach-
ers and researchers, whether very experienced, or new to the felds of applied
linguistics.

• What does research tell us, what doesn’t it tell us, and what should it tell
us about the feld? How is the feld mapped and landscaped? What is its
geography?
• How has research been applied and what interesting research possibilities
does practice raise? What are the issues we need to explore and explain?
• What are the key researchable topics that practitioners can undertake? How
can the research be turned into practical action?
• Where are the important resources that teachers and researchers need? Who
has the information? How can it be accessed?
 Series Editor Preface ix
Each book in the series has been carefully designed to be as accessible as pos-
sible, with built-in features to enable readers to fnd what they want quickly and
to home in on the key issues and themes that concern them. The structure is to
move from practice to theory and back to practice in a cycle of development of
understanding of the feld in question.
Each of the authors of books in the series is an acknowledged authority, able
to bring broad knowledge and experience to engage teachers and researchers in
following up their own ideas, working with them to build further on their own
experience.
The frst editions of books in this series have attracted widespread praise for
their authorship, their design, and their content, and have been widely used to
support practice and research. The success of the series, and the realization that
it needs to stay relevant in a world where new research is being conducted and
published at a rapid rate, have prompted the commissioning of this 3rd edition.
This new edition has been thoroughly updated, with accounts of research that
has appeared since the previous edition and with the addition of other relevant
material. We trust that students, teachers, and researchers will continue to dis-
cover inspiration in these pages to underpin their own investigations.
Chris Candlin
David Hall
Introduction to the Third Edition
Zoltán Dörnyei and Ema Ushioda

The frst edition of Teaching and Researching Motivation came out in 2001 and the
second edition in 2011; therefore, the 2021 publication date of the third edition
might well appear to be a conscious decision to have the consecutive editions
follow each other at regular ten-year intervals. However, in a complex dynamic
system such as the life of an academic – let alone two co-authors – few things
are so neatly systematic, and quite frankly we planned to write the new edition
several years earlier. Indeed, so much has changed over the past decade in L2
motivation research that a revision has been due for some time, but, curiously, it
was also this high-level activity of the feld that stopped us from acting any faster.
To start with, we became aware of the preparation of the frst-ever comprehen-
sive handbook of L2 motivation research, The Palgrave Handbook of Motivation
for Language Learning (Lamb, Csizér, Henry & Ryan, 2019), and we decided that
our book should review the material of this handbook. However, as it often hap-
pens with handbooks, the production took longer than expected, and when the
work had fnally been completed and we were about to start writing our third
edition, we learned about yet another ambitious collection of motivation papers
in the making, Contemporary Language Motivation Theory: 60 years Since Gardner
and Lambert (1959) (Al-Hoorie & MacIntyre, 2020). It would have been folly
not to wait for this set of material to be fnished before getting down to work-
ing on Teaching and Researching Motivation, and then two further interfering fac-
tors emerged in the form of books on motivation that we ourselves were in the
process of writing: Innovations and Challenges in Language Learning Motivation
(Dörnyei, 2020) and Language Learning Motivation: An Ethical Agenda for Research
(Ushioda, 2020). On top of all of this, of course, there was the small matter of a
global pandemic in 2020 that disrupted academic working life. As a result, and to
cut a long story short, it became obvious both to us and our editors at Routledge
that the third edition was not going to be completed before 2021. (Needless to
say, our justifcation for the delay has been that it was due to a conscious decision
to have the consecutive editions follow each other at regular ten-year intervals.)
One consequence of having a decade between the last and the new edition
of Teaching and Researching Motivation has been that when we started to work
on the text we soon came to realise that virtually the whole material needed to
be rewritten: the changes in both the practice and theory of L2 motivation had
 Introduction to the Third Edition xi
turned out to be so extensive during this period that very little of the old text
could be kept intact. The current volume therefore is not so much a revised ver-
sion as a newly written book that has the same authors, the same title and the
same structure as the previous one. In preparing this new edition, our primary
objective has been to be up-to-date, and we have made a real effort to review
relevant materials up to the present.
How has the feld changed in ten years? The good news (for us) is that the
main approaches we were promoting in the second edition – self-based research
and a qualitative, person-in-context inquiry – blossomed in the subsequent years
and became mainstream. The bad news has been that as with all mainstream
approaches, the feld has started to generate criticisms of them (which we have
of course omitted from this volume) and has even started to move beyond them
in meaningful ways (which we have included and interpreted as the result of our
approaches serving as welcoming frameworks for innovation and springboards for
new developments). Ten years ago we began the “Introduction to the Second
Edition” by stating that since the publication of the previous edition of Teaching
and Researching Motivation “the research landscape of language learning motivation
has changed almost beyond recognition”. We could reiterate this statement today:
some very big ships have appeared on the horizon – dynamic systems theory, vision,
unconscious motivation – to make the already crowded waterfront even busier, and
the novel theoretical paradigms have also been accompanied by methodological
innovations both in research and teaching. One thing, however, has not changed,
namely that the feld of L2 motivation has remained vibrant and vigorous: Boo,
Dörnyei and Ryan’s (2015) review demonstrated that publication levels were at an
all-time high in 2015, and the increasing trend has not stopped.
In sum, these are good times to be a motivation researcher, and we have done
our best to retell the intriguing story of L2 motivation in a detailed and at the
same time engaging way. We have even compiled a “Who’s who in L2 motiva-
tion research” in the concluding chapter (which is bound to reduce the number
of colleagues and friends on speaking terms with us signifcantly)! Our sincere
hope is that we have managed to convey some of the enthusiasm that we our-
selves feel for the topic. And, of course, we look forward to the next ten years…

References
Al-Hoorie, A. H., & MacIntyre, P. D. (Eds.). (2020). Contemporary language motivation
theory: 60 years since Gardner and Lambert (1959). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Boo, Z., Dörnyei, Z., & Ryan, S. (2015). L2 motivation research 2005–2014: Understanding
a publication surge and a changing landscape. System, 55, 147–157.
Dörnyei, Z. (2020). Innovations and challenges in language learning motivation. London:
Routledge.
Lamb, M., Csizér, K., Henry, A., & Ryan, S. (Eds.). (2019). The Palgrave handbook of
motivation for language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Ushioda, E. (2020). Language learning motivation: An ethical agenda for research. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Part I

What is Motivation?
1 Exploring Motivation
Changing Perspectives

This chapter will…

• describe the complex meaning of the term “motivation”;

• summarise key challenges in theorising motivation;
• outline current perspectives in understanding L2 motivation.

The word “motivation” derives from the Latin verb movere meaning “to move”.
What moves a person to make certain choices, to engage in action, to expend
effort and persist in action – such basic questions lie at the heart of motivation
theory and research. Remarkably, however, these deceptively simple questions
have generated a wealth of theory and research over the decades, provoked con-
siderable debate and disagreement among scholars, spawned numerous theoreti-
cal models encompassing different variables and different understandings of the
construct of motivation, and produced few clear and straightforward answers.
While intuitively we may know what we mean by the term “motivation”, there
seems little consensus on its conceptual range of reference. In fact, according to
Walker and Symons (1997), there was a point when the American Psychological
Association considered replacing the word “motivation” as a search term in its
main psychological database, Psychological Abstracts, because, as a concept, it had
too much meaning and therefore was not very useful.

1.1 The Complexity of Motivation

What has prevented a consensus in our understanding of motivation? Perhaps
a helpful analogy to draw here is with the well-known Indian fable of the blind
men encountering an elephant, each touching a different part of the animal
(tusk, tail, ear, trunk, belly) and ending up with a very different mental repre-
sentation of the animal. Similarly, when it comes to understanding motivation,
researchers are inevitably selective in their focus since it seems impossible to
capture the whole spectrum of internal and external infuences, and of conscious
and unconscious factors, that may motivate human behaviour. Therefore, let us
state as a preliminary that no existing motivation theory to date has managed
– or even attempted – to offer a comprehensive and integrative account of all
4 What Is Motivation?
the main types of possible motives for human behaviour, and it may well be the
case that elaborating an eclectic “supertheory” of motivation will always remain
an unrealistic aim. After all, motivation theories intend to explain nothing less
than why humans think and behave as they do, and it is very doubtful that the
complexity of this issue can be accounted for by a single comprehensive theory.
Let us begin our exploration by briefy considering this complexity from a number
of perspectives.

CONCEPT 1.1 THE MEANING OF THE TERM

“MOTIVATION”
Perhaps the only thing about motivation most researchers would agree
on is that it, by defnition, concerns the direction and magnitude of human
behaviour; that is,
• the choice of a particular action;
• the persistence with it;
• the effort expended on it.
In other words, motivation is responsible for
• why people decide to do something;
• how long they are willing to sustain the activity;
• how hard they are going to pursue it.

1.1.1 The Different Senses of Motivation, and the Challenge of Time

Even in common parlance, the term “motivation” can be used in several different
senses, suggesting something of its complexity as a phenomenon. Motivation can
mean a person’s reasons or purposes for doing something, such as when actors
read a script and ask themselves “What’s my motivation?” as they try to get into
character. The term can also be used to describe a gradable state, such as feeling
very motivated or only slightly motivated, and it can even describe a fuctuating
process over time, such as experiencing motivational highs and lows. Motivation
can also refer to more stable dispositional characteristics that we recognise in
people, such as when we describe a person as motivated and driven. Motivation
can furthermore characterise the properties of phenomena we experience, such
as when we describe a task or an event as motivating or demotivating, while in
its transitive verb form it can characterise purposeful actions we take to motivate
others or to motivate ourselves through, for example, motivational speeches or
self-motivational strategies.
 Exploring Motivation 5
Given this complexity, it is perhaps not surprising that researchers have tended
to pay rather selective attention to the different senses of motivation. Within
mainstream psychology, the principal attention has been on motivation as a dis-
positional trait or “individual difference” (ID) characteristic. This approach is
anchored in a long tradition of ID research or trait psychology that examines how
individuals show consistency of behaviour across time and contexts while differ-
ing from other individuals in their trait dimensions and associated behavioural
tendencies (for a brief history of ID research, see Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015). With
regard to motivation as an ID characteristic, the approach has led to a primary
focus on classifying the types of reasons, goals or purposes that people have for
pursuing a course of action, and on examining performance outcomes, such as
levels of achievement or success (e.g. expectancy–value frameworks, Rosenzweig,
Wigfeld & Eccles, 2019; or theories of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, Ryan
& Deci, 2017; see Sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.2). Attention has also been focused
on the effects of performance outcomes on subsequent motivation, as refected
in, for example, approach versus avoidance tendencies (Eder, Elliot & Harmon-
Jones, 2013) or learned helplessness (Peterson, Maier & Seligman, 1993). This
division of attention refects a history of debate within the educational feld as
to whether motivation is primarily a “cause” or an “effect” of learning, with the
general consensus being that it functions in a cyclical relationship with learning.
This is theorised in terms of positive cycles of high motivation and achievement,
and negative cycles of low motivation and achievement, with much research
attention focusing on how negative cycles can be broken by modifying the cogni-
tive processes (e.g. attributions, mindsets) that mediate the relationship between
motivation and learning (e.g. Dweck, 2006, 2017).
However, most people’s experience of motivation in real life is rather more
complex than simply perceiving cause-and-effect binary states before and after a
task or an event. Motivation to do something usually develops gradually, through
a complex mental process that involves initial planning and goal setting, inten-
tion formation, task generation, action implementation, action control and
outcome evaluation. These different subphases may be associated with different
motivational processes. Ignoring “time” can (and often does) result in a situation
when two theories are equally valid and yet contradict one another – simply
because they refer to different phases of the motivation process. Moreover, in sus-
tained long-term activities such as learning a foreign language, motivation does
not remain constant over weeks, months and years, or even during a single lesson.
It ebbs and fows in complex ways in response to various internal and external
infuences. This diachronic aspect of motivation thus complicates attempts to
represent the concept in a unifed way, since we need to take account of moti-
vational development at the micro-level of moment-by-moment experiences as
well as at the macro-level of long-term experience or life history. We shall see
in later chapters how current theoretical and empirical approaches are rising to
this challenge.
6 What Is Motivation?

QUOTE 1.1 DÖRNYEI AND OTTÓ’S DEFINITION OF L2

MOTIVATION
In a general sense, motivation can be defned as the dynamically
changing cumulative arousal in a person that initiates, directs, coor-
dinates, amplifes, terminates and evaluates the cognitive and motor
processes whereby initial wishes and desires are selected, prioritised,
operationalised and (successfully or unsuccessfully) acted out.
Dörnyei & Ottó (1998, p. 65)

1.1.2 The Relationship Between Individual and Context:

Evolving Perspectives
Adding to the complexity of theorising motivation is the challenge of account-
ing for the role of contextual factors and the relationship between individual and
context (for a recent discussion in relation to L2 motivation in particular, see
Dörnyei, 2020; Yim, Clément & MacIntyre, 2019). In most psychological theo-
ries of motivation, the unit of analysis is the individual, and social-contextual
factors are viewed as external infuences that may have an effect on individual
motivation. Thus, for example, in traditional behaviourist accounts, motivation
is theorised in terms of observable conditioned responses to environmental stim-
uli (rewards or punishments), as commonly depicted in the “carrot-and-stick”
metaphor of motivation. In subsequent cognitive accounts of motivation that
remain very current today, the analytical focus is on how individuals perceive
and process the external social environment, and how these internal cognitions
then direct their motivation and behaviour. Thus, social-contextual factors are
seen as important only in so far as they are fltered through the individual’s per-
ceptions. This makes intuitive sense since it is individuals who initiate actions
and the immediate cause of human behaviour is indeed individual motivation.
However, the problem with this individualistic perspective on social context
is that it is incomplete. Humans are social beings and human action is always
embedded in a range of social, cultural, physical or virtual environments that
considerably affect how any individual person may think, feel, act or behave. A
contrasting perspective on the relationship between individual and social con-
text focuses instead on broad social processes and macrocontextual factors, such
as sociocultural norms and values, intergroup relations, or socio-political ideolo-
gies. From this perspective, the individual is seen as a reactive “pawn” whose
motivations and attitudes are largely determined by the more powerful forces at
large, such as their membership of certain social, ethnic or political groups, as
refected in social identity theory (e.g. Hogg, 2016).
Yet, individuals are also an integral part of the contexts they inhabit and
contribute to shaping and changing their environment through their motivated
 Exploring Motivation 7
actions and behaviours. This agentic capacity of individuals to act upon and
shape their contexts is illustrated on a global and local scale, for example, in peo-
ple’s efforts to reduce their carbon footprint to protect the natural environment
or to contribute to a cultural change in society’s attitudes and practices; or it is
illustrated in relation to organisational settings, for example, in collective actions
and negotiations that people can pursue to improve their working conditions.
According to this perspective on motivation, the unit of analysis is no longer the
individual and embraces instead the “person-in-context” (Ushioda, 2009), that
is, the dynamic ecology of the individual and context in interaction with one
another. As we will see in later chapters, this situative perspective on the organic
relationship between individual and context is reshaping motivation theory in
psychology and L2 learning, with some scholars seeing the notion of “agency” as
a key factor in helping to set the boundaries of the unit of analysis (e.g. Larsen-
Freeman, 2019; for a review, see Dörnyei, 2020).

1.1.3 Cognition Versus Affect: Changing Emphases

Some scholars have traditionally classifed motivation as an “affective” variable,
and yet the most infuential theoretical accounts that shape our thinking today
take a cognitive view of motivation. Understanding how motivation (“I want”)
relates to both cognition (“I think”) and affect (“I feel”) is important to under-
standing what motivation is and how it directs human behaviour.
Early theories of motivation focused largely on deep-seated unconscious
drives, emotions and instincts shaping human behaviour, infuenced in par-
ticular by the work of Freud (e.g. 1966), whereas with the cognitive revolution
through the second half of the 20th century, the science of human motivation
became characterised by a focus on conscious cognitive processes (e.g. goals
and expectations, self-effcacy beliefs, interpretations of events) shaping action
and behaviour. Although cognitive perspectives on motivation continue to
hold sway today, the frst decade of the 21st century witnessed a resurgence of
interest in the role of emotions in motivational psychology. As Richard Ryan
(2007) summarised at the time, this resurgence came about through a num-
ber of parallel developments in the feld of psychology: interest in evolution-
ary psychology was focusing attention on what constitutes human nature, and
uncovered the importance of motives and emotions. At the same time, the
growing feld of cross-cultural psychology had begun to explore culturally spe-
cifc motives, emotions and values; the rise of positive psychology led to an
increasing interest in the study of personal meaning, motives and emotional
wellbeing; and scientifc advances in neuropsychology were facilitating analysis
of how behaviour and experience are infuenced by subcortical inputs associ-
ated with psychological needs and affects. Importantly, as Ryan observed, this
resurgence of interest in the emotional dimension of human motivation did
not mean that the cognitive dimension ceased to be important. Instead, the
challenge has been to develop theoretical frameworks that integrate these twin
dimensions in a coherent way.
8 What Is Motivation?
The integration of emotions is an ongoing effort and, for example, Weiner
(2019) has recently still concluded that “missing in many theories of motiva-
tion is emotion” (p. 191). The diffculty lies in the fact that while it is clear that
emotions can shape behaviour and thus have motivating power – for example,
when people are very angry they can be bursting to do something about it (see
e.g. MacIntyre, Ross & Clément, 2019) – an emotional arousal is not automati-
cally translated into goal-directed motivated behaviour. Indeed, when we are
bursting to do something in our anger, it is often unclear what this “something”
should be beyond simply lashing out. Thus, emotions do give people the urge
to act but do not tend to set course for the specifc action; and in this sense
emotional arousal is distinct from a motivational state, which is, by defnition,
purposeful and goal-directed. It may perhaps be more accurate to associate emo-
tions with “action tendencies” (Epstein, 2014, p. 63) rather than “goal-specifc
action”, which offers a halfway position, well-refected for example in the title of
a review article on the topic by Baumeister et al. (2007), “How emotion shapes
behaviour: Feedback, anticipation, and refection, rather than direct causation”.
A good summary along these lines is offered by MacIntyre et al. (2019, p. 185):
“Intense emotional arousal energizes the body, focusses the mind, and often can
provoke action” (for further discussion, see Dörnyei, 2020, pp. 119–122). In line
with these developments, there has been renewed interest in the feld of SLA
exploring the contribution of positive and negative emotions to L2 motivational
processes (e.g. MacIntyre & Vincze, 2017), and we shall examine current devel-
opments in this area in Chapter 4.

1.1.4 Conscious Versus Unconscious Motives

Despite this resurgence of interest in the role of emotions, the long-standing focus
on the cognitive processes shaping motivation has meant that little theoretical
attention has been paid to unconscious or subconscious motives in accounting for
human behaviour – at least, until recently. Of course, a focus on the unconscious
mind as the primary source of human behaviour was core to Freud’s psychoanalytic
theory of personality. However, this explanation of motivation in terms of deep-
seated unconscious drives and instincts became largely associated with the domain
of clinical psychology and psychotherapy, and did not grow to infuence theory
development in mainstream motivational psychology. The emphasis instead has
been on accounting for motivation in terms of conscious cognitive, emotional and
behavioural processes, such as formulating goals and intentions, sensing feelings
of satisfaction, or applying a high degree of effort. This theorising of motivation
in relation to conscious processes is refected also in the predominant reliance on
self-report tools, such as questionnaire and interview methods, to investigate moti-
vation. Such self-report tools assume, of course, that people are aware of the factors
that shape their motivation and behaviour and are able to articulate these.
Yet, in everyday life, we commonly experience situations where we fnd our-
selves engaging in certain actions and behaviours without conscious reasoning,
such as when we instinctively make snap judgements about people on the basis
 Exploring Motivation 9
of their physical appearance, cultural background or accent. A signifcant body
of research has shown that this kind of implicit stereotyping can infuence the
social judgements we make, even when we strive to avoid its use (e.g. Greenwald,
McGhee & Schwartz, 1998). In the 21st century, this concept of unconscious
bias in our social judgements has become a prominent issue in the context of
equality and diversity agendas, with many organisations investing in unconscious
bias training to improve decision-making and professional relationships, particu-
larly for those in recruitment, leadership and performance management roles.
However, as Hinton (2017) argues, the implicit stereotypes infuencing our social
judgements may refect not necessarily a cognitive “bias” in our brains, but rather
evidence of “culture in mind” – that is, a set of learnt stereotypical associations
and attitudes prevalent within the culture into which we are socialised. Either
way, nevertheless, the processes at work are largely implicit or unconscious, and
this raises interesting questions about the role that such processes play in shaping
human motivation and behaviour, and how they interact with conscious inten-
tional goals and motives; Baumeister and Bargh (2014) for example conclude
that even when behaviour originates in the unconscious sphere, its execution is
usually determined by “a blend of conscious and unconscious processes working
together to meet the person’s critical needs and facilitate important goal pursuits”
(p. 46). Importantly too, investigating the role of unconscious motivational pro-
cesses raises questions and challenges for research methodology, since we cannot
simply rely on self-report tools to obtain data. We shall return to consider these
theoretical and methodological challenges in Chapters 4 and 9.

1.1.5 The Complexity of Motivation: A Summary

In short, over the years, researchers have sought to develop theoretical accounts of
motivation in relation to the relative roles of conscious and unconscious processes,
cognition and affect, temporal and contextual factors. To reiterate what we stated
earlier, the challenge of capturing and integrating all the multiple complexities of
human motivation within a single comprehensive theory will undoubtedly remain
elusive. Even when a particular motivation theory is successful in explaining action
in a specifc behavioural domain (such as learning a foreign language), the typical
implication is that the actional process in question occurs in relative isolation,
without interference from other motivations and ongoing behaviours which the
person is pursuing. In reality, of course, we humans are always multitasking in our
day-to-day lives, and in the classroom students’ engagement in learning will inter-
act with a complex variety of other competing attentional demands, activities and
goals, including social goals (Jones, 2019) as well as academic goals. No theory of
motivation is likely to grasp the whole picture.
In this respect, theories of motivation will always remain constrained to the
extent that they draw on linear models to explain relationships between particu-
lar cognitive, affective and contextual variables. While capturing the temporal
dimension of motivation may be possible in a linear model by breaking down
the motivational sequence into discrete phases (Dörnyei, 2000), it is diffcult to
10 What Is Motivation?
see how such models could take account of evolving dynamic interactions with
the social context or of the complexities of interacting cognitive, unconscious or
emotional processes. In later chapters (particularly in Chapter 8), we shall see
how contemporary theorising in L2 motivation research is moving away from
linear to relational and dynamic systems approaches, in parallel with such devel-
opments across the broader felds of psychology and applied linguistics.

QUOTE 1.2 DÖRNYEI ON THE DYNAMIC CONCEPTION

OF MOTIVATION
Traditionally, we have thought of motives as exerting a linear effect
on action, which was then captured quantitatively by means of cor-
relation-based analyses (i.e. correlation, factor analysis, or structural
equation modelling). However, motives … do not necessarily have a
linear relationship with ongoing action. Their pull or push is interfered
with by a multitude of other pulls and pushes, and the relative power
of a particular pull/push will be amplifed or mitigated by particular
constellations of environmental and temporal factors. This means, for
example, that what was insignifcant a short while ago might assume
feeting or enduring power now, depending on the circumstances. This
dynamic conception requires a new approach to examining motivated
behavioural trajectories.
Dörnyei (2009, pp. 210–211)

1.2 Understanding L2 Motivation in a Changing,

Multifaceted World
The contemporary shift towards relational and dynamic systems approaches
makes sense when we consider the complex and changing global, social and vir-
tual landscape in which language learning and use take place in the 21st century.
Gone are the days when learning a foreign language meant sitting in a classroom
and practising L2 skills that might or might not be put to communicative use
some day in the future, such as when visiting the target language country on
holiday. Language, learning, communication and social relations in today’s world
function instead in highly mobile, fuid, instantaneous and interconnected ways,
where mobility refers not only to the portable technologies that we use for com-
munication, information access, entertainment or learning, but also to the con-
stant fow of people traversing political, geographic and linguistic borders. In this
evolving new world order, motivation for language learning takes on a range of
meanings and implications that are inextricably bound up with the complexities
of multilingualism “enmeshed in globalization, technologization, and mobility”
(Douglas Fir Group, 2016, p. 19) in the 21st-century society.
 Exploring Motivation 11
Understanding L2 motivation thus entails examining it in the context of a
changing, interconnected and multifaceted world. This is a world where, for
example, technological advances in artifcial intelligence and machine transla-
tion may obviate the need (in some people’s perceptions) for investing time and
effort in learning foreign languages when translation apps are not only easily
accessible but functionally effective (e.g. Tsai, 2019). It is also a world where
there are shifting attitudes and values in respect of particular languages, shaped
in part by the forces of globalisation that attribute signifcant economic power
to languages such as English or Mandarin Chinese, and that contribute to the
decline of minority or indigenous languages, or indeed contribute to the moti-
vation to learn and preserve such languages (e.g. MacIntyre, Baker & Sparling,
2017). As we progress into the third decade of the 21st century, we are also
facing an increasingly unstable world in which anti-globalisation forces are on
the increase, hand in hand with nationalist and anti-immigration sentiments,
thereby strengthening linguistic and cultural barriers to social integration (e.g.
Simpson, 2019). The motivation for language learning cannot be separated
from such social, political and technological realities, and neither therefore can
research paradigms in this area ignore the sociocultural features of the constantly
evolving learning environments.

1.3 The Motivation to Learn Global English Versus Other

Languages
In simple terms, of course, the biggest impact of globalisation on L2 motivation
is that, for many language learners around the world, the L2 is almost invariably
English. After all, English has become the dominant global language and inter-
national lingua franca and the most widely studied language in the 21st century,
estimated to be learnt and spoken by around a quarter of the world’s popula-
tion (British Council, 2013). Thus, it is not surprising that most contemporary
research on L2 motivation focuses on motivation for learning English. This has
been clearly evidenced in a systematic analysis of published studies spanning the
period 2005 to 2014, over 70 per cent of which were found to be situated in
English language learning contexts (Boo, Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015).
Yet, in terms of understanding L2 motivation, this predominant focus on
English language learning contexts inevitably limits the theoretical scope of this
research to what is relevant to accounting for the motivation to learn the dominant
global language. This limitation is refected in the current theoretical emphasis on
how motivation to learn the L2 may be linked to whether people aspire to become
global citizens who are able to communicate and function effectively in today’s
interconnected world. Clearly, this kind of global outlook and identity goal as an
explanation for language learning motivation can make sense when the L2 in ques-
tion is the world’s dominant international language. However, it is less clear if such
explanations are also relevant to people’s motivations for learning languages other
than English (LOTEs) in contemporary society, or whether alternative theoreti-
cal accounts are needed (Dörnyei & Al-Hoorie, 2017). In respect of some target
12 What Is Motivation?
languages that have widespread geographic distribution (e.g. Spanish or Arabic) or
signifcant economic status (e.g. Mandarin Chinese), it seems conceivable that a
global or international outlook may well contribute to shaping language learning
motivation. Yet, as noted earlier, people may also be motivated to learn minority
or heritage languages, while others may pursue language learning out of cultural
interest or simply out of necessity; or as people approach the latter years of life, they
may pursue language learning as a means of keeping mentally and socially active.
In short, motivation for learning LOTEs is likely to be rather varied in nature,
depending on a range of individual and contextual factors.
Importantly too, the motivations for learning different languages may co-exist
and perhaps interact with one another, since many people may learn and use
more than one additional language in life. As we shall see later in Chapter 4,
current developments in the feld are moving towards a stronger emphasis on
understanding motivation in relation to learning LOTEs and in relation to indi-
vidual multilingualism.

QUOTE 1.3 YIM, CLÉMENT AND MACINTYRE

ON MOTIVATION IN RELATION TO
INDIVIDUAL MULTILINGUALISM
When casting a global perspective on SLA motivation, it is useful to
represent it as multilingual communication. SLA encompasses learning
all the linguistic levels of a given language: phonology, morphology, syn-
tax, semantics, and pragmatics. Even if the L2 learner strives to attain
native-like fuency in each of these levels, the end goal is not to become
another ‘monolingual’ in the new language, but rather to become bilin-
gual. Therefore successful SLA should result in bilingualism, or mul-
tilingualism depending on the number of languages with which the
individual has communicative capacity. SLA motivation must therefore
be framed to accommodate the outlook on more than one language.
Yim, Clément & MacIntyre (2019, p. 229)

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2 Theories of Motivation
in Psychology

This chapter will…

• give a historical overview of the most infuential motivation theories and

constructs in psychology;
• discuss current developments and directions in motivation research that
explore the impact of the sociocultural context.

As noted in Chapter 1, through the second half of the 20th century theories of moti-
vation became shaped by the cognitive revolution in psychology, which emerged
in response to behaviourism, and the new theories have considerably infuenced L2
motivation research as well. In this chapter we will therefore frst review the cogni-
tive theories of motivation that have been particularly prominent in the feld and
which continue to infuence thinking today. As we have also indicated in Chapter
1, contemporary motivational psychology is currently in a considerable state of fux
with a number of parallel developments taking place and new directions emerging.
In the second part of our review we will focus on what has undoubtedly been the
source of the most substantial changes in the feld, the recognition of the role that
the sociocultural context plays in shaping the motivation that underlies human
behaviour, thereby pushing the boundaries of the cognitive approach. A further
challenge of the traditional conceptions – the growing importance attached to the
role of unconscious motivation – will be discussed in Chapter 4 as part of the over-
view of contemporary approaches in theorising L2 motivation.

2.1 Key Cognitive Theories of Motivation

Cognitive theories of motivation focus on the instrumental role of thoughts,
beliefs and information-processing mechanisms in shaping individual behaviour
and action. There has been considerable variation in the range of cognitive-
mediational processes theorised to be of importance in motivational psychology,
thus giving rise to several different cognitive models. The reason for such varia-
tion has got to do with the large number of motivational factors that can poten-
tially shape human behaviour as well as the wide variety of human behaviour,
ranging from instantaneous, one-off action to sustained, prolonged activities. In
16 What is Motivation?
order to come up with parsimonious constructs, much past research has focused
on reduction, that is, trying to distil a relatively small number of motivational
factors that would subsume or mediate numerous other factors, thereby produc-
ing a theoretical (rather than descriptive) framework. We will begin this review
by examining what is arguably the most infuential framework in contemporary
motivational psychology, self-determination theory.

2.1.1 Self-Determination Theory

One of the most general and best-known distinctions in motivation theories is
that of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. The former deals with behaviour per-
formed for its own sake in order to experience pleasure and satisfaction, such as
the joys of doing a particular activity or satisfying one’s curiosity. In contrast,
extrinsic motivation involves performing a behaviour as a means to some specifc
end, such as receiving an extrinsic reward (e.g. good grades) or avoiding punish-
ment. There is also a third type of motivation, amotivation, which refers to the
lack of any kind of motivation, whether intrinsic or extrinsic.
Extrinsic motivation has traditionally been seen as something that can under-
mine intrinsic motivation: several studies have confrmed that students will lose
their natural intrinsic interest in an activity if they have to do it to meet some
extrinsic requirement (e.g. Lepper & Greene, 1978). Not all studies, however,
have found a negative relationship between the two forms of motivation, lead-
ing Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985; for recent reviews, see Ryan & Deci,
2017, 2020) to replace the intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy with a more elaborate
construct following the main principles of what they termed self-determination
theory (SDT). According to SDT, extrinsic forms of motivation can be placed
on a continuum representing different degrees of external control, from external
regulation to integrated regulation, depending on how internalised (self-deter-
mined) these extrinsic goals are (see Concept 2.1). Extrinsic goals that are fully
internalised within the person’s self-concept (e.g. through the personal value of
being able to speak a particular language) may thus co-exist with intrinsic regula-
tion of motivation (e.g. enjoyment of learning the language). This continuum
would suggest that the various categories exclude each other, but Ryan and Deci
(2020, p. 3) stress that “SDT also recognizes that most intentional behaviours
are multiply motivated. People can, for example, be simultaneously intrinsically
motivated and identifed for some actions, or both externally regulated and intro-
jected, etc.”

CONCEPT 2.1 FOUR TYPES OF EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION

1. External regulation refers to the least self-determined form of extrinsic
motivation, coming entirely from external sources such as rewards or
threats (e.g. teacher praise or parental confrontation).
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 17

2. Introjected regulation involves externally imposed rules that the student

accepts as norms to be followed in order not to feel guilty (e.g. rules
against playing truant).
3. Identifed regulation occurs when the person engages in an activity
because he or she highly values and identifes with the behaviour, and
sees its usefulness (e.g. learning a language which is necessary to pursue
one’s hobbies or interests).
4. Integrated regulation is the most developmentally advanced form of
extrinsic motivation, involving choiceful behaviour that is fully
assimilated with the individual’s other values, needs and identity (e.g.
learning English because profciency in it is part of an educated cosmo-
politan culture one has adopted).

Even though the integrated level of motivation is self-determined to a large

extent, Wigfeld et al. (2019) emphasise that it still does not refect fully intrin-
sically motivated behaviour. Intrinsic motivation proper only occurs when the
individual exercises full ownership of his or her action, that is, his or her choice
and control of an activity is fully autonomous. It is this emphasis on people’s inher-
ent motivational propensities that makes self-determination theory unique. In
an important contribution to the theory, Vallerand (1997; Vallerand & Ratelle,
2002) developed a hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, in
which he proposed three subtypes of genuinely intrinsic motivation:

• to learn (engaging in an activity for the pleasure and satisfaction of under-

standing something new, satisfying one’s curiosity and exploring the
world);
• towards achievement (engaging in an activity for the satisfaction of surpassing
oneself, coping with challenges and accomplishing or creating something);
• to experience stimulation (engaging in an activity to experience pleasant
sensations).

The importance attached in STD to psychological growth and integration has

resonated widely with scholars in various areas of the social sciences, and SDT
has generated a rich programme of research on motivation in different spheres
of life (e.g. parenting, education, sport, healthcare, organisational management,
clinical psychology) where individuals are typically in a hierarchical relationship
such as parent/child, teacher/student, coach/team, doctor/patient. Within these
hierarchical relationships, SDT’s central notion of a continuum of self-determina-
tion focuses attention on how motivation for externally defned goals and behav-
iours may be socialised and gradually internalised. A consistent fnding has been
that people will be more self-determined in performing a particular behaviour
to the extent that the social environment supports the following fundamental
human needs:
18 What is Motivation?
• autonomy (i.e. experiencing oneself as the origin of one’s behaviour);
• competence (i.e. feeling effcacious and having a sense of accomplishment);
• relatedness (i.e. feeling close to and connected to other individuals).

The fulflment of these basic psychological needs is seen as critical to motivation,

because they function as “innate psychological nutriments that are essential for
ongoing psychological growth, integrity, and well-being” (Deci & Ryan, 2000, p.
229). Taking these needs together with STD’s emphasis on internalised, intrinsic
motivation, we may conclude that the theory is particularly well-suited to being
applied to educational contexts, as it underlines the experience of interest and
enjoyment, the feeling of mastery and the capability to grow and succeed, as well
as the importance of a sense of belonging within an environment that conveys
care and respect (Ryan & Deci, 2020).

2.1.2 Expectancy–Value Theories

Expectancy–value theories represent a broad perspective on motivation, subsum-
ing a number of approaches that all regard students’ expectancies for success and
the values they attach to tasks as two critical factors impacting motivation and
academic performance (for a recent overview, see Rosenzweig et al., 2019). The
core tenet of the framework is straightforward: motivation = expectancy × value.
That is, motivation to perform a task is the product of two key factors: (a) the
individual’s expectancy of success in the task and of the rewards that successful
task performance will bring; and (b) the value the individual attaches to success
on that task, including the value of the rewards and of being engaged with the
task. Accordingly, the greater the perceived likelihood of goal-attainment and
the greater the incentive value of the goal, the higher the degree of the indi-
vidual’s positive motivation. Conversely, it is unlikely that effort will be invested
in a task if either factor is missing, that is, if the individual is convinced that he
or she cannot succeed no matter how hard he or she tries, or if the task does not
lead to valued outcomes.
The frst well-known theory adopting an expectancy–value framework
was Atkinson’s classic model of achievement motivation, which integrated the
components of need for achievement, expectancy and value into a compre-
hensive theory (see Concept 2.2), and initiated a strong tradition of expec-
tancy–value theories of achievement motivation. The current conception of
the framework is largely the outcome of the work of Jacqueline Eccles and
Allan Wigfeld (e.g. Wigfeld & Eccles, 2000), who extended the theory and
reframed the components in terms of the individual’s subjective appraisals of
tasks, rather than in terms of objective quantities such as probabilities of
success and incentives (as was the case in Atkinson’s theory). Until the turn
of the century, attention within this tradition focused predominantly on the
expectancy component (rather than task value) of achievement motivation
and, in particular, on the cognitive-mediational processes that determine
expectancy.
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 19

CONCEPT 2.2 ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION AND NEED

FOR ACHIEVEMENT
Atkinson’s achievement motivation theory (cf. Atkinson & Raynor,
1974) was the frst comprehensive model of achievement motivation and
dominated the feld for decades. The theory was formulated within an
expectancy–value framework since achievement behaviours were seen by
Atkinson to be determined by expectancies of success and incentive values.
To these he also added two further components in his model:
1. Need for achievement: Individuals with a high need for achievement are
interested in excellence for its own sake (rather than for the extrinsic
rewards it can bring), tend to initiate achievement activities, work
with heightened intensity at these tasks and persist in the face of fail-
ure. This need becomes part of an individual’s personality and affects
the person’s behaviour in every facet of life, including education.
2. Fear of failure: This is the opposite of need for achievement in that here
the main drive to do well comes from avoiding a negative outcome
rather than approaching a positive one.
Achievement motivation, then, was taken to be the sum of need for
achievement, the probability of success and the incentive value of suc-
cessful task fulflment, minus the sum of fear of failure, the incentive to
avoid failure and the probability of failure. That is, achievement-oriented
behaviour was seen as the resultant of a confict between approach and
avoidance tendencies.

As the term suggests, expectancy for success can be defned within an educational
context as students’ beliefs about how well they will perform on future academic
tasks. Such beliefs are dependent on the learners’ perceptions of their abilities,
and are therefore closely associated with Bandura’s notion of self-effcacy, which
will be discussed in Section 2.1.3. Expectancy, however, also includes other
components, such as the students’ interpretations of their previous experiences
– which in turn creates a link with attribution theory (Section 2.1.4) – as well as
with the students’ perceptions of the demands of the task. Regarding this latter
point, Dörnyei (2001) has suggested several practical motivational strategies to
increase the learners’ expectancy, including:

• providing suffcient preparation, since the perceived likelihood of success does

not depend only on how diffcult the task is but also on how well the learners
are prepared for the task;
• offering assistance, since if students know that they can count on guidance
and help, this knowledge will increase their expectation of success;
20 What is Motivation?
• setting up the task in a way that students can help each other, resulting in a “safety
in numbers” kind of assurance;
• making the success criteria as clear as possible, because students can only expect
to be successful if it is clear to them what “success” means in the particular
context; with respect to assessment, past tests and papers can give realistic
examples of what is to be expected.

Regarding the value of the task, Wigfeld and Eccles (2000) developed a compre-
hensive model of task values, defning them in terms of four components:

• attainment value, that is, the personal importance of mastering a skill and
doing well on a task;
• intrinsic value, that is, interest in or aesthetic appreciation of the subject/skills
in question, and enjoyment coming from performing the activity;
• extrinsic utility value, that is, awareness of how well a task relates to current
and future goals and what role learning plays in improving the quality of
one’s life or making one a better person;
• cost, that is, the negative value component that includes factors such as
expended effort and time, other actions that the planned action would
exclude, as well as various emotional costs such as anxiety and fear of failure.

The overall achievement value of a task is made up of the interplay of these four
components, and this value is believed to determine the strength of intensity of
the behaviour. Recently, growing interest in the temporal dimension of motiva-
tion – and future time perspectives in particular – has begun to emphasise the
importance of the utility value of tasks, that is, the extent to which students are
able to perceive a clear instrumental relationship between current academic tasks
and the attainment of personally valued long-term goals (e.g. McInerney, 2004;
Miller & Brickman, 2004). This establishes a link between expectancy–value
theories and goal theories, which will be discussed in Section 2.1.6.

QUOTE 2.1 BROPHY ON AN ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTION

OF THE VALUE OF LEARNING
Neither intrinsic motivation concepts (fun, enjoyment), nor extrin-
sic motivation concepts (perform specifc behaviours in order to earn
anticipated rewards), nor even relatively specifc or focused forms of
utility value concepts (major in biology and work hard to get good
grades to ensure entrance into medical school) satisfactorily construe
the potential benefts derivable from learning the most powerful ideas
and important intellectual skills taught in school. These benefts of
education are better described using terms such as enrichment, enable-
ment, and empowerment.
Brophy (2008, p. 40)
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 21
2.1.3 Self-Effcacy Theory
Self-effcacy theory was developed by Albert Bandura (1997) and it refers to peo-
ple’s judgement of their capabilities to carry out certain specifc tasks. Such per-
ceived competence is a powerful motivational factor, because it determines the
choice of activities attempted, along with the level of aspiration, the amount
of effort exerted and the persistence displayed (for recent reviews, see Ahn &
Bong, 2019; Schunk & DiBenedetto, 2015). People with a low sense of self-
effcacy in a given domain perceive diffcult tasks as personal threats; they dwell
on their own personal defciencies and the obstacles they encounter rather than
concentrate on how to perform the task successfully. Consequently, they eas-
ily lose faith in their capabilities and are likely to give up. In contrast, a strong
sense of self-effcacy enhances people’s achievement behaviour by helping them
to approach threatening situations with confdence, to maintain a task- rather
than self-diagnostic focus during task involvement, and to heighten and sustain
effort in the face of failure.

QUOTE 2.2 BANDURA ON SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS

Effcacy beliefs are the foundation of human agency. Unless people
believe that they can produce desired results and forestall detrimental
ones by their actions, they have little incentive to act or to persevere
in the face of diffculties. Whatever other factors may operate as guides
and motivators, they are rooted in the core belief that one has the
power to produce effects by one’s actions.
Bandura (2001, p. 10)

It is important to note three further aspects of self-effcacy beliefs. First, they

are only indirectly related to actual competence and abilities because they are
the product of a complex process of self-persuasion that is based on cognitive
processing of diverse sources (see Concept 2.3). Second, Bandura (e.g. 2001,
2004) has also extended the notion of self-effcacy to the collective effcacy
of groups (e.g. families, communities, social institutions) working together
towards a common goal, thus refecting parallel moves in the feld towards
the analysis of motivation as a socially distributed process. Third, cultural dif-
ferences can considerably shape people’s self-effcacy judgements (e.g. other-
oriented sources of self-effcacy information – i.e. vicarious experience and
social persuasion – can have a different impact in collectivistic and individu-
alistic societies).
22 What is Motivation?

CONCEPT 2.3 SOURCES OF SELF-EFFICACY

• past performance accomplishments (experiences of success, a good
track record);
• relevant training (suffcient practice in skills, information about effec-
tive task strategies);
• vicarious experience (observing similar others performing well);
• social persuasion (receiving encouragement, positive feedback);
• physiological indexes (emotional reactions to tasks concerning antici-
pated success or failure).

2.1.4 Attribution Theory

Attributional processes form one of the most important infuences on the forma-
tion of peoples’ expectancies of future success and, more generally, of their moti-
vation to initiate future action. Attribution theory, based on the work of Bernard
Weiner (e.g. 1986), became a dominant model in research on student motivation
in the 1980s, and it has remained one of the mainstream motivation theories
ever since (for recent reviews, see Graham, 2020; Weiner, 2019). The theory is
based on the assumption that people try to understand the causal determinants
of their past successes and failures, and that different types of causal attributions
will affect behaviour differently (see Concept 2.4). In other words, attributions
are “cognitions that answer ‘why’ questions” (Graham, 2020, p. 1) and the theory
stipulates that future action will depend on the quality of how people explain
why something good or bad has happened to them. It has been observed in this
respect that the appropriate processing of past failures carries more weight than
attributions about past successes.

CONCEPT 2.4 THE MAIN PRINCIPLE OF ATTRIBUTION

THEORY
The main principle of attribution theory is that the causal attributions one
makes of past successes and failures (i.e. inferences about why certain out-
comes have occurred) have consequences on future achievement strivings.
The most common attributions in school environments are those to
• ability;
• effort;
• task diffculty;
• luck;
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 23

• mood;
• family background;
• help or hindrance from others.
Among these, ability and effort have been identifed as the most dominant
perceived causes in western culture. Past failure that is ascribed to stable
and uncontrollable factors such as low ability (e.g. “I failed because I am
too stupid”) hinders future achievement behaviour more than failure that
is ascribed to unstable and controllable factors (i.e. ones that the learner
can change, such as effort; e.g. “I didn’t pass the test because I hadn’t prepared
enough for it”).

Attribution theory was the frst cognitive model of motivation to incorporate

emotions in terms of the specifc emotional consequences of particular causal
attributions (Weiner, 1986). For example, attributing failure to an internal
uncontrollable factor such as lack of aptitude may trigger feelings of shame,
embarrassment or humiliation. On the other hand, attributing failure to an
internal controllable factor such as lack of effort may evoke feelings of guilt.
As Graham (2020, p. 6) explains, “attribution theorists hypothesize a particu-
lar thinking–feeling–action motivational sequence in which attributions shape
emotions and emotions then guide behaviour. Our causal thoughts tell us how to
feel and our feelings, in turn, tell us what to do”. Mirroring the current growth
of interest in emotion and moves towards more dynamic interactive perspec-
tives on motivation, Weiner (2007) also highlighted the attributional processes
of others (teachers, peers) vis-à-vis a person’s performance, and their emotional
consequences (e.g. sympathy, envy, admiration, anger), and how these interact
with and affect the person’s own self-perceptions and motivation.

2.1.5 Self-Worth Theory

According to Covington’s (1992) self-worth theory, people are highly motivated
to maintain a fundamental sense of personal value and worth, especially in the
face of competition, failure and negative feedback. This basic need for self-worth
generates a number of unique patterns of motivational beliefs and face-saving
behaviours in school settings, particularly when potentially poor performance
poses a threat to the student’s self-esteem. In such situations students may actu-
ally stand to gain by not trying, that is, by deliberately withholding effort or engag-
ing in self-handicapping or defensive strategies (De Castella, Byrne & Covington,
2013), because this would allow failure to be attributed to lack of effort rather
than to low ability (for similar L2-related phenomena, see Breen et al., 2001). An
example of this self-handicapping approach is when a learner spends insuffcient
24 What is Motivation?
time preparing for a test so that in the case of failure he or she can use the lack of
suffcient striving as a mitigating excuse for poor performance, rather than hav-
ing to admit a lack of competence, which would be far more damaging for the
student’s self-concept (see Concept 2.5).

QUOTE 2.3 THE CURIOUS IMPLICATION

OF SELF-WORTH THEORY
All students, even the seemingly unmotivated, care about being seen
as competent and able in the eyes of others. And yet, despite the unde-
niable benefts of trying hard, effort puts students at risk. Success with-
out trying can indicate one has talent, but failure following effort is
often viewed as compelling evidence that one lacks ability.
De Castella, Byrne & Covington (2013, p. 861)

CONCEPT 2.5 DEFLECTIVE STRATEGIES TO PROTECT

SELF-WORTH
Defensive pessimism – holding unrealistically low expectations for tasks
where one’s performance will be evaluated, thereby buffering one’s self-
esteem in the event of failure.

Self-handicapping – creating a priori excuses to avoid the responsibility for

possible failure and to manage the impressions of others; relevant strategies
include:
• deliberately withholding effort;
• sabotaging one’s own performance by reducing preparation and
practice;
• self-imposing obstacles to hinder success;
• exercising task-avoidance, denial and procrastination;
• justifying failure through reporting illness or other physical symptoms;
• drug or alcohol use;
• the choice of other performance-debilitating circumstances.

Thus, self-worth theory highlights the critical importance of a person’s sense of

ability or competence in shaping motivation in educational or other achieve-
ment settings. As we have seen earlier, perceived competence/ability is likewise
a core feature of attributional processes and self-effcacy beliefs. Indeed, there has
been a major push towards refocusing the achievement motivation framework
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 25
around the concept of “competence” over the past two decades; a culmination
of such efforts has been an edited volume entitled Handbook of Competence and
Motivation (Elliot, Dweck & Yeager, 2017a) with Elliot, Dweck and Yeager
(2017b) arguing in their introduction that there are strong arguments for replac-
ing the term “achievement motivation” with “competence motivation”.

2.1.6 Goal Theories

The cognitive concept of “goal” became prominent in motivational psychology
in the 1970s to replace earlier notions of “needs” and “drives” as the main factor
seen to provide the impetus for and direction of motivated action. During the
past two decades, research attention has focused in particular on two key areas:
goal-setting and goal-orientation.

Goal-Setting Theory
Locke and Latham’s (1990) goal-setting theory seeks to explain differences in per-
formance among individuals in terms of differences in goal attributes (for over-
views, see Locke & Latham, 2013, 2019). There are three particularly important
areas where goals may differ: specifcity, diffculty and goal commitment. Goal-
setting theory is compatible with expectancy–value theories (Section 2.1.2) in
that commitment is seen to be enhanced when people believe that achieving
the goal is possible (cf. expectancy) and important (cf. task value). Locke (1996)
summarises the main fndings of past research under fve points:

1. The more diffcult the goal, the greater the achievement.

2. The more specifc or explicit the goal, the more precisely performance is
regulated.
3. Goals that are both specifc and diffcult lead to the highest performance.
4. Commitment to goals is most critical when goals are specifc and diffcult
(i.e. when goals are easy or vague it is not hard to get commitment because
it does not require much dedication to reach easy goals, and vague goals can
be easily redefned to accommodate low performance).
5. High commitment to goals is attained when (a) the individual is convinced
that the goal is important; and (b) the individual is convinced that the goal
is attainable (or that, at least, progress can be made towards it).

Although Locke and Latham’s theory was developed in the context of organi-
sational and work settings, it has also been applied to educational settings (e.g.
Schunk, Meece & Pintrich, 2014), with much emphasis placed on the role of
proximal goal-setting (see Concept 2.6). There is now also increasing interest in
models of motivation that incorporate time perspectives and which examine how
people’s conceptions of their future (e.g. in terms of personal goals or visions of
themselves) infuence their motivation in the present, and how these shape the
26 What is Motivation?
degree to which they perceive proximal goals as instrumental to reaching distal
goals or indeed create proximal guides for courses of action that will lead to distal
attainments (e.g. Lens & Seginer, 2015; Miller & Brickman, 2004). As we shall
see later in Chapter 3, this role of visualising the future is a major dimension of
current theories of language learning motivation.

CONCEPT 2.6 PROXIMAL VERSUS DISTAL GOALS

Goals are not only outcomes to shoot for but also standards by which to
evaluate one’s performance, providing a defnition of success. In the case
of long-lasting, continuous activities such as language learning where there
is only a rather distal goal of task completion (i.e. mastering the L2), the
setting of proximal subgoals (e.g. taking tests, passing exams, satisfying learn-
ing contracts) may have a powerful motivating function in that they mark
progress along a specifc course of action and provide immediate incen-
tive and feedback. Thus, there is a consensus amongst motivation scholars
that goals with shorter deadlines are generally more motivating than goals
with longer deadlines: distal goals are too far off or too general to motivate
specifc actions in immediate situations, whereas proximal subgoals break
down the task into a series of more manageable targets; the shorter deadline
for these subgoals also generates greater time pressure and thus a stronger
need to act on the goal (for further discussion, see Dörnyei, 2020).

Goal-Orientation Theory
Unlike goal-setting theory, which was originally applied to motivation in the
workplace, goal-orientation theory was specially developed to explain children’s
learning and performance in school settings. As Ames (1992) summarises, the
theory highlights two contrasting achievement goal constructs – or “orienta-
tions” – that students can adopt towards their academic work:

• mastery orientation, involving the pursuit of “mastery goals” (also labelled as

“task-involvement goals” or “learning goals”) with the focus on learning the
content;
• performance orientation (or ego-orientation), involving the pursuit of “perfor-
mance goals” (or “ego-involvement goals”) with the focus on demonstrating
ability, getting good grades or outdoing other students.

Thus, mastery and performance goals represent different success criteria and dif-
ferent reasons for engaging in an achievement activity (for a recent review, see
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 27
Murayama & Elliot, 2019). Central to a mastery goal is the belief that effort
will lead to success, with the emphasis being on one’s own improvement and
growth. In contrast, a performance orientation views learning merely as a way to
achieve a goal and the accompanying public recognition. Regarding the relative
merits of the two goal orientation types, there is general agreement that mastery
goals are highly benefcial in that they focus on meaningful learning and lead to
increased persistence. In contrast, performance goals have divided experts: the
inherent focus on outperforming others has been typically seen as a maladap-
tive consequence, whereas some scholars believe that performance goals’ positive
association with grades as educational outcomes might be capitalised on (see e.g.
Wigfeld et al., 2019). In order to resolve ambiguities in this respect, Andrew
Elliot and his associates introduced the approach–avoidance distinction (see
Murayama & Elliot, 2019), which yielded a 2 × 2 model of achievement goals:
mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach and performance-
avoidance goals. This made the categorisation of goal orientations more fne-
tuned and allowed for research to examine various interactions between students’
personal goal orientations and the nature of the pedagogical context (whether
mastery or performance-focused) in which they fnd themselves and how they
perceive this context (e.g. Linnenbrink, 2005).

New Perspectives on Goals

Goal-setting theory and goal-orientation theory have been useful in describ-
ing robust trends with regard to student performance and achievement, and are
therefore still important components of the theoretical toolkit of motivation
research. On the other hand, research over the past decade has foregrounded
several new perspectives on goals that go beyond the premises of these traditional
goal theories. Drawing on Ford’s (1992) earlier work on goal content, Kathryn
Wentzel (2000, 2007) has led research on exploring students’ multiple goals in
classroom settings. Given that school is the main social arena for many students,
their academic goals might be infuenced by parallel social goals (e.g. to make
friends or to maintain solidarity with peers), and even the academic aspect may
have several social dimensions (e.g. goals to please the teacher, avoid punish-
ment or conform to classroom rules). We shall explore the infuence of this social
dimension further in the next section.
The dynamic nature of parallel goal pursuit in general has also become the
subject of recent research, since people usually have to juggle several personal
goals that they are simultaneously motivated to attain in every area of their
lives. These roles will inevitably compete for the individual’s energy and time,
and some may even be in confict with the others (Neal, Ballard & Vancouver,
2017). Accordingly, scholars over the past decade have increasingly recognised
the fact that “managing multiple goals is the norm rather than the exception”
(Unsworth, Yeo & Beck, 2014, p. 1064), and consequently, there has been a
growing body of research on how multiple goals are prioritised and structured (for
a summary, see Dörnyei, 2020).
28 What is Motivation?
Finally, we have talked about goals so far only as conscious constructs, and
indeed, they fulfl several conscious self-regulatory functions (see e.g. Dörnyei,
2001): (a) they direct attention and effort towards goal-relevant activities at the
expense of irrelevant or distracting actions; (b) they regulate the amount of effort
people expend as people adjust their effort to the diffculty level and the demands
of the task; (c) they encourage persistence until the goal is accomplished; and
(d) they promote the search for relevant action plans or task strategies. However,
there has been a growing body of research over the past two decades on goal prim-
ing and unconscious goal pursuit, which suggest that unconsciously activated goals
play a far greater role in everyday life than previously suspected (e.g. Custers &
Aarts, 2014). The magnitude of this paradigm shift is best illustrated by the fact
that even one of the fathers of conscious goal-setting theory (discussed above),
Gary Latham, has gone on record about his changing perspective in this respect
in a fascinating paper which describes his “transition from skeptic to believer”
(Latham, 2018, p. 392). We shall come back to unconscious goals in Chapter 4
(Section 4.3) when we discuss unconscious motivation in general.

2.2 Motivation and its Sociocultural Context

We have seen in several places in this chapter (e.g. regarding self-determination
theory, self-effcacy and social goals) that socio-contextual factors can play a sig-
nifcant role in shaping motivation. This has indeed turned out to become a
major theme in contemporary motivation research: although the feld of motiva-
tional psychology was originally characterised by an individualistic perspective,
whereby the sociocultural environment was considered through the individual’s
eyes and was thus seen to play a relatively marginal role, this view has undergone
a dramatic change over the past two decades. Theoretical accounts of motiva-
tion – and also of other related psychological constructs such as identity and self-
esteem – have increasingly abandoned the tacit assumption of environmental
generalisability and included contextual factors into the research paradigms. In
fact, the sociocultural dimension of motivation has gained such an importance
that the notion of “social motivation” was introduced in the 1990s to provide
an umbrella term for related research. We shall begin the current discussion by
describing the rise of social motivation, and then survey the main social fac-
tors impacting student motivation, from the infuences of the peer group to the
broader cultural context.

2.2.1 The Rise of “Social Motivation”

Motivational psychology has traditionally focused on personal factors (e.g. needs,
beliefs, desires, interests, goals) as the primary determinants of human behav-
iour. This emphasis does not mean, however, that social concerns and infuences
were completely ignored, as the historically dominant theories of motivation did
recognise the importance of certain interpersonal relationships as determinants
of human behaviour; yet, as Graham (1996) rightly pointed out, these social
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 29
concerns did not affect the core trajectory of motivation research, which had
been dominated by the study of “intrapsychic processes and individual achieve-
ment strivings” (p. 349). This general trajectory underwent a profound change
in the 1990s, well refected by the publication of an infuential paper by Weiner
(1994) entitled “Integrating social and personal theories of achievement motiva-
tion”. This was followed by a continuous stream of publications related to social
motivation, including two high-profle edited volumes involving sterling casts
of contributors, Social Motivation: Understanding Children’s School Adjustment
(Juvonen & Wentzel, 1996) and Student Motivation: The Culture and Context of
Learning (Salili, Chiu & Hong, 2001). Thus, by the beginning of the new millen-
nium, social motivation had passed its infancy and the topic became a permanent
component of most relevant research agendas (for a review of the development of
sociocultural awareness in the feld, see Dörnyei, 2020).

2.2.2 Peer Group Infuence

Peer groups may exert a powerful infuence on individual motivation, especially
among young adolescent learners, since adolescence is a period when peer rela-
tions take on increasing signifcance over parental infuence and relations, when
students often experience transitions to new school environments and social
networks, and when processes of identity and self-concept formation are shaped
(Berndt & Keefe, 1995). Peer infuence on student motivation is often portrayed
negatively in terms of social comparison and the development of self-conscious
emotions in performing in front of peers (Lewis & Sullivan, 2007); or of under-
achievement and the “norm of mediocrity” in response to the prevailing peer
group culture (Graham, 2001); or of more serious behavioural consequences
such as disaffection, classroom countercultures and school dropout (Hymel et
al., 1996). However, as Wigfeld et al. (2019) note, there is plenty of research
evidence to suggest that peers often gravitate to similar others and strengthen one
another’s motivational orientations, and where these motivational orientations
are learning or achievement-focused, the effects of such social infuence can be
very positive. For example, Wentzel et al. (2017) have found that “at the indi-
vidual level, student’s perceptions of peer supports are likely to impact student
effort and mastery goal orientations by way of internalized values and academic
self-effcacy” (p. 42).

QUOTE 2.4 ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PEERS

Peers are another important social infuence on motivation. When
children are socially supported and accepted by their peers, they have
stronger motivation, have better achievement outcomes, and are more
engaged in school.
Wigfeld et al. (2019, p. 448)
30 What is Motivation?
The important role played by peers in shaping student motivation highlights the
relevance of the vivid discipline of group dynamics. As Dörnyei and Muir (2019)
summarise, one particularly fruitful avenue of studying the context of classroom
reality is to investigate the dynamics of learner groups. The most important
group-level counterparts of individual-level motivation are group cohesiveness,
group norms and group leadership styles. Because these factors play an important
role in determining the behaviour of the learners within the group, they should
be seen as valid motivational antecedents. In other words, as Dörnyei and Muir
conclude, “when we discuss the learning behaviour of groups of learners, moti-
vational psychology and group dynamics converge” (p. 729). We shall return to
this topic in Chapter 5 when we discuss practical strategies and approaches to
promoting student engagement in language classrooms.

2.2.3 Classroom Goal Structures

Evaluation practices and grouping structures are also likely to infuence student motiva-
tion in terms of the kinds of learning goal they promote and the extent to which they
emphasise normative evaluation (Ames, 1992; Dweck, 1999). While the common
educational practice of tracking (or ability-grouping or streaming) children based
on their academic abilities makes such normative evaluation obvious, within-class
grouping structures can affect student motivation in subtler ways by providing cues
that inform students about their capabilities (Schunk, Meece & Pintrich, 2014).
Three types of classroom structure have usually been identifed in this respect:

• competitive (where the focus is on how students perform relative to one

another);
• individualistic (where the focus is on individual learning goals);
• cooperative (where students work together to achieve a shared goal).

Research suggests that while high achievers may thrive in competitive classroom
structures, the motivational consequences for low achievers may be detrimental,
leading to poor self-esteem, disaffection or learned helplessness (Dweck, 1999;
Peterson, Maier & Seligman, 1993). Individualistic structures, on the other hand,
are more likely to shape motivation towards personal progress and mastery, and may
also promote self-effcacy, while successful cooperative learning is likely to generate
motivation and self-effcacy among all members of the group (see Concept 2.7).

CONCEPT 2.7 COOPERATIVE LEARNING AND

MOTIVATION
A prominent aspect of group motivation concerns the unique motiva-
tional setup of cooperative learning, which is a generic name for a number
of related methods of organising classroom instruction in order to achieve
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 31

common learning goals via cooperation. In a cooperatively organised

classroom, students work in small groups in which each member shares
responsibility for the outcome and is equally rewarded (which can be
contrasted to a “competitive” structure in which students work against
each other and only the best ones are rewarded). In many ways, coopera-
tive learning can be seen as a philosophy that maximises student collabora-
tion, and investigations have almost invariably proved that this approach
is superior to most traditional forms of instruction in terms of producing
learning gains and student achievement. Cooperative learning has been
shown to generate a powerful motivational system to energise learning (see
Dörnyei, 1997; Slavin, 1996), indicating that if a number of individuals
form a social unit by joining in a group, under certain conditions the
motivational level associated with this collection of people can signif-
cantly exceed the motivational level the individuals would have demon-
strated if they had remained independent.

2.2.4 Schools
Schools as a whole may also play an important role in socialising student moti-
vation, depending on the kinds of ethos they promote. In a pioneering article,
Maehr and Midgley (1991) argued that schools vary in their general climate and
policies, for example in terms of:

• school-wide stress on accomplishment;

• general expectations regarding student potential;
• school-level authority and management structures;
• the teachers’ general sense of effcacy;
• school-wide grouping and evaluation practices;
• promoting ability-tracking.

The signifcance of such school-level practices is obvious, and indeed, it has been
a common observation that many students’ general disposition to learning is to a
large extent determined when they enter the school gate, even before they reach
the language classroom (Mercer & Dörnyei, 2020). Maehr and Midgley’s (1991)
research was also instrumental in drawing attention to the fact that the culture of
a school is an amalgam made up of several diverse components, such as the struc-
tures, policies, norms and physical spaces of the school, as well as informal and
invisible dimensions of school life, such as beliefs and emotional climate. These
create an overall ethos that pervades the whole school and infuences the collec-
tive behaviour of staff. Arguably the most salient aspect of this school climate is
32 What is Motivation?
how it relates to behaviour management. As Juvonen and Knifsend (2016) sum-
marise, students are – unsurprisingly – more motivated to work hard in environ-
ments where they feel safe and respected, as opposed to contexts where they feel
unsafe, for example because some form of bullying or discrimination is tolerated.
More generally, the authors point out that if students lack a sense of belonging
and do not identify with the school, this is likely to alienate them from academic
work in general (see also Cemalcilar, 2010), especially if they have insuffcient
support outside the school to keep them academically motivated (to be discussed
in the next section).
A powerful illustration of the signifcance of a whole-school culture has been
presented by Mercer and Dörnyei (2020) when they described the remarkable
transformation of a British secondary school, Redhill Academy. Located in one
of the educationally most disadvantaged regions of the UK, the school man-
aged to reach excellence through transforming the school climate and ethos,
thereby increasing student engagement. One of the main tools they used for
this purpose involved a Pledge System, comprising ten commitments students
had to make regarding participation in school life (https://www.theredhillaca
demy.org.uk/parents/the-redhill-academy-pledge-system). That these pledges
were not merely lip-service was indicated by the fact that each student had
their own individual Pledge Passport, the pledges were displayed on post-
ers throughout the school and the students’ pledge achievements were regu-
larly celebrated at school events. Through this system, students were actively
brought on board and the quality of learning dramatically increased. What is
particularly noteworthy of this initiative is that the ten pledges did not directly
concern academic achievement as such, but rather aimed at strengthening the
foundation of such achievement by promoting a climate of school-wide student
engagement.

2.2.5 Parents and Family

We mentioned above that support outside the school can keep students aca-
demically motivated even if the school-based conditions are less-than-ideal. The
primary source of such support comes from parents and family (we are using the
term “parents” here broadly, to refer to any carer who looks after a child outside
of school). Educational psychologists have long recognised that various family
characteristics and practices are linked to school achievement, and one of the
central mediators between family and school is generally thought to be motiva-
tion (for recent reviews, see Simpkins & Fredericks, 2015; Pomerantz, Cheung &
Qin, 2019). There are various aspects of a learner’s home life that can affect their
engagement in class: the attitudes they pick up at home towards learning, includ-
ing achievement demands and pressures; the kinds of literacy practices that are
present in home life; and the degree of academic support the learner receives (see
Concept 2.8).
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 33

QUOTE 2.5 POMERANTZ, CHEUNG AND QIN

ON PARENTS’ MOTIVATIONAL IMPACT
There is much evidence supporting the idea that parents play a sig-
nifcant role in either facilitating or undermining children’s motiva-
tion. … Indeed, children’s relationships with their parents have been
identifed as key contexts for virtually all aspects of their psychological
development.
Pomerantz, Cheung & Qin (2019, p. 337)

CONCEPT 2.8 MAIN ELEMENTS OF PARENTS’

MOTIVATIONAL ROLE (ADAPTED FROM SIMPKINS &
FREDERICKS, 2015)
• parents’ child-specifc beliefs;
• perceptions of child’s abilities;
• expectations for child’s achievement;
• role-modelling behaviours;
• training of specifc values;
• teaching strategies;
• encouragement of various activities;
• provisions of tools, toys, opportunities to learn various skills;
• causal attributions for child’s outcomes;
• career guidance.

An important aspect of the parents’ motivational infuence concerns whether

they are autonomy-supportive or controlling. As Simpkins and Fredericks summa-
rise, autonomy-supportive parents allow children to explore their own environ-
ment and to take an active role in solving their own problems, all of which leads
children to experience themselves as capable. This, in turn, positively impacts a
variety of outcomes relevant to children’s success in school. Signifcantly, Raftery,
Grolnick and Flamm’s (2012) review of the link between parental autonomy
support and achievement motivation indicates that there is a growing body of
research confrming the benefts of such support, and these researchers also high-
light the importance of a frmly established “parental structure”, which involves
providing clear and consistent guidelines, expectations and rules for children.
Homes with such a structure give children a clear sense of how their actions are
34 What is Motivation?
connected to important learning outcomes, which in turn results in an increased
sense of perceived control. Pomerantz et al. (2019) further underline the fact
that because structure also includes providing children with ability-appropriate
instructions, “it assists children in not only identifying societally valued stand-
ards but also developing the skills to achieve them” (p. 342). Finally, we should
note that the nature of optimal parenting styles varies across ethnic groups and
cultures, which takes us to the broadest dimension of the sociocultural context,
culture, to be discussed next.

2.2.6 Culture
The wider infuence of culture and society on individual motivation has been
receiving increasing attention with the growth of cross-cultural psychology and
the study of culturally specifc motivational orientations, values and socialisation
practices. As King and McInerney (2014) explain, there is no single defnition of
the notion of culture; it can refer to what has been called “material culture” (e.g.,
dress, tools, machines) and “subjective culture”, which refers to patterns of per-
ceptions, values, beliefs and corresponding behaviours; in King and McInerney’s
words, the subjective culture “pertains to a society’s characteristic way of perceiv-
ing and interacting with the social environment” (p. 176).
A key tenet in motivation studies adopting a cross-cultural perspective is
the assumption that setting-specifc cultural values mediate achievement cogni-
tion and behaviour. That is, sociocultural values can be conceived as normative
beliefs about what is right or wrong, shared by most members of a given cultural
or social group; for example, an oft-cited fnding in this respect is that Chinese
students, parents and teachers are more likely to attribute student performance
outcomes to effort than ability, compared with their western counterparts, since
Chinese Confucian culture places particular value on hard work and persever-
ance (Hong, 2001). However, an obvious risk of this kind of approach is that it
may lead to cultural stereotyping or essentialisation, whereby all members of a
particular cultural or social group are ascribed certain motivational tendencies.
This risk is especially acute when such groups are defned in rather broad terms
such as East Asians, or western versus eastern cultures, or individualist versus
collectivist cultures. Moreover, in the current postmodern world of globalisation,
migration and multiculturalism where people may belong to or move between
multiple ethnic, social and cultural communities, cultural boundaries and identi-
ties are far from easy to defne in a clear-cut sense (Pavlenko, 2002).
However, certain culture-specifc trends tend to be too powerful to ignore,
even if we accept that they involve a certain amount of stereotypical generalisa-
tion. A case in point is, for example, a study reported by King and McInerney
(2014), in which Anglophone children were found to become more motivated in
a problem-solving task when they were allowed to make personal choices, whereas
with Asian children, motivation increased when trusted authority fgures or peers
made the choices for them. In this case, therefore, cultural factors overrode the
power of the “need for autonomy”, which is a pillar of self-determination theory.
 Theories of Motivation in Psychology 35
On the basis of this and similar examples, the authors conclude: “Culture plays
an important role in students’ motivation in school but prominent motivation
theories have relegated it to the sidelines” (p. 194). In response to this observa-
tion, Liem and McInerney (2018) have recently edited an intriguing anthology
containing summaries of mainstream motivation theories – Big Theories Revisited
2 – in which they invited renowned scholars to re-examine their theoretical and
conceptual work on school motivation in the light of sociocultural infuences,
addressing several of the theories reviewed in the frst part of this chapter (e.g.
self-determination theory, achievement goal theory, expectancy–value theory
and self-effcacy theory).

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3 Motivation to Learn a
Foreign/Second Language
A Historical Overview

This chapter will…

• trace the historical evolution of theories of L2 motivation from the 1960s up

until the contemporary era;
• set the context for current developments and directions in L2 motivation
theory (which will be discussed in the next chapter).

Having considered key theoretical perspectives on motivation in the feld of psy-

chology in general, we turn now to our main focus in this book, the motivation
to learn a second or foreign language, or multiple additional languages. Although
one might imagine language learning motivation to be easily subsumed within,
and explained by, the mainstream theories of learning motivation reviewed in
Chapter 2, it is important to state at the outset that the study of L2 motiva-
tion has evolved in a rich and largely independent research feld, originating
in a concern to address the unique social, psychological, behavioural and cul-
tural complexities that acquiring a new communication code entails. In essence,
the history of L2 motivation theory could be described as moving through three
phases refecting increasing degrees of integration with mainstream theoretical
perspectives and developments, while retaining a sharp focus on aspects of moti-
vation specifc to language learning:

1. the social psychological beginnings;

2. accounting for cognitive theories and the classroom reality;
3. focus on time, context and vision.

These phases do not represent neat divisions but rather stages in the evolution
of the feld when signifcant new areas of interest emerged to shape and expand
research inquiry, alongside existing strands. In other words, the new phases did
not replace the earlier ones but rather represented additional perspectives and
theories. Our purpose in this chapter is to give a historical overview of these
developments, in order to provide the background for discussion of current per-
spectives and directions in the next chapter.
40 What is Motivation?
3.1 The Social Psychological Beginnings
The modern feld of L2 motivation research owes its origins to two social psy-
chologists, Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert, based in the bilingual social
context of Montreal, Canada in the late 1950s. Gardner and Lambert saw second
languages as mediating factors between different ethnolinguistic communities,
and they considered motivation to learn the language of the other community to
be a primary force responsible for enhancing or hindering intercultural communi-
cation and affliation. A key tenet of this approach was that individuals’ attitudes
towards the L2 and its associated community, as well as their ethnocentric ori-
entation in general, exerted a directive infuence on their L2 learning behaviour.
These attitudinal dimensions distinguished language learning motivation from
other types of learning motivation, since learners were expected not simply to
acquire knowledge of the language (as they might acquire knowledge of history
or biology), but also to be willing “to identify with members of another ethno-
linguistic group and to take on very subtle aspects of their behaviour, including
their distinctive style of speech and their language” (Gardner & Lambert, 1972,
p. 135). Thus, the study of L2 motivation was shaped from the beginning by a
pioneering social psychological perspective implicating the social context of learn-
ing as well as attitudes and relations between different linguistic communities.
This perspective on the social context of learning sharply differentiated this line
of inquiry from the mainstream individual-cognitive theories of motivation prev-
alent at the time. As we saw in Chapter 2, it was only much later, in the 1990s,
that socio-contextual perspectives began to inform mainstream motivational psy-
chology in a substantial way.
Within the feld of SLA itself, Gardner and Lambert’s work was also pioneering
for highlighting non-cognitive (in their terminology, “affective”) factors – specif-
cally, motivation – as a signifcant cause of variability in language learning success.
Hitherto, the research focus had been on cognitive factors such as ability or apti-
tude, but Gardner and Lambert (1972) reasoned that such factors and the availabil-
ity of learning opportunities were insuffcient explanations for individual variability
in L2 achievement. Accordingly, they speculated that motivation played a signif-
cant causal role in shaping the L2 learning process, and from 1959 onwards they
conducted a series of studies investigating attitudes and motivation in L2 learning
and their impact on L2 achievement. This work culminated in a seminal publica-
tion in 1972 that was to shape L2 motivation theory and research for the next two
decades (for a historical account of this pioneering work, see Gardner, 2019).

3.1.1 Key Concepts of Gardner’s Theory of L2 Motivation

A key issue in Gardner’s (1985) motivation theory was the relationship between
motivation and orientation (which was his term for a “goal”). The role of orienta-
tions was to help arouse motivation and direct it towards a set of goals. Although
orientations were theorised to be antecedents rather than components of motiva-
tion, ironically two orientations labelled instrumental and integrative became the
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 41
most widely known concepts associated with Gardner’s work in the feld (see
Concept 3.1).

CONCEPT 3.1 INTEGRATIVE AND INSTRUMENTAL

ORIENTATIONS
• Integrative orientation concerns a positive disposition towards the L2
group and the desire to interact with and even become similar to
valued members of that community; it was defned in Gardner and
Lambert’s (1959, p. 271) pioneering study as the “willingness to be like
valued members of the language community”.
• Instrumental orientation is the utilitarian counterpart of integrative ori-
entation in Gardner’s theory, pertaining to the potential pragmatic
gains of L2 profciency, such as getting a better job or a higher salary.
Although the term was coined by Gardner and Lambert (1959), most
subsequent research conducted by Gardner and his colleagues targeted
the integrative dimension.

Perhaps the most elaborate and researched aspect of Gardner’s motivation theory
has been the concept of the integrative motive, which was defned as a “motivation
to learn a second language because of positive feelings towards the community
that speaks the language” (Gardner, 1985, pp. 82–83). The integrative motive
was a composite construct made up of three main components:

1. integrativeness, which subsumed integrative orientation, interest in foreign

languages, and attitudes towards the L2 community, refecting the “indi-
vidual’s willingness and interest in social interaction with members of other
groups” (Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993, p. 159);
2. attitudes towards the learning situation, which comprised attitudes towards the
language teacher and the L2 course;
3. motivation, comprising effort, desire to learn the L2, and attitudes towards
learning the L2.

In various parts of the world, factor analytical studies examining data from L2
learner samples consistently produced a factor comprising all, or many of, the
components of the integrative motive. Thus, a large body of evidence accumu-
lated to show that L2 motivation was generally associated with a positive outlook
towards the L2 group and the values that the L2 was linked with, regardless of
the nature of the actual learning context. For example, Dörnyei and Clément
(2001) conducted a large-scale nationwide study in Hungary, a largely mono-
lingual and monocultural environment strikingly different from Canada, where
42 What is Motivation?
foreign languages are taught primarily as a school subject with limited contact
with L2 speakers. They found integrativeness to be the most powerful component
of participants’ generalised language-related disposition, determining language
choice and the general level of effort students intended to invest in the learning
process. Over the years, however, the “integrative” notion also generated con-
siderable critical debate around its conceptual defnition (e.g. Dörnyei, 1994b)
and, in more recent times, around its relevance to the learning of English as an
international lingua franca not tied to a specifc target language community. We
shall examine these more recent perspectives later.

3.1.2 Other Social Psychological Concepts and Theories

While it was the work of Gardner and his associates that centrally defned the
“social psychological” beginnings of L2 motivation research, other related strands
of social psychological inquiry also emerged from these origins in situations of
contact between different language communities.
Among these strands was Clément’s (1980) social context model, which consid-
ered how the social setting infuenced the development of L2 profciency among
students from minority groups through two sets of motivational processes, primary
and secondary. Primary motivational processes concerned the tension between
integrativeness and fear of assimilation (i.e. fear of losing one’s own minor-
ity language and culture through learning the language of the majority), while
secondary motivational processes related to a person’s linguistic self-confdence
in using the L2. In multicultural settings with opportunities for social contact
with members of the majority language community, the frequency and quality
of such social contact was theorised to affect linguistic self-confdence, which, in
turn, was theorised to mediate the motivation to learn and use the majority lan-
guage. Thus, in Clément’s model, the construct of linguistic self-confdence had
a socially defned component as well as a cognitive component of perceived L2
profciency. While the model was originally tested in multicultural settings (e.g.
Clément & Kruidenier, 1985), the construct of linguistic self-confdence was
found to be applicable also to foreign language learning settings where there was
little direct social contact with target language speakers but considerable indirect
contact with the target language culture through the media (Clément, Dörnyei
& Noels, 1994). In more recent explorations of the dynamics of second language
confdence (e.g. Sampasivam & Clément, 2014; Yim, Clément & MacIntyre,
2019), the richness and diversity of linguistic and cultural contact experiences
(e.g. through social media and electronic communication) are integrated into a
contact space framework, together with a focus on the degree of self-involvement
or personal signifcance in relation to these contact experiences, as well as a focus
on local contextual conditions of contact.
Giles and Byrne’s (1982) intergroup model similarly offered a social psychologi-
cal framework for examining the conditions under which members of minority
ethnic groups in multicultural settings successfully acquire and use the majority
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 43
language. Giles and Byrne drew on Tajfel’s (1974) concept of social identity,
defned as a person’s sense of identity based on perceived membership of particular
social categories or groups such as ethnicity, social class and gender. According to
the intergroup model, the extent to which people acquired and exhibited target-
like features of the majority language was a function of how much they identifed
with their own ethnic in-group and perceived it to have strong ethnolinguistic
vitality and hard in-group boundaries. Ethnolinguistic vitality was determined by
demographic representation, social status and institutional representation (e.g.
in the media, government, education), while group boundaries referred to the
relative ease or diffculty of individual mobility across different groups. Where in-
group identifcation, ethnolinguistic vitality and boundaries were strong, mem-
bers were likely to adopt an L2 code that diverged from the standard variety (e.g.
characterised by non-standard accent and simplifed grammar). On the other
hand, where in-group identifcation, vitality and boundaries were weak, members
were more likely to assimilate to the majority culture or group and develop a
more target-like linguistic code.
This social psychological line of inquiry focusing on language learning in
multicultural settings was further developed by Richard Clément, Kim Noels
and their colleagues in Canada (e.g. Clément & Noels, 1992; Clément, Noels
& Deneault, 2001). Their objective was to create the foundations of a situated
identity theory, highlighting the possibility that complex situational factors may
mediate the effects of macro-processes at the societal level (i.e. linguistic assimi-
lation or integration), and promote (if only temporarily) membership in groups
defned along dimensions other than language. Situational contingencies might
include, for example, the perception of ethnic threat, the relative minority or
majority status of the interlocutor in the immediate communication setting, the
private versus public facet of language use, strong normative pressures within the
ethnic group, or the quality and quantity of contact with members of another
ethnic group. These scholars proposed that such situational contingencies might
affect people’s sense of ethnolinguistic identity in communication encounters,
prompting them to “slip in and out of particular group memberships as required
by immediate contextual demands” (Clément & Noels, 1992, p. 205). This
increased focus on situational factors affecting motivation and L2 learning/use
refected a general shift to more contextual perspectives on L2 motivation, as we
shall see later in this chapter.
Before moving to the next section, however, we think it is worth emphasis-
ing the importance of the social psychological legacy in establishing and shap-
ing the vibrant feld of L2 motivation research (for a comprehensive overview
of this legacy from diverse conceptual and empirical perspectives, see Al-Hoorie
& MacIntyre, 2020). Of course, since this foundational period of L2 motiva-
tion research, the world has moved on and changed signifcantly – in Gardner’s
(2019, p. 35) own recent words, “with all that has occurred because of inter-
national travel, immigration, refugee movements, and the availability of the
internet”. Thus, it is not surprising that our theorising about L2 motivation has
44 What is Motivation?
also evolved to keep pace with the changing global, social and virtual contexts
in which language learning and use are happening. Yet, as Edwards (2020)
observes, an important wider legacy of this foundational period of L2 motiva-
tion research was that it helped to shape understanding of the social psychol-
ogy of language and draw attention to attitudinal factors “in the social life of
language” (p. 274). Such factors continue to be signifcant in today’s globalised
and post-globalised world, where there are shifting attitudes, emotions and val-
ues in respect of particular languages, and where there are ideologies of differ-
ence and discrimination affecting language learning and use in many areas of
society. As MacIntyre et al. (2020) submit, for example, contemporary work on
emotions in language learning can be theoretically and empirically linked to
dimensions of L2 motivation in Gardner’s original work. Similarly, Rubenfeld
and Clément (2020) discuss how the legacy of these social psychological per-
spectives can be found in current work exploring non-linguistic behavioural
outcomes of L2 learning such as psychological adjustment, cultural representa-
tions, prejudice and discrimination.

3.2 Accounting for Cognitive Theories and the

Classroom Reality
As we have seen above, the social psychological tradition of L2 motivation
research generated a wealth of literature through the 1970s and 1980s, shaped
by a view of motivation conceived in the context of a cluster of social psycho-
logical variables implicated in language learning, such as attitudes towards target
language speakers and their culture. At the same time, by the late 1980s and
early 1990s, there was also a sense that the social psychological line of inquiry
had perhaps run its course and that new and alternative research perspectives
were needed to revitalise and refocus the L2 motivation feld. This view was
voiced independently by a number of scholars at the turn of the decade (e.g.
Brown, 1990; Julkunen, 1989; Skehan, 1989), and led to the publication in 1991
of a seminal article by Crookes and Schmidt critiquing the social psychological
tradition and calling for the motivation research agenda to be reopened. These
voices heralded a shift in thinking in the 1990s characterised by two interrelated
perspectives:

1. the need to bring L2 motivation research in line with cognitive theories in

motivational psychology;
2. the need to sharpen the analytical focus on the classroom reality of motivation.

In essence, these twin perspectives served to direct attention more closely to the
concerns and needs of teachers, for whom social psychological research on moti-
vation had little practical relevance. This latter argument was central to Crookes
and Schmidt’s (1991) trenchant critique of the Gardnerian tradition and their
call for a more practitioner-validated concept of motivation, shaped by insights
from motivation research in education.
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 45

QUOTE 3.1 CROOKES AND SCHMIDT’S CALL FOR A

PRACTITIONER-VALIDATED CONCEPT OF L2
MOTIVATION
Discussion of the topic of motivation in second-language (SL) learn-
ing contexts has been limited by the understanding the feld of applied
linguistics has attached to it. In that view, primary emphasis is placed
on attitudes and other social psychological aspects of SL learning. This
does not do full justice to the way SL teachers have used the term
motivation. Their use is more congruent with defnitions common
outside social psychology, specifcally in education.
Crookes & Schmidt (1991, p. 469)

The subsequent shift to more cognitive and classroom-focused perspectives

through the 1990s did not mean discarding social psychological concepts alto-
gether, but it entailed instead a broadening of the existing theoretical framework
through integrating cognitive motivation concepts from educational psychology.
This mood for expansion and integration was captured in a series of vibrant dis-
cussion papers and response articles published in The Modern Language Journal in
1994. These included key contributions from those working in the social psycho-
logical tradition (e.g. Gardner & Tremblay, 1994a, 1994b), as well as from those
embracing new directions and broader theoretical frameworks (Dörnyei, 1994a,
1994b; Oxford, 1994; Oxford & Shearin, 1994). An appropriate way of describ-
ing the changes is to underline the educational shift in focus that took place (see
Concept 3.2).

CONCEPT 3.2 THE EDUCATIONAL SHIFT IN L2

MOTIVATION RESEARCH
The common theme underlying the new emerging educational orientation
in the frst half of the 1990s was the belief that motivational sources closely
related to the learners’ immediate classroom environment have a stronger
impact on the overall L2 motivation complex than had been expected.
Thus, there was a growing perception of the need to elaborate and extend
motivation constructs not only to account for these situation-specifc
motives but also to render them more suitable for immediate classroom
application. In order to achieve this, scholars typically deviated from the
traditional social psychological approach both in their goals and emphases,
yet the signifcance of the broad sociocultural orientations and language
attitudes advocated by Gardner and his Canadian associates was never
questioned.
46 What is Motivation?
3.2.1 Expanding the Theoretical Framework of L2 Motivation
Crookes and Schmidt’s (1991) position paper certainly set the agenda for broad-
ening the theoretical framework of L2 motivation. It included a well-researched
review of both the L2 and mainstream psychological literature of motivation with
over 140 references, introducing the work of several prominent motivational psy-
chologists for the frst time in the L2 feld. It rose to the challenge of addressing
the eclectic and multifaceted nature of L2 motivation by distinguishing between
various levels of motivation and motivated learning (micro, classroom, syllabus/
curriculum and extracurricular levels), and thus highlighted several paths along
which subsequent research could proceed. Drawing on Keller’s (1983) theory of
motivation and instructional design, the authors presented a parsimonious moti-
vation framework made up of four components: interest, relevance, expectancy
and satisfaction/outcomes.
Crookes and Schmidt’s approach of examining motivation at various concep-
tual levels was taken up by Dörnyei (1994a), who conceptualised L2 motivation
within a framework of three relatively distinct levels:

• language level;
• learner level;
• learning situation level.

Dörnyei’s intention was to design a comprehensive construct to synthesise vari-

ous lines of research by offering an extensive list of motivational components
categorised into main dimensions or clusters. The frst two levels – the language
level and the learner level – drew heavily on Gardner and Clément’s theories,
supplemented with the fndings of Dörnyei (1990), whereas the third and most
elaborate dimension – the learning situation level – was largely based on fndings
reported in educational psychology. This third level was associated with situ-
ation-specifc motives rooted in various aspects of language learning within a
classroom setting, divided into three facets:

• Course-specifc motivational components were related to the syllabus, teaching

materials, teaching method and learning tasks.
• Teacher-specifc motivational components concerned the motivational impact
of the teacher’s personality, behaviour, teaching style and practices.
• Group-specifc motivational components were related to the group dynamics of
the learner group.

The rationale for separating the three motivational levels was that they seemed
to have a vital effect on overall motivation independently of one another; that
is, by changing the parameters at one level and keeping the other two dimensions
constant, overall motivation might completely change. For example, the same
learner in the same learning situation might show a strikingly different degree of
motivation depending on what the target language was. Similarly, in relation to
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 47
the same target language, a learner’s motivation could change signifcantly as a
function of the learning situation, such as a change of teacher or classroom group.
Thus, this model foreshadowed a more dynamic relationship between motiva-
tional factors, with situated, classroom-specifc motives taking central stage.

3.2.2 Key Areas of Inquiry

We saw in Chapter 2 that the 1990s were a particularly fruitful period in moti-
vational psychology for establishing a number of infuential new theories, which
in turn facilitated the expansion of the range of cognitive and situational factors
that were seen to shape motivation in the L2 classroom. As a result, several key
lines of inquiry began to emerge through the 1990s, many of which continue to
sustain research developments today.

Attributional Processes
As we saw in Section 2.1.4, understanding a person’s causal attributional processes
for experiences of success or failure became a dominant feature of psychological
research on student motivation in the 1980s. Within our own research feld, Skehan
(1989) was perhaps among the frst scholars to call for more research on applying
attribution theory to language learning motivation, and this call was echoed by
others (e.g. Dörnyei, 1990, 1994a; Julkunen, 1989). The potential motivational
importance of L2 learners’ causal attributions for success and failure experiences
was empirically illustrated during this period by Ushioda (1996a) and Williams
and Burden (1999), in a couple of studies that were small-scale and qualitative in
design (see Concept 3.3). These were followed by a few further qualitative explo-
rations of L2 learners’ attributional processes at the turn of the century (e.g. Tse,
2000; Williams, Burden & Al-Baharna, 2001). In subsequent years, the study of
attributional processes in L2 learning became largely integrated within research on
autonomy and motivational self-regulation, and more recently within research on
language mindsets and positive psychology (e.g. Lou & Noels, 2019; MacIntyre,
Gregersen & Mercer, 2016; Mercer & Ryan, 2010; Ryan & Mercer, 2012).
In this respect, while attribution theory did not grow to become a major
research area in itself in the L2 motivation feld, its introduction infuenced the
development of this feld in two important ways. Firstly, it opened up L2 motiva-
tion research to qualitative approaches to investigating how L2 learners perceived
and made sense of aspects of their situated language learning experience. Such
approaches had the potential to offer richer and more nuanced insights than the
traditional quantitative approaches then dominating L2 motivation research (for
discussion, see Ushioda, 2020; see also Chapter 9). Secondly, attribution theory
drew attention to the temporal dimension of language learning motivation, since
it focused on how language learners’ processing of past experiences might then
shape current and future motivation and behaviours. As we shall see later, these
two developments became highly signifcant in the subsequent evolution of the
L2 motivation feld.
48 What is Motivation?

CONCEPT 3.3 ATTRIBUTIONAL FINDINGS IN TWO

QUALITATIVE STUDIES
1. In a two-stage interview study of Irish university students learning
French, Ushioda (1996a, 2001) found that maintaining a positive self-
concept and a belief in personal potential in the face of negative expe-
riences hinged on two attributional patterns:
• attributing positive L2 outcomes to personal ability or other inter-
nal factors (e.g. effort, perfectionist approach);
• attributing negative L2 outcomes or lack of success to temporary
(i.e. unstable) shortcomings that might be overcome (e.g. lack of
effort, lack of opportunity to spend time in the L2 environment).
These two patterns coincided almost exactly with the recommenda-
tions made in educational psychology concerning the promotion of
motivation-enhancing attributions.
2. Williams and Burden (1999) were concerned with the developmental
aspects of L2 learner attributions. Their interview study revealed clear
differences between the different age groups investigated in terms of
children’s construction of success and in the range of attributions pro-
vided for success and failure in language learning:
• 10–12-year-olds saw the main reasons for success as listening and
concentrating;
• older children provided a wider range of attributions, including
ability, level of work, circumstances and the infuence of others.
A noteworthy fnding was that there was hardly any mention of the
application of appropriate learning strategies when explaining suc-
cesses, indicating the children’s lack of awareness of the importance
of strategy use.

Self-Determination Theory
In view of the widespread infuence of Deci and Ryan’s (1985) theory of extrin-
sic versus intrinsic motivation and self-determination in mainstream educational
psychology (Section 2.1.1), it is not surprising that self-determination theory
(SDT) has grown to become a major conceptual framework in the L2 motivation
feld sustaining a signifcant programme of research (for a recent overview, see
Noels et al., 2019). In general terms, the importance of intrinsic motivation in
the language classroom was long recognised in the feld (e.g. Brown, 1981, 1990).
Moreover, interest as a motivational factor consistently featured in theorising dat-
ing back to Gardner’s (1985) socio-educational model (where interest in foreign
languages was a defned component of integrativeness), and in the subsequent
expanded framework developed by Dörnyei (1994a). With specifc reference to
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 49
SDT, however, its establishment and extensive development as an infuential
theoretical framework in the L2 motivation feld can be primarily attributed to
the work of Kim Noels and her colleagues at the turn of the century (e.g. Noels,
2001; Noels, Clément & Pelletier, 1999, 2001). As part of their programme of
SDT research, Noels, Pelletier, Clément and Vallerand (2000) set out to develop
a new instrument for assessing L2 learners’ orientations from a self-determination
perspective (i.e. a questionnaire measuring various types of intrinsic and extrinsic
orientations in L2 learning), and they sought to relate the obtained measures to:

• various antecedent and consequence measures (perceptions of competence,

freedom of choice, anxiety and the intention to continue L2 studies – all
assessed by scales well established in educational psychology) to serve as cri-
terion measures;
• Clément and Kruidenier’s (1983) infuential framework of four types of ori-
entations: instrumental, knowledge, travel and friendship.

The researchers found that instrumental orientation corresponded closely

to external extrinsic regulation (for a summary of the different types of extrinsic
motive, see Concept 2.1 in the previous chapter), whereas the other three orien-
tations were associated with more self-determined and intrinsic types of motive. In
addition, an interesting fnding was that, contrary to expectation, the identifed
regulation scale (representing personally valued internalised goals and motives)
had a stronger relation with the criterion variables than the intrinsic motivation
subscales. Noels and her colleagues speculated that intrinsic motivation factors
such as enjoyment and interest might not be suffcient in themselves to foster
sustained learning, and that the personal value and importance of learning the
language could be more signifcant in this regard.
The work of Noels and her colleagues has been helpful in offering a theoretical
framework for classifying and organising language learning goals or orientations
in terms of a self-determination continuum. Moreover, their classroom-focused
research highlighted features of the social learning setting which may infuence
the development of students’ intrinsic or extrinsic motivation. Specifcally, they
focused attention on the teachers’ communicative style and how the degree to
which this was perceived by students as controlling or autonomy-supportive would
reduce or strengthen their intrinsic motivation (Noels, Clément & Pelletier,
1999). This is an important line of SDT inquiry that continues to generate class-
room research as well as applications for pedagogical interventions (e.g. Dincer
et al., 2019; Kaur, Hashim & Noman, 2015). Furthermore, this line of inquiry
has extended to exploring the wider context of social support for motivation from
peers, parents and siblings, or from members of the target language community, as
well as the impact of larger socio-structural and sociocultural systems on shaping
self-determined forms of motivation (Noels et al., 2019). Broadly speaking, the
extensive body of SDT research on language learning motivation consistently
shows that when learners perceive that their psychological needs for autonomy,
competence and relatedness are met, they experience more self-determined and
50 What is Motivation?
intrinsic forms of motivation, and this in turn will likely lead to high levels of
engagement and achievement in L2 learning.

Autonomy Theory
The shift to cognitive and classroom-focused perspectives on L2 motivation in
the 1990s coincided with a period when, with the widespread establishment of
self-access centres through the 1990s and the development of new technolo-
gies promoting independent learning (for a recent comprehensive overview, see
Little, Dam & Legenhausen, 2017), there was rising interest in learner auton-
omy in language education (e.g. Benson & Voller, 1997; Dickinson & Wenden,
1995; Little, 1991), as well as in language learning strategies (e.g. Oxford, 1990;
Wenden, 1991). Not surprisingly, perhaps, a small body of literature devel-
oped during this period that began to explore the theoretical interface between
autonomy and motivation, and the relationship between motivation and learner
strategies.
Dickinson (1995) published an important review of the literature on auton-
omy and motivation, drawing on cognitive theories and concepts of motiva-
tion in education (e.g. intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, attribution theory,
mastery versus performance goals) to analyse links with autonomy and develop
justifcation for its promotion in language learning. A key argument in linking
autonomy and motivation is that both are centrally concerned with the learner’s
agency, that is, active engagement with and involvement in the learning process.
As Ushioda (1996b) summarised, while autonomy implies being involved in and
taking responsibility for one’s learning in all its aspects, self-motivation implies
taking charge of the affective dimension of the learning process.
Over the years, the relationship between motivation and autonomy has gen-
erated considerable debate, not least because of the different senses ascribed to
autonomy. Autonomy can be taken to mean, for example, a basic psychological
need in self-determination theory, the strategic ability to take charge of one’s
learning, or recognition of the rights of learners within educational systems.
These different understandings of autonomy have led to different accounts of
how autonomy relates to motivation and the direction of this relationship (e.g.
Lou et al., 2018; Spratt, Humphreys & Chan, 2002; Ushioda, 2014). As we
shall see later (Section 5.3.2), the interface between motivation and autonomy
remains an important area of interest in the L2 motivation feld today.

Task Motivation
The shift to cognitive and classroom-focused perspectives on L2 motivation also
coincided with a period when there was a rapidly growing literature on task-based
research and task-based instruction in the L2 learning feld (e.g. Crookes & Gass,
1993; Long, 1989; Long & Crookes, 1992; Willis, 1996; for recent overviews, see
Ellis et al., 2020; Samuda, Van den Branden & Bygate, 2018). From a research
perspective, focusing on tasks as the unit of analysis makes it possible to break
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 51
down the language learning process into clearly defnable segments, which can
in turn facilitate the analysis of the cognitive processing mechanisms involved.
Among the frst to focus on task-related motivation in the L2 feld was Kyösti
Julkunen, who published a series of studies in Finland (reported in Julkunen,
1989, 2001). Drawing particularly on the work of Boekaerts (1987, 1988) and
the distinction she made between trait motivation (a learner’s general motiva-
tional orientation) and state motivation (a learner’s situation-specifc motivation),
Julkunen (2001) developed a motivation model that attempted to capture situ-
ation-specifc motivation and relate it to general motivational orientation. He
further proposed a construct of task motivation that combined generalised and
situation-specifc motives.
In an empirical study that explored the motivational characteristics of lan-
guage learning tasks, Dörnyei (2002) offered a rather more complex view of task
motivation than the state/trait dichotomy. As he argued, a weakness of the trait/
state approach was that it suggested a fairly static conception of motivation,
whereas the process of engaging in and executing a language learning task clearly
spanned a length of time during which motivation was unlikely to remain stable.
In Dörnyei’s view, the individual’s task motivation was likely to be the composite
dynamic outcome of a complex range of contextual infuences as well as learner-
internal factors and the intrinsic properties of the task. It was also likely to vary
in relation to different stages of task engagement, learners’ ongoing appraisal or
monitoring of the task engagement process, and their efforts to control or regu-
late this process (see Dörnyei & Tseng, 2009).
In subsequent years, the study of task motivation has continued to generate
research interest (e.g. Kormos & Dörnyei, 2004; Lambert, Philp & Nakamura,
2017; Poupore, 2016; for a recent overview, see Kormos & Wilby, 2019).
However, as Dörnyei (2019a) points out, it remains challenging to theorise task
motivation because of the complexity of learner-specifc, situation-specifc, task-
related and other contextual factors involved, including the process-oriented ele-
ment of task engagement over time. The study of task motivation has thus drawn
attention to the temporal and contextual features of motivation, and the chal-
lenges of accounting for these. As the feld entered the 21st century, addressing
these challenges grew to become a major concern, and it is to these developments
that we now turn.

3.3 Focus on Time, Context and Vision

As we observed in Chapter 1, a major challenge for motivation theories in gen-
eral has been to describe the temporal organisation of motivation and to portray
motivational processes as they happen in time. This is of particular importance
when the target of interest is a sustained learning process, such as the mastery of
a second language, which may take several years to accomplish. Although most
language teachers and students know from experience that motivation does not
remain constant during the course of learning, analysing the contextual dynam-
ics of how L2 motivation changes over time and of how to take account of past,
52 What is Motivation?
present and future temporal perspectives did not receive major theoretical atten-
tion until the turn of the century.

3.3.1 Focus on Time: Dörnyei and Ottó’s Process Model of

L2 Motivation
The most elaborate attempt to model the process dimension of L2 motivation
was developed by Dörnyei and Ottó (1998; see also Dörnyei, 2000). Their model
organised the motivational infuences of L2 learning along a sequence of discrete
actional events within the chain of initiating and enacting motivated behaviour.
In developing a process model of L2 motivation, Dörnyei and Ottó also aimed to
synthesise a number of different lines of research in a unifed framework, thereby
offering a non-reductionist, comprehensive model.
Figure 3.1 is a schematic representation of the process model of L2 motiva-
tion, which contains two main dimensions: Action Sequence and Motivational
Infuences. The former represents the behavioural process whereby initial wishes,
hopes and desires are frst transformed into goals, then into intentions, leading
eventually to action and, hopefully, to the accomplishment of the goals, after which
the process is submitted to fnal evaluation. The second dimension of the model,
Motivational Infuences, includes the energy sources and motivational forces that
underlie and fuel the behavioural process.
Drawing on Heckhausen and Kuhl’s (1985) Action Control Theory, Dörnyei
and Ottó divided the motivated behavioural process into three main phases:

1. Preactional phase. This corresponds roughly to “choice motivation” leading

to the selection of the goal or task to be pursued. Within this phase, three
sequential subprocesses can be distinguished: goal setting, intention forma-
tion and the initiation of intention enactment. The main motivational
infuences during this phase are likely to be various goal properties (e.g. rel-
evance, proximity); values associated with the learning process, outcomes
and consequences; attitudes towards the L2 and its speakers; expectancy of
success; learner beliefs and strategies; environmental support or constraints.
2. Actional phase. This corresponds to “executive motivation” that energises
action while it is being carried out and, following Heckhausen (1991), can
be compared to crossing a metaphorical “Rubicon” (see Concept 3.4): by
actually embarking on the task (e.g. enrolling in a language course), the
individual becomes committed to action and the emphasis shifts from delib-
eration and decision-making to implementation. During the actional phase,
three basic processes come into effect: subtask generation and implementation
to break down action plans into manageable units and short-term goals;
a complex ongoing appraisal process to evaluate the multitude of stimuli
from the learning environment and monitor progress towards the goal; the
application of various action control mechanisms or self-regulatory strategies
to enhance, protect and sustain motivation and learning progress. The main
motivational infuences during the actional phase are likely to be the quality
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 53

Figure 3.1 Dörnyei and Ottó’s (1998) process model of L2 motivation.

of the learning experience, sense of autonomy, social infuences (teachers,

peers, parents), classroom reward and goal structures, and knowledge and
use of self-regulatory strategies.
3. Post-actional phase. This involves critical retrospection after action has been
completed or possibly interrupted for a period (e.g. a holiday). The main
processes during this phase entail evaluating the accomplished action out-
come and contemplating possible lessons to be drawn for future actions.
During this phase, the learner compares initial expectancies and plans of
action to how they turned out in reality and forms causal attributions about
the outcomes. Through this evaluative process, internal standards are devel-
oped, as well as action-specifc strategies for future learning, followed by the
54 What is Motivation?
transition to new or further goals and intentions. The main motivational
infuences during the post-actional phase are likely to be attributional fac-
tors, self-concept beliefs, and external feedback and achievement grades.

CONCEPT 3.4 ON THE “RUBICON” OF ACTION

The Rubicon was a small stream at the northern border of Italy in the era
of the Roman Empire. In order to protect Roman democracy from military
coups, a specifc law forbade a general to lead an army out of the province
to which he was assigned. In 49 BC, after a great deal of internal political
turmoil, Julius Caesar’s forces crossed the river Rubicon, thereby violating
the law and declaring war against the Roman Senate (starting a three-
year civil war that left Caesar ruler of the Roman Empire). “Crossing the
Rubicon” has since then become a phrase to describe a step that defnitely
commits a person to a given course of action. Heckhausen (1991) named
his motivation theory the “Rubicon Model of Action Phases” based on this
analogy.

However, despite the schematic value of delineating the chain of actional events
constituting the motivated behavioural process over time, the model perhaps
raised more questions than it sought to address. In critically refecting on his
process model of L2 motivation, Dörnyei (2005) acknowledged two key short-
comings. Firstly, the model assumed that we could defne and delimit the actional
process under focus. While this may potentially be workable in the case of a
discrete learning task (e.g. in a research laboratory setting), in a real classroom
setting it is virtually impossible to say exactly when a learning process begins
and ends, or whether several learning processes might be running simultane-
ously, overlapping or interacting with one another. Secondly, the model assumed
that the actional process would occur in relative isolation, without interference
from other actional processes that the learner may simultaneously be engaged
in. These might relate to other academic studies as well as various personal and
social goals. In short, the process model of L2 motivation could not do justice to
the situated complexity of the learning process or the multiple goals and agendas
shaping learner behaviour.
As Dörnyei (2009) further noted, an additional shortcoming of the process
model was that, although it reframed motivation as a dynamically changing
cumulative arousal in a person, it was still conceptualised within a paradigm
characterised by linear cause–effect relations. However, the multiple parallel and
interacting cause–effect relationships, accompanied by several circular feedback
loops, made the validity of the overall linear nature of the model highly ques-
tionable. Thus, he concluded, “it was really a matter of time before I realised
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 55
that such a patchwork of interwoven cause–effect relationships would not do the
complexity of the motivation system justice and therefore a more radical refor-
mulation was needed” (p. 197). This “radical reformulation” involved eventually
adopting a complex dynamic systems approach to the understanding of the col-
laboration of various motivational elements. We shall return to this issue in the
next chapter when we survey current initiatives in L2 motivation research.

3.3.2 The Challenge of Integrating Time and Context,

and the “Social Turn”
A further conceptual challenge in mapping motivation as a process over time
is how to integrate evolving interactions with local contextual factors, such as
interpersonal relationships, classroom goal structures, peer group infuences or
institutional and societal culture (see Section 2.2). The notion that we can theo-
rise language learning motivation as a decontextualised psychological process
without taking into account its deeply socially embedded nature thus came under
critical scrutiny.
One key critical voice in his respect that emerged at the turn of the century
was that of Bonny Norton (2000), who questioned the traditional concept of
an “ahistorical” language learner who can be unproblematically characterised
as instrumentally or integratively motivated, with a clear-cut target identity; as
she argued, motivation and identity are socially constructed, often in inequita-
ble relations of power, changing over time and space, and possibly coexisting in
contradictory ways in the individual. Norton submitted that SLA theorists had
not developed a comprehensive theory of identity that integrated the language
learner and the language learning context. She used the term “identity” to refer-
ence how a person understands their relationship to the world, how that rela-
tionship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands
possibilities for the future. Norton also developed a sociological (rather than psy-
chological) construct of motivation as investment to capture the “socially and
historically constructed relationship of learners to the target language, and their
often ambivalent desire to learn and practice it” (Norton, 2000, p. 10). As she
has more recently explained (Norton, 2020, pp. 161–162), the sociological con-
struct of investment “signals a learner’s commitment to learn a language, given
their changing identities and their hopes for the future, in frequently inequitable
social contexts”. Learners may thus invest in learning a language if they antici-
pate that they will accrue symbolic and material resources that will enhance their
cultural capital and social power, and enhance the range of social identity posi-
tions from which they can speak (e.g. as a parent or a respected professional)
instead of being positioned with disempowering or essentialising identities (e.g.
as a migrant or a non-native speaker).
Norton’s view of motivation, identity and language as socially and histori-
cally situated processes very much aligned with the broader social turn (Block,
2003) that characterised SLA research through the frst decade of the century.
Essentially, this social turn represented a shift in thinking from language learning
56 What is Motivation?
as primarily a cognitive psycholinguistic process to a view of language learning as
a sociocultural and sociohistorically situated process (Lafford, 2007; Zuengler &
Miller, 2006). Although the notion of motivation remained rooted in psychol-
ogy, such a view had implications for how we might conceptualise and theorise
the interactions between motivation and social context, and it heralded a move
away from traditional linear models of motivational and contextual variables to
relational and dynamic systems perspectives.

3.3.3 Ushioda’s Person-in-Context Relational View of L2 Motivation

One reason why the L2 motivation feld was slow to integrate a focus on time and
context may have been the predominance of a quantitative research paradigm,
characteristic not only of the social psychological tradition within SLA but also
of the psychometric tradition of mainstream cognitive approaches to motiva-
tion which came to infuence our feld in the 1990s. As we shall see later in
Chapters 8 and 9, quantitative research approaches seek to represent the bigger
picture, using measurement instruments such as test batteries or questionnaires
to examine generalisable patterns and relationships across a large dataset. Such
approaches do not lend themselves easily to investigating the dynamic processes
of motivational evolution within an individual person’s learning experience. Not
surprisingly, then, a focus on the evolving and contextually situated nature of
motivation heralded also a call for qualitative research approaches that would
enable a richer, more nuanced analysis in this regard, as voiced in particular by
Ushioda (1994, 1996a, 2001).

QUOTE 3.2 USHIODA ON THE NEED FOR QUALITATIVE

RESEARCH APPROACHES TO EXPLORE THE DYNAMIC
NATURE OF L2 MOTIVATION IN CONTEXT
Within the context of institutionalised learning especially, the com-
mon experience would seem to be motivational fux rather than sta-
bility. … Yet, the potential for developing a dynamic theory of L2
motivation would seem to extend beyond the phenomenon of motiva-
tional loss or growth alone. In this respect, a more introspective type
of research approach is needed to explore qualitative developments in
motivational experience over time, as well as to identify the contex-
tual factors perceived to be in dynamic interplay with motivation.
Ushioda (1996a, pp. 240–241)

As Ushioda (2009) observes, L2 motivation studies that consider contextual fac-

tors (relating for example to pedagogy, classroom environment or cultural setting)
tend to treat such factors as independent variables in linear models of motivation.
In other words, context is conceptualised as a stable background variable that may
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 57
infuence individual motivation. However, a linear approach of this kind cannot
capture the dynamic nature of the interactions between motivation and context,
and Ushioda therefore argues that a more relational approach is needed. As Sealey
and Carter (2004, p. 196) explain, a key difference between a linear and a relational
approach is that the latter is not concerned with identifying “variables” and tracing
cause–effect relationships. It focuses instead on the evolving network of relations
among various features, phenomena and processes – relations which are complex,
unpredictable, non-linear and always unique, since every person and context is
unique. From a relational perspective, the phenomenon of interest (e.g. motiva-
tion) is thus viewed not as a quantifable “variable” or individual difference char-
acteristic, but in Sealey and Carter’s words, “as emergent from relations between
human intentionality and the social world” (p. 206).
In response to the shortcomings of linear approaches to L2 motivation, Ushioda
(2009) thus proposed a relational view that takes account of the organically
evolving interactions among motivation, self and context. Her “person-in-context
relational view of motivation” puts explicit emphasis on the complex individuality
of real persons and their lived experiences (echoing Norton’s work), in contrast
to the traditional focus on abstract language learners or language learner char-
acteristics. As Ushioda says, for anyone engaged in learning a language, being a
“language learner” represents just one aspect of their social identity or sense of
self. Other identities that may be relevant at various times to their motivation
and experience of L2 learning may include, for example, being Chinese (Spanish,
American, etc.), or being a mother, a doctor, a graduate student, a football fan, a
wine expert and so on. Following Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001), Ushioda argues
that where L2 motivation is concerned, we need to understand second language
learners as real people who are necessarily located in particular cultural and his-
torical contexts, and whose motivations and identities shape and are shaped by
these contexts.

QUOTE 3.3 USHIODA’S PERSON-IN-CONTEXT

RELATIONAL VIEW OF MOTIVATION
I mean a focus on real persons, rather than on learners as theoretical
abstractions; a focus on the agency of the individual person as a think-
ing, feeling human being, with an identity, a personality, a unique his-
tory and background, a person with goals, motives and intentions; a
focus on the interaction between this self-refective intentional agent,
and the fuid and complex system of social relations, activities, experi-
ences and multiple micro- and macro-contexts in which the person is
embedded, moves, and is inherently part of. My argument is that we
need to take a relational (rather than linear) view of these multiple
contextual elements, and view motivation as an organic process that
emerges through the complex system of interrelations.
Ushioda (2009, p. 220)
58 What is Motivation?
From an analytical perspective, this kind of relational view of motivation pre-
sents challenges, since the unit of analysis extends beyond the individual to
embrace the complex interactions between the individual and multiple evolving
contexts. Identifying the core of the issue, Ushioda (2015, p. 48) poses the ques-
tion: “If learners are ‘persons-in-context’ who are inherently part of, act upon and
contribute to shaping the social, cultural and physical environments with which
they interact, how do we differentiate meaningfully between learner and context
when examining these evolving interactions?” And recently Yim et al. (2019, p.
247) have reiterated: “But the question then becomes how to distinguish learners
from context? Furthermore, how to defne the internal, external, and temporal
boundaries of context? Any one focal element, such as motivation, potentially
makes all other elements part of the context”.
According to Ushioda (2015), developing a practical strategy of inquiry for a per-
son-in-context relational approach entails fnding a principled way of defning and
delimiting what is relevant to “context” for purposes of analysis. One strategy in this
respect may be to focus on the micro-analysis of interactional data (e.g. teacher–stu-
dent talk) and thereby examine motivation as it evolves and emerges through the
developing discourse (Ushioda, 2009). In particular, where language classroom talk
is concerned, a key motivational concern is to what extent those participating in
the interaction are encouraged or enabled to “speak as themselves” (Legenhausen,
1999, p. 171) with the particular social identities they want to express (e.g. as foot-
ball fan or music lover), instead of simply behaving as “language learners” who are
practising and reproducing textbook structures and forms. The analysis of classroom
talk and teacher–student interactions may offer a focused way of exploring motiva-
tion among persons-in-context, as illustrated recently in a study of language class-
rooms in Sweden (Henry & Thorsen, 2018b; Henry, Sundqvist & Thorsen, 2019).
Taking a different angle and drawing on Larsen-Freeman’s (2019) work on
agency, Dörnyei (2020) suggests that in order to avoid a fuzzy situation in which
it is not clear how to prioritise any of the overlapping aspects of the “person-in-
context” paradigm, researchers need to place the human agent in the centre of
the complex system. The question of agency becomes particularly critical when
we consider adopting a complex dynamic systems perspective, and we shall there-
fore revisit this theme in the next chapter.

QUOTE 3.4 HIVER AND LARSEN-FREEMAN’S VIEW

OF AGENCY IN CONNECTION WITH MOTIVATION
[W]e believe that the study of human and social systems always impli-
cates agency, whether this is individual or collective. This makes it
necessary to include within any human system’s boundaries an agent,
or agents, capable of exercising intentional action that contributes
causally, though not deterministically, to the system’s motivational
outcomes and processes of change.
Hiver & Larsen-Freeman (2020, p. 289)
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 59
Since a person-in-context relational view of motivation emphasises a holis-
tic perspective on the lived experiences of individuals who are engaging with
language learning in specifc socio-historical and cultural contexts, it may also
favour life story, biographical and narrative approaches to research inquiry
(e.g. Harvey, 2017; Miyahara, 2015). Such approaches have recently grown to
prominence in applied linguistics research (e.g. Barkhuizen, 2013), and they
facilitate a focus on the complex social and personal histories shaping individu-
als’ motivations to engage with language learning in the present. Of course, the
challenge of integrating a focus on time and context in the analysis of moti-
vation lies in incorporating not only past and present temporal perspectives
in a person’s language learning experience, but also future temporal perspec-
tives and imagined possibilities. It is to a consideration of this important future
dimension that we now turn.

3.3.4 Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System and the Notion of

Future Vision
The L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) was proposed by Dörnyei in 2005 as a
comprehensive synthesis of past research on the main dimensions of L2 motiva-
tion (for a detailed description, see Dörnyei, 2009). It represents a major reforma-
tion of previous motivational thinking by its explicit utilisation of psychological
theories of the self, yet the theory’s roots are frmly set in previous research in the
L2 feld. L2 motivation researchers have always believed that a foreign language
is more than a mere communication code that can be learnt similarly to other
academic subjects, and have therefore typically adopted paradigms that linked
the L2 to the individual’s “personal core”, forming an important part of one’s
identity.
The L2MSS construct has grown out of the combined effect of two signifcant
theoretical developments, one taking place in the L2 feld, the other in main-
stream psychology. Within L2 research, as we saw in Section 3.1.1, integrative-
ness/integrative motivation had been an infuential concept ever since it was frst
introduced by Gardner and Lambert in 1959, and the L2MSS can be seen as a
natural progression from Gardner’s theory (for a discussion of this continuity, see
Dörnyei, 2010). The second theoretical development took place in psychologi-
cal research of the self that had led to a gradual convergence of self theories and
motivation theories in mainstream psychology in the last two decades of the 20th
century. Let us begin the exploration of these two antecedents by looking at the
latter frst.

Possible Selves and Future Self-Guides in Psychology

Towards the end of the 20th century, self theorists became increasingly inter-
ested in the active, dynamic nature of the self-system, gradually replacing tra-
ditionally static forms of self-representations with a self-system that mediates
and controls ongoing behaviour (see Leary, 2007). This move resulted in the
60 What is Motivation?
introduction of a number of self-specifc mechanisms that link the self with
action (e.g. self-regulation and mental schemata), and, consequently, an
intriguing interface began to form between personality psychology and moti-
vational psychology. One of the most powerful mechanisms intended to make
this link explicit by describing how the self regulates behaviour through setting
goals and expectations was proposed by Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius (1986)
in their theory of “possible selves”.
Possible selves are images of the self in a future state; they represent the
individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become,
and what they are afraid of becoming (Markus & Nurius, 1986), and thus they
denote a unique self-dimension that refers to future rather than current self
states (see Concept 3.5). The notion of possible selves concerns how people
conceptualise their as-yet unrealised potential, and as such, it also draws on
hopes, wishes and fantasies. In this sense, possible selves act as “future self-
guides”, refecting a dynamic, forward-pointing conception that can explain
how someone is moved from the present towards the future. Thus, as Segal
(2006) explains, Markus and Nurius’s conceptualisation meant, in effect, that
social psychology was taking on the subtleties of psychodynamic processes
that are so prominent in psychoanalytic theory: “Markus and Nurius essen-
tially married a social-cognitive instrument with a projective. Future possible
selves are fantasy tempered by expectation (or expectations leavened by fan-
tasy)” (p. 82).

CONCEPT 3.5 OYSERMAN AND JAMES’S (2009, P. 373)

DEFINITION OF POSSIBLE SELVES
Possible selves are the future-oriented aspects of self-concept, the positive
and negative selves that one expects to become or hopes to avoid becom-
ing. They are the desired and feared images of the self already in a future
state – the “clever” self who passed the algebra test, the “unhealthy” self
who failed to lose weight or quit smoking and the “off-track” self who
became pregnant. Individuals possess multiple positive and negative pos-
sible selves. These possible selves are often linked with differing social roles
and identities, so that possible selves are likely to develop in domains rel-
evant to current life tasks such as being a student, a parent or a life partner.
Possible selves also differ along a continuum of detail; some possible selves
are flled with vivid detail of how, when and in what way the possible self
will be attained and what it will feel like to be that self in the future. Other
possible selves are much simpler.
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 61

QUOTE 3.5 MARKUS ON THE GENESIS OF POSSIBLE

SELF RESEARCH
Our excitement with the notion of possible selves had multiple
sources. Focusing on possible selves gave us license to speculate about
the remarkable power of imagination in human life. We also had room
to think about the importance of the self-structure as a dynamic inter-
pretive matrix for thought, feeling, and action, and to begin to theo-
rise about the role of sociocultural contexts in behaviour. Finally, the
concept wove together our mutual interests in social psychology, social
work, and clinical psychology.
Markus (2006, p. xi)

According to Tory Higgins (e.g. 1987, 1998), one type of possible self is par-
ticularly important with respect to guiding academic achievement, the learner’s
ideal self, as it concerns the attributes that one would ideally like to possess (i.e.
representation of hopes, aspirations or wishes). A complementary self-image is
the ought self, which refers to the representation of attributes that one believes
one ought to possess (i.e. representation of someone else’s sense of duties, obliga-
tions or moral responsibilities for the person). Thus, the ideal self involves the
individual’s own vision for themselves, while the ought self involves someone
else’s vision for the individual – the latter may therefore bear little resemblance
to one’s own desires or wishes or the possibility of ever attaining them. Despite
this difference between being internally and externally sourced, the two types of
self-image are similar in that they both act as self-guides: as Higgins argues, people
have a feeling of unease when there is a discrepancy between their actual real-life
self and their aspired future self, which spurs the desire for action towards reduc-
ing the gap (a point we shall return to below when discussing the motivational
capacity of vision).

The Notion of Vision

Let us underline in particular one aspect of Markus and Nurius’s (1986) proposal
that is central to the conception of possible selves yet which is often ignored
or overlooked in works on the subject: possible selves involve tangible images
and senses as they are represented in the same imaginary and semantic way as
the here-and-now self. That is, they are a reality for the individual – people can
“see” and “hear” a possible self. As Markus and Ruvolo (1989) argue, by focusing
on possible selves we are “phenomenologically very close to the actual thoughts
and feelings that individuals experience as they are in the process of motivated
behaviour and instrumental action” (p. 217); indeed, Markus and Nurius (1987,
p. 59) confrm, “Possible selves encompass within their scope visions of desired
and undesired end states”.
62 What is Motivation?
Connecting possible selves to vision was part of a wider trend at the end of the
20th century, with the notion of vision being utilised widely in a number of different
domains, from politics to business management. In a review article, therefore, van
der Helm (2009, p. 96) rightly concluded that “visions show up in diverse contexts,
taking many different shapes” so much so that we can talk about “the vision phe-
nomenon” to cover “the ensemble of claims and products which are called ‘visions’
or could be called as such”. The popularity of the term is explained by the fact
that vision – or as it is called in cognitive neuroscience, “mental imagery” – is one
of the most remarkable human faculties: our brains are hard-wired from birth to
perceive mental imagery through a built-in set of internal senses, and the ability to
generate and behold vision has been found to form an integral part of higher order
mental functioning in general, from information processing to memory functions
(both long-term and working memory) (for a detailed summary, see Dörnyei, 2020,
Chapter 5). Accordingly, the study of various forms of vision (e.g. mental simula-
tion and rehearsal) enjoys high academic status in a number of disciplines within the
social sciences, from psychology to business management, with its applications uti-
lised in areas as diverse as leadership studies, sport enhancement and psychotherapy.

The Motivating Capacity of Vision

Research on vision has been wide-ranging, with one of the most notable fndings
being that the act of conjuring up mental pictures, particularly scenes of imag-
ined future realities, can be highly effective in motivating people across a broad
spectrum of life activities. Investigations, however, have been far less conclusive
on what makes visionary images effective (see e.g. Rawolle et al., 2017). Indeed,
one may ask, why is a mental image of a future scenario instrumental in realising
a desired outcome? The traditional response in possible selves theory has been
offered by Higgins’s (1987, 1996) self-discrepancy theory, which postulates that
people are motivated to reach a condition where their self-concept matches their
personally relevant self-guides. In other words, motivation in this sense involves
the desire to reduce the discrepancy between one’s actual self and the projected
behavioural standards of the ideal/ought selves. However, Dörnyei (2020) argued
that this is only part of a larger picture; in fact, in some circumstances “positive
fantasies” may not only be motivationally ineffective but might even be counter-
productive (see e.g. Oettingen & Sevincer, 2018). Scholars have offered various
descriptions of how mental imagery exerts motivational power, ranging from the
need for the vision to include “process imagery” (i.e. also envisaging the journey
to the goal rather than merely the fnal outcome itself; e.g. Knäuper et al., 2009)
or “mental contrasting” (i.e. deliberate juxtaposing of a positive future outcome
with an identifed obstacle standing in the way or realising that outcome; e.g.
Oettingen & Sevincer, 2018) to the hope raised by the reality-like nature of
envisaged future scenes (as the realistic depiction implies that the outcome is
plausible and can therefore be reached; see Dörnyei, 2020).
Other scholars have emphasised the emotional dimension of vision as a source of
motivation. Indeed, when engaging with vision, individuals mentally mimic not
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 63
only perceptual images and motor movements but also emotional experiences
(see e.g. Holmes & Matthews, 2010). We have argued in Chapter 1 (Section
1.1.4) that emotional arousal can energise the body and provoke action (see e.g.
MacIntyre, Ross & Clément, 2019), although this “provocation” often lacks suf-
fcient goal-directed purposefulness, which is a defning criterion for motivated
behaviour proper. Yet, the amplifying nature of emotions is undeniable; according
to Tomkins’s (2008) classic observation, for example, “Affect amplifes, in an
abstract way, any stimulus which evokes it or any response which it may recruit
and prompt, be the response cognitive or motoric” (p. 659). This being the case,
Dörnyei (2020) suggests that the emotions evoked by vison can be seen as the
source of powerful “action tendencies” (rather than specifc actions) that need
further motivational guidance, with the latter provided by the behavioural road-
map that is associated with an effective vision.

The Construct of the L2 Motivational Self System

Dörnyei (2009) explains that when he set out to revise the theoretical construct
of L2 motivation, he was attracted to possible selves theory because of its vision-
ary nature that went beyond abstract, intellectual arguments. In a synthesis of a
number of L2 motivation theories, most notably Gardner’s concepts of integra-
tive and instrumental motivation (Section 3.1.1), Dörnyei (2005) proposed a
three-component construct, the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS), made up
of the Ideal L2 Self, the Ought-to L2 Self and the Language Learning Experience
(see Concept 3.6; for a review, see Csizér, 2019). While the frst two components
were conceptualised as L2-specifc future self-guides along the lines discussed with
regard to possible selves theory above (i.e. as imagined future L2-related experi-
ences), the third component, the L2 learning experience, was intended to offer an
index of actual experiences. However, as Dörnyei (2019b) explains, in the origi-
nal version of the model, these “actual” experiences were only rather superfcially
described as a broad component concerning the attitudes towards L2 learning
(for further discussion, see Csizér & Kálmán, 2019), and therefore he argues that
it might be more precise to defne the third component as the perceived quality of
the learners’ engagement with various aspects of the L2 learning process (we shall
discuss the notion of engagement further in Sections 4.6.2 and 5.5).

CONCEPT 3.6 DESCRIPTIONS OF THE THREE COMPONENTS

OF THE L2 MOTIVATIONAL SELF SYSTEM
• Ideal L2 Self, which is the L2-specifc facet of one’s “ideal self”: if the
person we would like to become speaks an L2, this becomes a power-
ful motivator to learn the L2 because of the desire to approximate the
L2-speaking self-image.
64 What is Motivation?

• Ought-to L2 Self, which concerns the attributes that one believes one
ought to possess to meet various L2-specifc expectations (e.g. of fam-
ily, friends, other authority fgures or by the broader social milieu) and
to avoid possible negative outcomes.
• L2 Learning Experience, which concerns situated, “executive” motives
related to the immediate L2 learning environment and experience
(e.g. the impact of the teacher, the curriculum, the peer group, the
experience of success).

The L2MSS has had extensive empirical backing. Already the actual trigger
for the model was provided by the results of a large-scale motivation survey in
Hungary that involved 13,000+ students over a period of 12 years, focusing on
attitudes towards fve target languages, English, German, French, Italian and
Russian (for an overview, see Dörnyei, Csizér & Németh, 2006), and over the
past 15 years a large number of studies have confrmed that the three components
of the model do indeed represent major aspects of L2 learners’ overall motiva-
tional disposition (for a particularly large-scale survey involving 10,000+ par-
ticipants in China, see You & Dörnyei, 2016; You, Dörnyei & Csizér, 2016; for
reviews, see Boo et al., 2015; Csizér, 2019).

QUOTE 3.6 MACINTYRE, MACKINNON AND CLÉMENT

ON POSSIBLE SELVES AND THE L2 MOTIVATIONAL
SELF SYSTEM
The notion of possible selves is an interesting approach and deserves
serious study in SLA. The expansive literature on integrative motiva-
tion can be a solid basis on which to build the literature on the L2
Motivational Self System, knowing that some key questions already
have been answered. As a conceptual scheme, the L2 Motivational
Self System, including the concept of possible selves, holds a great
deal of promise. The strength of the concept of possible selves lies in
its focus on the learner as applicable to education research contexts,
its focus on who individuals plan to use language with apart from a
specifc cultural group, and its ability to integrate multiple, sometimes
conficting motives.
MacIntyre, MacKinnon & Clément (2009, p. 58)

How does the Ideal L2 Self relate to Gardner’s (1985) notion of integrativeness?
It was initially suggested (e.g. Csizér & Dörnyei, 2005) that the Ideal L2 Self is
a broader concept that also pertains to contexts where the notion of any actual
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 65
“integration” does not apply (e.g. in countries where there is no obvious L2 com-
munity to integrate into or with regard to Global English where the exact nature of
the L2 community is vague). However, one may argue that this explanation might
be too limiting. The notion of integrativeness was originally based on the psycho-
logical process of identifcation with the L2 community (see e.g. Gardner, 2020),
and Claro (2020) rightly points out that this identifcation aspect forms a link with
the ideal L2 self, which is also based on a process of identifcation with a projected
future image within the person’s self-concept. That is, integrativeness and the ideal
L2 self represent two different but potentially complementary types of this process.

QUOTE 3.7 CLARO ON THE COMPLEMENTARY

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INTEGRATIVENESS
AND THE IDEAL L2 SELF
But the ideal L2 self cannot replace integrativeness. Integrativeness
(Gardner) and the ideal L2 self (Dörnyei) are complementary forms
of identifcation that differ in locus of identifcation. Integrativeness
represents identifcation with an external locus (role models and refer-
ence groups), while the ideal L2 self represents identifcation with an
internal locus.
Claro (2020, p. 253)

Conditions for the Motivating Capacity of Future L2 Self-Images

It has been widely observed that although vision-based future self-guides have
the capacity to motivate action, this does not always happen automatically but
depends on a number of conditions. These conditions thus form an integral part
of the L2MSS theory, because without them the three primary motivational
components dimensions of the L2 Motivational Self System would lose their
motivational capacity. We may list nine interrelated conditions in this respect:

• The learner has a desired future self-image: not everyone is expected to pos-
sess a developed ideal or ought-to self guide.
• The future self-image is suffciently different from the current self: if there is
no observable gap between current and future selves, no increased effort is
felt necessary.
• The future self-image is elaborate and vivid: a possible self with insuffcient
specifcity and detail may not be able to evoke the necessary motivational
response.
• The future self-image is perceived as plausible: possible selves are only effec-
tive insomuch as the individual does indeed perceive them as possible, that
is, realistic within the person’s individual circumstances.
66 What is Motivation?
• The future self-image is not perceived as comfortably certain, that is, within
one’s grasp: the learner must believe that the possible self will not happen
automatically.
• The future self-image does not clash with the expectations of the learner’s
family, peers and other elements of the social environment; that is, one’s
ideal and ought-to selves do not impede each other.
• The future self-image is regularly activated in the learner’s working self-
concept: possible selves become relevant for behaviour only when they are
primed.
• The future self-image is accompanied by relevant action plans and effective
procedural strategies that act as a concrete roadmap towards the goal.
• A desired future self-image is offset by a counteracting feared possible self in
the same domain: maximal motivational effectiveness may be achieved if
the learner also has an image about the negative consequences of failing to
achieve the desired end-state (although one needs to be very cautious with
such “scare tactics”).

These conditions offer a useful framework for considering any practical implica-
tions of the notion of vision, because satisfying these conditions will result in
motivational enhancement. Accordingly, the specifc methods of fulflling these
conditions can be seen as de facto vision-enhancing motivational strategies (a
topic we will come back to in Section 5.4).

Issues with the L2 Motivational Self System

Several issues have been raised with regard to the L2 Motivational Self System
over the past 15 years. Some of these concern possible extensions of the model.
For example, Thompson (2017, 2019; Thompson & Vásquez, 2015) has sug-
gested the addition of an “anti-ought-to self”, which concerns a counterreaction-
ary desire to go against the grain of existing social pressures and expectations (e.g.
by learning a language that is not encouraged by the social milieu). Lanvers and
Chambers (2019) have reported a similar countercultural disposition, whereby
learners are “motivated to react against an environment perceived as linguaphobe
and see their FL engagement as a deliberate act of rebellion against the dominant
culture and have thus been described as adopting a ‘rebellious stance’” (p. 437).
Another possible extension of the L2 Motivation Self System was offered by
Henry (2017) when he introduced the concept of the “ideal multilingual self”,
which involves a person’s aspirations to become multilingual (see also Ushioda,
2017), and a similar construct, termed the “plurilingual future self”, was pro-
posed by Busse (2017). The suggestion is that the multilingual self can gener-
ate motivational energy in addition to that created by the desire to speak the
specifc languages the learner is simultaneously engaging with. As Henry and
Thorsen (2018a) explain the underlying mechanism, when the self-guides of the
different language systems interact with each other in a complementary manner
in situations of multiple L2 learning/acquisition, this joint operation not only
 Motivation to Learn a Second Language 67
generates further motivation but it can also create system-level cohesion and
stability. Finally, based on a study of heritage language learning in Cape Breton
(Canada), MacIntyre, Baker and Sparling (2017) observed a strong community-
level motive, labelled as the “rooted L2 self”, that differs both from integrative-
ness and the ideal L2 self in that it represents a collective mindset that is rooted
in the shared geography, history and cultural practices of the community.
Some other issues with the L2MSS have concerned the ought-to L2 self, which
involves an “imported”, that is, a partially internalised, vision. Past empirical
research has shown that the energising force of this self-guide tends to fall short of
the power of ideal self-images, but it has not been established yet why these images
function in such a “secondary”, watered-down manner (or how we may compen-
sate for the shortfall). One may also expect the existence of a certain amount of
cross-cultural variation in this respect, depending on whether the learner comes
from a more individualistic or collectivistic environment (although we should note
the cautions regarding such generalisations highlighted in Section 2.2.6). Finally,
recent studies have also examined the dynamic nature of the L2MSS, arguing that
ongoing activation can change the quality of the future self-guide (e.g. strength-
ening its intensity; see Henry, 2015; Hessel, 2015) and that the self-image can be
revised over time as a reaction to environmental stimuli (e.g. You & Chan, 2015) –
Sato and Lara (2017) even found that in an intervention study the ideal and the
ought-to L2 selves displayed an inverse trajectory. However, as Thorsen, Henry
and Cliffordson (2020) rightly point out, such processes of vision transformation
have not been adequately addressed in L2 motivation research to date.

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4 Current Approaches in
Theorising L2 Motivation

This chapter will…

• describe the main developments in L2 motivation theory over the past

decade;
• survey cutting-edge initiatives in theorising.

In the previous chapter we saw how the study of L2 motivation has evolved
through different theoretical phases since the 1960s, and we examined the crit-
ical factors that have shaped this development. The chapter concluded with a
description of the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS), which – according to
Boo, Dörnyei and Ryan’s (2015) survey – became the most widely used theo-
retical paradigm in L2 motivation research in the second decade of the cur-
rent century. The authors, however, stressed that this dominance did not mean
that the feld settled into a “fossilised new orthodoxy”. Instead, the self-based
approach appeared to provide a welcoming framework for innovation within
the L2MSS paradigm and, signifcantly, “it also offered a springboard for new
approaches” (p. 153).
The current chapter presents a survey of new theoretical approaches that have
emerged in the feld of L2 motivation over the past decade. As we shall see, our
overview confrms the existence of a non-restrictive research climate: the feld
has embraced a number of very different emphases and angles, responded to sev-
eral challenges and infuences originating both within and outside SLA, and dis-
played novel theoretical initiatives. The frst new approach to be discussed, the
adoption of a complex dynamic systems perspective for the purpose of capturing
motivational dynamics (Section 4.1), was originally initiated by a “dynamic turn”
in the feld of applied linguistics at the beginning of the century (in parallel with
similar developments across the broader felds of the social sciences). Given the
complexity of L2 motivation described in Chapter 1, the notion provides fertile
ground for such a dynamic approach, and indeed, some of the principles of com-
plex dynamic systems theory resonated powerfully with L2 motivation scholars.
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 77
The second area of progress concerns advancements within the L2MSS para-
digm itself and especially the notion of vision, leading to the conceptualisation
of directed motivational currents (DMCs) and long-term motivation (Section 4.2).
Following this, we address a fundamental challenge that has affected motiva-
tional psychology as a whole, the recognition that unconscious motivation plays
a more substantial role in shaping human behaviour than previously thought
(Section 4.3).
In Section 4.4 we explore a long-standing issue in L2 motivation research,
namely that in many cases talking about “L2” motivation is inappropriate
given the nature of the contemporary multilingual world. In this section we
also examine whether the past dominance of focusing on Global English
(rather than languages that do not have a global lingua franca status) has
caused a bias in theorising about language learning motivation. Section 4.5
will survey other recent initiatives in the literature to adopt cutting-edge
psychological theories and constructs in order to achieve a better understand-
ing of L2 motivation; while some of these proposals may not stand the test of
time, their appearance is an indication of the vibrant creativity of the feld.
Finally, in Section 4.6 we focus on two new perspectives that have emerged
from efforts to make L2 motivation theory more relevant to actual classroom
applications, a focus on L2 learner engagement and a general call to pursue
“small lens” approaches.

4.1 Motivational Dynamics

We saw in Chapter 1 that over the years researchers have sought to develop theo-
retical accounts of motivation in relation to the relative roles of cognition and
affect, temporal and contextual factors, as well as conscious and unconscious pro-
cesses. In order to be able to handle these various aspects of the complex notion
of motivation, a growing number of scholars have become open to experimenting
with the adoption of a complex dynamic systems perspective that has started to
gain recognition both in the social sciences in general (e.g. Byrne & Callaghan,
2014) and in the feld of SLA in particular (e.g. de Bot, Lowie & Verspoor, 2007;
Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008; Ortega & Han, 2017; Sampson & Pinner,
2021) – indeed, in 2005 Boo et al. documented a steady climb in research on L2
motivational dynamics, and this trajectory has remained unchanged over the past
fve years. As a preliminary, we would like to point out that the terms “complex”
and “dynamic” have been used in many different senses in the literature, referring
to various forms/degrees of intricacy and unpredictability. In this chapter we use
them as technical terms in the way they have been employed in complex dynamic
systems theory (CDST): they concern development in “complex, dynamic systems”
(see Concept 4.1) that consist of multiple interconnected parts and in which the
overall system behaviour is often characterised by non-linear, emergent change.
78 What is Motivation?

CONCEPT 4.1 COMPLEX DYNAMIC SYSTEMS AND THE

DOUBLE PENDULUM
A system can be considered dynamic if it has two or more elements that
are (a) interlinked with each other and (b) which also change over time.
These two simple conditions can result in highly complex system behav-
iour, which is often illustrated by the movement of a “double pendulum”.
This is a pendulum with another pendulum connected to one end – the
frst one acts as the “upper arm” and the second as the “lower arm”. While
both arms can move around, the fact that they are interconnected inter-
feres with their movement and makes the pendulum’s overall behaviour
seemingly bizarre and unpredictable: when we initiate a regular swinging
movement of the upper arm, the linked lower arm also starts moving but in
a slightly different rhythm, which will soon upset the regularity of the joint
movement (the Internet contains several useful short videos demonstrating
this dynamic effect). This pattern is typical of complex dynamic systems
general, as the ongoing interference between the different components
makes the system’s behaviour highly complex and unpredictable.

QUOTE 4.1 MACINTYRE, MERCER AND GREGERSEN

ON COMPLEXITY AND THE CHALLENGE IT POSES
Humans are highly complex beings. Language and communication
are complex systems. Combining psychology and language learning
with the multifaceted communication process increases the complex-
ity substantially. Add then to the mix the idea that all of these things
are constantly changing over time and with even small differences in
context, the challenge facing researchers in this feld rounds into form.
MacIntyre, Mercer & Gregersen (2021, p. 15)

Dörnyei, MacIntyre and Henry (2015) conducted a three-year project to explore

how feasible it is for L2 motivation researchers to apply dynamic principles to
their investigations. The outcome of this trial was an edited volume entitled
Motivational Dynamics in Language Learning, containing over 20 empirical and
conceptual studies. In the Conclusion, MacIntyre, Dörnyei and Henry (2015)
argue that whether we like it or not, the social world around us is dynamic, and
once someone has realised this, there is simply no turning back, because the
person will be constantly aware of the shortcomings of more traditional research
designs. Indeed, Hiver and Larsen-Freeman (2020) also point out that the major
contribution of CDST to scholars in the social sciences has been “its way of
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 79
thinking that represents a radically new foundation for scientifc inquiry” (p.
288). This “new thinking” has introduced a holistic approach that takes into
account the combined and interactive operation of a number of different factors
that are relevant to a specifc motivational situation rather than following the tra-
ditional practice of examining cause–effect relations between isolated variables.
We have seen in the previous chapters that all motivation theories propose
theoretical constructs that are made up of multiple components, and these not
only interact with each other but also with various contextual and temporal
factors. This being the case, L2 motivation research lends itself to being ana-
lysed within a CDST paradigm although researching such dynamic interferences
empirically does pose defnite challenges. These will be addressed in Chapters 8
and 9, but here we would like to highlight an aspect of the complex nature of
motivation that we have not talked about yet: the difference between perceiv-
ing motivation as a trait-like versus state-like characteristic. As Sheldon (2004)
rightly points out, humans have an inherent propensity to describe people in trait
terms and to produce personality profles of others in this manner (e.g. “Hugo is a
highly motivated and confdent student”). The truth is, however, that while people
do display certain stable tendencies, we can also observe a great deal of varia-
tion in their behaviour across situations. Signifcantly in this respect, Dörnyei
and Ryan (2015; see also Dörnyei, 2017) describe a personality construct pro-
posed by American psychologist Dan McAdams, the “New Big Five” model (e.g.
McAdams & Pals, 2006), which includes a three-tier framework of personality
that accommodates both trait and state characteristics (see Concept 4.2)

CONCEPT 4.2 THE THREE-TIER FRAMEWORK OF

PERSONALITY IN THE “NEW BIG FIVE” MODEL
(MCADAMS & PALS, 2006)
(a) Dispositional Traits, referring to relatively stable and decontextualized
broad dimensions of individual differences;
(b) Characteristic Adaptations, referring to more situated and contextual-
ised (i.e. state-like) aspects of individuality that interact with specifc
environmental conditions; McAdams and Pals specifcally include in
this level, amongst others, “motives, goals, plans, strivings, strategies,
values, virtues, schemas, self-images” (p. 208);
(c) Integrative Life Narratives, referring to personal accounts that people
develop for themselves to help to make sense of their lives; this com-
ponent therefore concerns a person’s narrative identity.

The three tiers in the New Big Five model can be seen as three layers of descrip-
tion representing different degrees of situatedness and transience, and the impor-
tant lesson for our current discussion is that a particular learner characteristic can
be relevant to all three spheres of the model at the same time (e.g. anxiety – as
Şimşek & Dörnyei, 2017, have illustrated – has meaningful manifestations as
80 What is Motivation?
trait anxiety, state anxiety and narrated anxious self). Accordingly, Dörnyei
(2020) has proposed that motivation can also be ftted into such a three-tier
framework under the rubrics of dispositional motivational traits, characteristic moti-
vational adaptations and integrative motivational life narratives:

• Dispositional motivational traits can have genetic or biological underpinnings,

but they can also include enduring ways of thinking and feeling that develop
in a person in response to formative experiences in one’s childhood; a good
example is the “need for achievement” component of classic achievement
motivation theory (see e.g. Weiner, 2019), and two further examples are
mindsets (e.g. Lou & Noels, 2017, 2019) and motivational inclinations
related to approach versus avoidance tendencies (e.g. Henry & Davydenko,
2020) and the corresponding promotion versus prevention-specifc regulatory
focus (e.g. Papi, 2018) (see Section 4.5 below).
• Characteristic motivational adaptations include most motives associated with
student motivation in instructional settings, because many of the learners’
thoughts and actions are guided by motivational stimuli associated with
their immediate learning environments and the motivational demands and
surges that the contextual conditions give rise to.
• Integrative motivational life narratives offer a mediating link between the frst
two levels, by providing an explanation of how people navigate the vari-
ous situational demands in relation to their more established motivational
dispositions. A well-constructed personal narrative constitutes a coherent
framework to organise and manage the multiple pulls and pushes that people
encounter in their daily lives, and by improving their self-narratives, their
motivation can be enhanced. A key aspect to underline here is that this
narrative component can effect changes even in the trait-like characteris-
tics; for example, mindsets can be re-narrated (see e.g. Lou & Noels, 2019).
Admittedly, such narratives have not been subject to much research with
regard to L2 motivation yet (although for a very recent study, see Hiver
et al., 2020, and for more information, see Section 4.5), but research on
motivational attributions (see Sections 2.1.4 and 3.2.2) offers an illustra-
tion of the feasibility of the concept, because such attributions are, in effect,
personal narratives explaining past successes and failures, with a powerful
impact on the future.

In sum, this three-tier construct offers a heuristic framework that can integrate
motivational components of varying levels of situatedness, while also accom-
modating their possible dynamic interactions. Unfortunately, as we shall see in
Chapters 8 and 9, it remains challenging to translate dynamic system principles
into workable motivational research paradigms; nonetheless, Hiver and Papi
(2019) are right to conclude that the new way of systemic thinking has fertilised
several strands of L2 motivation research concerning issues such as multilingual-
ism, long-term motivation, small group dynamics, demotivation and teacher–
learner relationships.
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 81
4.2 Motivational Currents and Long-Term Motivation
We saw in the previous chapter (Section 3.3.4) that the notion of vision forms a
central aspect of the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS). It was argued that the
act of conjuring up mental images, particularly scenes of imagined future realities,
has an inherent motivational capacity, and therefore this faculty can be utilised to
inspire and energise people across a broad spectrum of life activities. This motiva-
tional potency of vision explains why it has also been included in two recent motiva-
tional paradigms, directed motivational currents and long-term motivation – therefore,
these two paradigms can be seen as advancements originating in the L2MSS. Both
developments concern prolonged motivated action, and as such, they ft into the
fundamental quest in L2 motivation research to understand not only what gener-
ates language learning motivation but also what can sustain motivation long enough
for the relatively slow process of L2 learning to produce usable language profciency.

4.2.1 Directed Motivational Currents

The concept of a directed motivational current (DMC) refers to a powerful motiva-
tional drive which unfolds over time and impacts its participants in a signifcant
way (see Concept 4.3). The term was coined by Dörnyei, Muir and Ibrahim (2014;
see also Muir & Dörnyei, 2013, which was written as a follow-up paper) and a
detailed summary was provided by Dörnyei, Henry and Muir (2016). Over the past
fve years the notion has been subject to a growing body of empirical research, estab-
lishing the validity of the concept and elaborating on its properties (e.g. Henry,
Davydenko & Dörnyei, 2015; Ibrahim, 2016; Muir, 2020; Zarrinabadi & Tavakoli,
2017; Zarrinabadi, Ketabi & Tavakoli, 2019; for a review, see Henry, 2019).

QUOTE 4.2 DÖRNYEI, HENRY AND MUIR ON THE ORIGINS

OF THE NOTION OF MOTIVATIONAL CURRENTS
Our thinking about motivational currents originates in an observa-
tion. We have seen, both in our own lives and in those of others
around us, that there are specifc periods when we seem to fnd our-
selves in a particularly intensive state of focused productivity which
allows us to achieve a great deal, often much more than we would
have believed possible at the outset. It is as if every piece of a jigsaw
falls magically into place and we “get into the zone”. … We decided
to call this phenomenon a “directed motivational current” because of
its similarity with ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream or the East
Australian Current (the latter vividly portrayed in the animated flm
Finding Nemo as an oceanic “superhighway”). Both motivational and
ocean currents represent a formidable fow of energy, carrying the life-
forms caught up within them unimaginable distances.
Dörnyei et al. (2016, pp. ix, xi)
82 What is Motivation?

CONCEPT 4.3 DÖRNYEI, MUIR AND IBRAHIM’S (2014)

CHARACTERISATION OF A DIRECTED MOTIVATIONAL
CURRENT (DMC)
A DMC is a conceptual framework which depicts unique periods of inten-
sive motivational involvement of individuals and groups, capable of both
stimulating and sustaining L2 learning behaviour. All DMCs follow the
same pattern: a clearly visualised goal combined with a concrete pathway
of motivated action brings a new lease of life and burst of passion to a
situation. The resulting motivational jetstream can transport individuals
forward even in situations that do not offer much hope. After a powerful
launch, a DMC is motivationally self-supporting as the initial momentum
takes the individual through a set of subgoals which generate positive feed-
back and further momentum towards the fnal goal. In this way the energy
level of the current is sustained throughout the whole pathway.

A DMC is, essentially, a long-term motivational surge that, while it lasts, domi-
nates one’s life like an all-consuming preoccupation around which all other
activities are somehow accommodated. According to Dörnyei et al. (2016), the
main components of a DMC are as follows:

• a powerful goal/vision to give the motivational surge direction;

• a sense of ownership and control of the task process, and a perceived balance
between the participants’ skills and the challenges posed by the task;
• specifc triggering factors that initiate a pronounced launch to set the process
in motion;
• behavioural routines and habitual actions that function like a “motivational
autopilot”;
• a set of specifc subgoals to map out a clear pathway for the task along which
motivational energy can be channelled;
• regular progress checks to make the participants’ move towards the envis-
aged goal salient and thus to generate satisfaction;
• affrmative feedback to offer positive progress appraisal;
• a tenor of overall positive emotionality radiated by the desired target.

Although most people will have some direct or indirect experience of a DMC
(see Muir, 2020), these surges are admittedly not that frequent. Therefore, the
real signifcance of the notion lies in the fact that a DMC represents an optimal
form of engagement with a project, one which occurs when all the necessary con-
ditions and components of motivated action are present and act as a harmonious
whole. Accordingly, understanding how and why a DMC occurs can allow us to
identify the principal building blocks of sustained motivated behaviour, as even
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 83
when these elements do not all come together in an entirely complementary
manner, they will still fuel long-term action. Consequently, when we turn to the
issue of long-term motivation below, we shall draw on the lessons that DMCs
offer in this respect, and the practical implications of DMCs will be discussed in
the next chapter (Section 5.6).

4.2.2 Long-Term Motivation

Motivation is generally seen to determine both the direction and the magnitude of
human behaviour, that is, the choice of a particular action, the effort expended on it
and the persistence with it. Accordingly, motivation theories tend to answer three
fundamental questions: why do people decide to do something, how hard are they
going to pursue the activity and how long are they willing to sustain it? The curious
fact is, however, that the third of these motivational dimensions – persistence – has
received far less attention in past research than the other components (see e.g. Grant
& Shin, 2012). This imbalance affects the study of sustained learning behaviour in
particular (such as the study of an L2), where success depends to a large extent on
the learners’ persistence. It is therefore important that we address this issue.

QUOTE 4.3 DÖRNYEI ON THE UNDERTHEORISED NATURE

OF MOTIVATIONAL PERSISTENCE
[A] better understanding of the nature of student perseverance would
be crucial for promoting sustained learning behaviours that are required
for the mastery of an L2. In some sense, therefore, the exploration of
L2 learning perseverance is a debt that motivation researchers – both
in mainstream psychology and in the feld of applied linguistics – still
owe to the teaching profession.
Dörnyei (2019, p. 61)

In his recent overview of long-term motivation, Dörnyei (2020) has likened sus-
tained motivated behaviour to going on a long car journey, and has argued that
the following factors in particular contribute to achieving an extended range: an
effcient car (e.g. with low fuel consumption and a hybrid engine), a full tank of
good-quality fuel, regular opportunities to refuel and a breakdown cover to deal
with any mishaps. He then translated this car metaphor into motivational terms
by proposing a broad framework of long-term motivation consisting of a number of
motivational factors and processes that together sustain motivation in the long run:

High-Octane Fuel
Human action is goal-directed and therefore achieving a goal has been tradition-
ally seen in psychology as a principal driving force of action. Sustained, ongoing
84 What is Motivation?
behaviour obviously requires long-lasting fuel, that is, a fortifed goal, and psy-
chological research has identifed two potent amplifying factors in this respect,
vision and self-concordance. We saw in Section 3.3.4 that adding an imagery
dimension to a goal (i.e. generating a vision proper) can increase the pulling
power of the desired target considerably. This impact is further augmented if
the envisaged goal is self-concordant. “Self-concordance” refers to the degree
to which a person’s actions correspond to their personality and identity (see e.g.
Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Sheldon et al., 2015); for example, for an environmen-
talist maintaining animal welfare would most likely qualify as being self-con-
cordant. Accordingly, self-concordant goals can be described as representing a
person’s enduring interests and passions, as well as their central values, beliefs
and convictions. Not surprisingly, it has been found that if a goal is congruent
with someone’s personal core in such a self-concordant way, this will lead to sus-
tained effort and perseverance (Sheldon, Prentice & Osin, 2019). This being the
case, the fusion of vision and self-concordance – that is, having a self-concordant
vision – offers a particularly compelling motivational force, suitable for energising
long-term action.

Fuel-Economy
One way of making the initial fuel last longer is to economise with the motiva-
tional energy that one exerts to power the action. An established way of conserv-
ing such volitional energy is the employment of habitual actions and behavioural
routines. A habit is a behaviour pattern that has become (semi-)automatic in
the sense that it is performed with little or no awareness, almost involuntarily
(see e.g. Wood & Neal, 2007). The motivational signifcance of habits lies in
the fact that they are not initiated by volitional decisions; for example, during
a typical evening routine one does not conduct cost-beneft calculations before
brushing one’s teeth but simply does it because it is part of the evening routine.
Therefore, Dörnyei (2020) argues that if we set up constructive, goal-specifc
habits (e.g. going for a run every morning before breakfast), the execution of the
habitual actions will not incur any signifcant volitional costs. This was indeed
confrmed by Dörnyei et al. (2016), who have described several L2 learning cases
when establishing and then adhering to such “behavioural routines” (their term
for habitual actions), for example doing some L2 reading in bed before switching
the lights off, helped students to achieve their language learning targets: these
routines created a type of “motivational autopilot” in the learners, which allowed
the initiation and execution of learning activities to become a semi-automatic
process.

Fuel-Regeneration
It is a well-established fact in motivational psychology that setting short-term,
incremental goals – or proximal subgoals, as they are often referred to – tend to
be more energising than having only long-term, distal goals (e.g. Bandura &
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 85
Schunk, 1981, see Section 2.1.6). From our current perspective, an even greater
beneft of proximal subgoals is that they also function as progress checks by mak-
ing one’s advance towards the desired target visible. The satisfaction gained
from such a tangible sense of progress has a potent energy-yielding capacity (e.g.
when the dieter steps on the bathroom scales and registers a weight loss) that
can regenerate some of the used-up motivational fuel. The same effect can also
be achieved by receiving positive progress feedback – or “affrmative feedback” – as
this, too, constitutes a powerful type of progress check. We must note here that
both attaining subgoals and receiving positive feedback are specifc instances of
one of the most effective motivation boosting mechanisms, the success-breeds-
success spiral, which is at the heart of the theory of “psychological momentum”
(e.g. Markman & Guenther, 2007; Guenther & Kokotajlo, 2017). According to
this theory, if a person experiences success in a task within an action sequence,
this will infuence the likelihood of success on a similar subsequent task, a phe-
nomenon that has sometimes been referred to informally as “getting on a roll”.

Additional Fuel
We have seen in the previous chapters (Sections 1.1.4 and 3.3.4) that emotions
have the capability to sustain and amplify existing motivation, and therefore a
steady positive emotional loading is potentially an ideal foundation for supplying
additional fuel during lasting action. Indeed, a recurring observation of people
having DMCs has been that the process involves a highly satisfying emotional
state, and an analysis of this phenomenon suggests that participants experience
such enjoyment because they feel that they are on track towards reaching the
desired vision. In a similar vein, further energy can be added to long-term moti-
vation by ensuring that people have ongoing positive emotional experiences dur-
ing the goal pursuit. This point has also been underlined by Gregersen (2019),
who emphasised the sustaining quality of positive emotions in language learners,
because “positive emotions incite them to sustain their initial desire to com-
municate in a new language, and to confront challenges that arise by invoking
resourceful and alternate solutions” (p. 630).

Motivational Breakdown Cover

A fnal aspect of sustaining long-term motivation involves preventing any demo-
tivation caused by setbacks. In any long-term action there will inevitably be
low moments and people will also encounter obstacles; for example, summaris-
ing lessons from several longitudinal studies, Beltman and Volet (2007) report
that “Even the most motivated students experienced self-doubt and periods of
reduced interest which required the external support of parents and teachers to
overcome” (p. 315). This implies that a fnal ingredient of long-term motivation
is the capacity to resist the discouragement when problems occur. It has been
found that some learners appear to be well-equipped with such a “motivational
breakdown cover” as they bounce back relatively easily from failures, and this
86 What is Motivation?
observation has prompted a great deal of recent research on the special capa-
bility to overcome discouraging or disrupting impulses. This precious potential
has been termed in many different ways in the literature – for example, grit,
resilience, persistence, self-control, coping capacity, stamina, hardiness, buoy-
ancy, conscientiousness, mental toughness and self-regulation (for SLA-specifc
reviews, see Dörnyei, 2020; Feng & Papi, 2020; Teimouri, Plonsky & Tabandeh,
in press; Yu, Hiver & Al-Hoorie, 2018) – with the differently labelled constructs
showing a considerable overlap (see Concept 4.4). As Dörnyei (2020) concludes,
the differences between the various labels primarily lie in how broadly or nar-
rowly the specifc notion is defned, what timescale it occupies, which facet of
adversity it is concerned with and how it is assumed to navigate the diffculty in
question.

QUOTE 4.4 HOWARD AND CRAYNE ON THE

PROLIFERATION OF PERSISTENCE-RELATED CONSTRUCTS
While interest in persistence has provided many discoveries, a multi-
tude of persistence-related constructs have been conceptualized with
defnitions that overlap considerably. … Although these constructs
are often considered to be unique, they are also discussed interchange-
ably in certain contexts. … The proliferation of persistence-related
constructs incurs several concerns. First, as these concepts are often
interchanged, they are likely repetitive. … Second, misconceptions
about these constructs may cause measures to be created that mis-
represent persistence. … Third, many persistence-related constructs
have been proposed, but the suggested number and nature of these
constructs varies greatly.
Howard & Crayne (2019, p. 77)

CONCEPT 4.4 DEFINITIONS OF VARIOUS RESILIENCE-

RELATED CONSTRUCTS
• Persistence and perseverance: “voluntary continuation of a goal-directed
action in spite of obstacles, diffculties, or discouragement. … We
use the terms perseverance and persistence interchangeably, as have
most previous researchers, though the connotations of perseverance
are more uniformly positive than the connotations of persistence”
(Peterson & Seligman, 2004, pp. 229–230).
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 87

• Self-control: “the self-initiated regulation of thoughts, feelings, and

actions when enduringly valued goals confict with momentarily more
gratifying goals” (Duckworth et al., 2019, p. 374).
• Grit: “perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails work-
ing strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over
years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress” (Duckworth
et al., 2007, pp. 1087–1088).
• Resilience: “the capacity of a system to adapt successfully to signif-
cant challenges that threaten its function, viability, or development”
(Masten, 2018, p. 12).
• Academic buoyancy: “a student’s ability to succeed when managing aca-
demic diffculties and setbacks in everyday school settings (e.g., poor
academic grade, meeting deadlines, test stress, diffcult school tasks)”
(Fong & Kim, in press, p. 3).
• Hardiness: “a pattern of attitudes and strategies that together facilitate
turning stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth
opportunities” (Maddi, 2013, p. 8).

4.3 Unconscious Motivation

While most people would probably maintain that they are more or less aware
of the reasons for their behaviours, few would disagree with the claim that
sometimes our unconscious mind directs us to do things in a way that we
cannot fully explain. Indeed, research has shown that a great deal of human
behaviour is not consciously driven, which is in contrast with the fact that
most research in psychology to explain why people act as they do has been
centred on conscious and reportable experiences of intention and motiva-
tion (Ferguson, Hassin & Bargh, 2008). The study of unconscious motiva-
tion is currently a cutting-edge development in mainstream psychology, and
the research community has been rather divided about how much control
unconscious intentions have on human behaviour and how these uncon-
scious intentions cooperate with the conscious mind. The emerging consen-
sus is that while behaviour may well originate in the unconscious sphere, its
execution is usually determined by a mixture of conscious and unconscious
processes, and some theoreticians (e.g. Kihlstrom, 2019) would argue that
performing any task requires a certain amount of contribution from both
automatic and conscious processes (for good overviews, see Bargh, 2017;
Baumeister & Bargh, 2014).
88 What is Motivation?

QUOTE 4.5 BAUMEISTER AND BARGH ON THE

RECONCILIATION OF THEIR PREVIOUSLY
CONTRASTING VIEWS
The two of us have worked separately for many years to emphasize the
positive benefts and utility of conscious processes on the one hand,
and unconscious processes on the other. We have managed to con-
vince each other of our respective positions, so that we have come to
share the view today that both conscious and unconscious processes
are important in their own right and in their own domains, but more
than that, they need each other to work at all. Neither conscious not
unconscious processes can do it all by themselves. They must rely on
each other in much the same way that individual humans do.
Baumeister & Bargh (2014, p. 47)

Within the feld of SLA, fewer than a handful of papers have as yet touched
upon the subject of unconscious motivation. The frst recent work highlight-
ing this subject was an insightful conceptual paper by Ali Al-Hoorie (2015) on
unconscious human agency, and in order to provide empirical evidence of the
signifcance of this motivational dimension, he conducted two further empirical
investigations (Al-Hoorie, 2016a, 2016b) to compare the impact of explicit and
implicit attitudes towards L2 speakers on the learners’ overall motivation. These
studies provided confrmation that unconscious language attitudes do make a dif-
ference, as accounting for the learners’ level of implicit attitudes had a substantial
effect on the explanatory power of the results. Signifcantly, Al-Hoorie (2019)
emphasises that a focus on unconscious motivation does not have to be at odds
with the currently popular frameworks in the feld; for example, in their pioneer-
ing paper on possible selves Markus and Nurius (1986) already discussed the pos-
sibility of the unconscious activation of both positive and negative self-guides,
and Higgins’s (1987) self-discrepancy theory also accommodates unconscious
processes, as it does not assume that people are aware of the availability of their
self-discrepancies.
Because the scientifc study of the unconscious sources of human behaviour
is a relatively new line of inquiry, conducting empirical research in this area is
still at a pioneering stage. The main diffculty scholars face in this area is exactly
the fact that unconscious attitudes and motives are not conscious: most people
simply cannot recognise, let alone report, the causes of their behaviours accu-
rately, and when they try to understand why they do (or do not do) something,
they are susceptible to personal subjectivity, social desire effect and misattribu-
tion. It has therefore become obvious that relying solely on conscious measures
produces a partial, and often biased, picture of the overall motivation complex.
Accordingly, the past two decades have seen a great deal of progress in devising
new research instruments as well as developing novel research designs that allow
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 89
for priming (i.e. consciously generating) unconscious motives in participants. We
shall return to these questions in Chapter 9 when we discuss the main types and
methods of L2 motivation research (Section 9.4.2; for a detailed discussion see
Dörnyei, 2020).

4.4 Motivation, Multilingualism and Languages Other than

English (LOTEs)
As we observed in Chapter 1, a major consequence of globalisation for theorising
L2 motivation has been the overwhelming tendency of contemporary research to
focus on settings where people are learning English (Boo et al., 2015). This ten-
dency is not surprising, given the dominant position of English as the most widely
learnt language and its status as a core curriculum subject in many educational
systems around the world. However, as we noted in Section 1.3, this tendency
potentially limits the theoretical scope of this research to what is relevant to
explaining the motivation to learn this “hypercentral” (De Swaan, 2001) lan-
guage, such as how we theorise L2 motivation in relation to people’s aspirations
to become global citizens who are able to communicate and function effectively
in today’s interconnected world. The extent to which such theorising meaning-
fully applies to people’s motivation to learn languages that are much less widely
spoken seems open to question.
Furthermore, as highlighted by Henry (2010), L2 motivation has tended to be
theorised in relation to idealised situations where a monolingual speaker is learn-
ing a single L2, whereas in today’s dynamic, fuid and multicultural linguistic
landscapes, such idealised situations are increasingly rare. In most societies across
the world, people come into contact with more than one additional language
at some level through various stages of their lives. This growing recognition of
multilingualism as the normative reality today characterises what has been called
the “multilingual turn” (May, 2014; Ortega, 2013) in language education and
SLA research, representing a critical movement against the monolingual biases
in traditional SLA theorising, including L2 motivation research.
As we seek to align with the multilingual turn in theorising language learn-
ing motivation, we have to recognise that the dominating presence of English in
people’s language-related experience may inevitably colour their motivation for
learning languages other than English (LOTEs) in some way. Indeed, as Dörnyei
and Al-Hoorie (2017, p. 457) have emphasised, “arguably the most important
unique characteristic of the motivation to learn LOTEs is the fact that the pro-
cess typically takes place in the shadow of Global English”. In principle, this
argument applies whether the focus is on L2 learners of English who subsequently
or in parallel learn other languages, or whether the focus is on L1 speakers of
English who learn (or are not motivated to learn) other languages. Thus, theoris-
ing the motivation to learn LOTEs needs to take into account the inescapable
presence of English within the language learner’s current linguistic repertoire. It
also needs to consider how the surrounding educational and social environment
may (or may not) value multilingualism and the learning of other languages,
90 What is Motivation?
and consider how particular languages are positioned within the “hierarchies of
value” (Liddicoat & Curnow, 2014, p. 277) refecting their degree of interna-
tional or local prestige and associated economic and cultural capital.
Once we broaden the theoretical focus beyond the learning of English or a
single L2, questions naturally arise as to how the motivation for learning other
languages may be similar or different, and what kind of interrelationships (e.g.
competing, interacting, integrated) these languages may have within the learn-
er’s motivational system. In what follows, we will explore both these questions
in turn.

4.4.1 The Distinctiveness of Motivation to Learn LOTEs

With regard to the similarity/difference question, Dörnyei and Al-Hoorie (2017)
make the point that, unlike motivation for learning English (which is usually
not a matter of individual choice), motivation for learning LOTEs is more likely
to be shaped by specifc personal goals, reasons or interests (at least in contexts
where choice can be exercised). Given its internally driven nature, such motiva-
tion may thus have strong and deep-seated psychological foundations (see e.g.
Fraschini & Caruso, 2019). This line of thinking is notably refected in recent
theorising around the notion of psychological reactance (Brehm & Brehm, 1981)
and its application to understanding why some strongly motivated individuals
choose to learn languages despite negative external evaluations and expectations
(e.g. in contexts where learning foreign languages is not socially valued). As we
saw in Section 3.3.4, within the framework of Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self
System, Thompson and Vásquez (2015) have proposed the concept of an anti-
ought-to self to capture this type of self-oriented guide aimed at defying social
expectations, while Lanvers (2016, 2017) has similarly characterised a rebellious
self among those in the UK who feel motivated to react against the monolingual
ideologies and ethnocentrism of their own Anglophone culture and to engage
with other languages, cultures and communities.
This last point illustrates another possibly distinctive characteristic of the
motivation to learn LOTEs, which concerns the desire to connect with a certain
culture and community of speakers, or perhaps a broader sense of openness to
other cultures and societies. Of course, the attitudinal disposition towards other
linguistic and cultural groups was a core feature of theorising dating back to the
social psychological origins of our feld (see Section 3.1). However, its explana-
tory relevance diminished as the theoretical focus intensifed on motivation
for learning English in a globalised world, since English as a basic educational
skill and international lingua franca is not tied to specifc cultures and communi-
ties. Yet now in contemporary research that explores students’ motivations for
learning LOTEs such as Chinese (e.g. Xu & Moloney, 2019) or Japanese (e.g.
Nakamura, 2019), the distinctive attraction of the target culture and society has
re-emerged as an important motivational dimension, alongside more pragmatic
career-related goals. Moreover, where there is a strong personal association with
the target language, as in the case of heritage language learning, this sense of
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 91
connection with a specifc culture and community may run very deep, as we
noted earlier in relation to MacIntyre, Baker and Sparling’s (2017) collective
concept of a rooted L2 self (see Section 3.3.4).

4.4.2 Motivational Interrelationships in Multiple Language Learning

Whatever the specifc motivations for learning particular languages, an impor-
tant question is how the various motives interplay with one another within a
person’s overall motivational system. Understanding these interrelationships is
not simply a matter of theoretical interest but also has potential implications
for pedagogy and practice. Much work in this area has focused attention on the
notion of motivational interactions and interference between languages of study
(for an overview, see Thompson, 2019), which may have implications for when
additional foreign languages should be introduced into the curriculum. For exam-
ple, in their study of Hungarian students learning English and German, Csizér
and Lukács (2010) found evidence to suggest that the nature of any motivational
interference may depend on which language students start learning frst. Where
English is learnt frst (following students’ own general preferences), motivation
for learning English (the global lingua franca) and subsequently German (the
traditional regional lingua franca in Central Europe) evolves broadly positively.
However, for students who learnt English after starting German, there appeared
to be negative motivational interference. Drawing on dynamic systems theory,
Csizér and Lukács account for this as interference between competing ideal
selves, in a context where learning English represents a powerful attractor state.
The signifcant role of English in such competing motivations is theorised by
Henry (2010) in terms of language-specifc self-concepts developed by learners
(in this case in Sweden), whereby their dominant L2 English self-concept may
serve a referential function against which their L3 self-concepts are internally
evaluated. If this internal self-concept referencing is negative, L3 motivation
is likely to suffer. However, Henry (2015, 2017) further highlights the impor-
tance of viewing the relational nature of these language-specifc self-images as
dynamic and constantly evolving in the language learner’s working self-concept
rather than as stable and fxed. He also provides evidence to suggest that some
L3 learners may be able to use positive thinking strategies to counteract negative
self-concept referencing (Henry, 2011), thus pointing again to the pedagogical
implications of this theoretical line of inquiry.
While research evidence suggests that multilingual learners may have distinc-
tive language-specifc self-images (e.g. Dörnyei & Chan, 2013), current thinking
also highlights the idea of a more holistic multilingual self. This is captured in
Henry’s (2017) concept of an ideal multilingual self (introduced in Section 3.3.4),
refecting people’s aspirations to see themselves as cosmopolitan multilingual
individuals, and providing the basis for a more cohesive and integrated motiva-
tional self-system than one in which different language self-concepts compete.
This issue has gained considerable traction recently, with scholars analysing
empirically the nature and contribution of such a multilingual self in various
92 What is Motivation?
language learning contexts (e.g. Henry & Thorsen, 2018; Liu, in press; Takahashi,
in press; Wang & Zheng, in press). Moreover, as Ushioda (2017) argues, theoris-
ing language learning motivation in relation to a linguistic multi-competence
framework (Cook, 2016) in this way (rather than an SLA framework) helps focus
attention on how we actually use languages in our everyday lives, as we draw
adaptively on a range of linguistic, intercultural and interpretative resources to
communicate in different social contexts. From a pedagogical perspective, such
an approach to theorising motivation facilitates a view of language learning as a
process of becoming a multilingual speaker (with varying levels of competence
across different languages), rather than as a process of becoming and forever
remaining an imperfect L2 speaker.

QUOTE 4.6 HENRY AND THORSEN ON THE IDEAL

MULTILINGUAL SELF
L2 motivation research has treated the motivational systems of differ-
ent languages as separate entities, rather than as the interconnected
constituents of larger identity systems. In an attempt to bring a holistic
focus to L2 motivation research, Henry (2017) has argued that the
motivational systems of the different languages a person is learning
need to be understood as forming a larger multilingual motivational
system, and that interactions between the self-guides of the different
L2 motivational systems (i.e. the ideal Lx self, and the ideal Ly self)
can lead to the emergence of multilingual self-guides. … When inter-
actions are complementary, an ideal multilingual self can develop.
When this occurs, two things are theorised to happen. Not only will
it operate together with the ideal Lx self and the ideal Ly self in gen-
erating motivation, but it can also function to create system-level
cohesion and stability. This means that learning behaviours associated
with each of the languages learned are likely to become more closely
related, development driven not only by the desire to achieve an ideal
state as a speaker/user of the Lx and the Ly, but also an ideal state as a
developing multilingual.
Henry & Thorsen (2018, pp. 351–352)

In this respect, theorising language learning motivation in relation to the holistic

development of linguistic multi-competence may also make this research feld more
relevant to what Coetzee-Van Rooy (2019, p. 490) characterises as “deeply mul-
tilingual contexts”, such as South Africa. As she explains, in such contexts where
speakers of one language add multiple African languages to their linguistic repertoire
as a matter of course, the primary motivational impetus is not the goal of L2 learn-
ing in itself but rather the social goal of “building human relationships in linguisti-
cally complex settings” (ibid). Coetzee-Van Rooy here re-conceptualises Norton’s
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 93
motivational concept of investment (see Section 3.3.2) as “a primary investment in
human relationships which is supported by appropriate multilingual resources that
include appropriate multilingual competencies; and not a primary investment in
language learning” (p. 490). Thus, Coetzee-Van Rooy’s analysis of motivation in
the South African context highlights the relevance of considering both individual
and societal multilingualism when we theorise motivation in relation to language
learning and use in linguistically complex settings (Ushioda, 2019).

4.5 Other Recent Theoretical Initiatives

The current situation in L2 motivation research is not unlike the 1990s, when
scholars experimented with a number of new psychological theories and concepts
in an attempt to expand the dominating social psychological perspective initiated
by Robert Gardner and his associates in Canada (see Section 3.2). In a similar vein,
over the past few years there have been a series of interesting studies published in
the L2 motivation literature that have attempted to fnd alternatives or comple-
ments to the currently popular self-based approach (and especially the L2MSS). As
said in the introduction of this chapter, it is not yet clear which of these initiatives
will play a lasting role in moving the feld forward and which will not stand the
test of time, but the emergence of such a variety of perspectives is evidence of the
vigour of L2 motivation research. The following overview can only offer brief intro-
ductions to the selected proposals; interested readers should refer to the original
sources for more information. The frst three topics have already been mentioned
in Section 4.1: mindsets, approach–avoidance tendencies (and the related regula-
tory focus theory) and integrative motivational life narratives.

QUOTE 4.7 PAPI ET AL. ON THE NEED FOR CHANGE IN

THEORISING L2 MOTIVATION
The L2MSS has been the most commonly used theoretical framework
for the study of L2 motivation over the last decade. Not only has it
provided an alternative to the Gardnerian research tradition, it has
also opened our eyes to the potentials of looking at the self as the core
of learners’ motivational thinking. It was time, however, for the origi-
nal conceptualization to undergo modifcations to better capture how
motivation works for language learning.
Papi et al. (2019, pp. 355–356)

Mindsets
Carol Dweck’s mindset theory (also called “implicit theory”; for a recent, accessi-
ble summary, see Dweck, 2017) has been seen by many as motivational in nature,
because it concerns variation in the amount of effort that people will exert on a
94 What is Motivation?
particular activity. The basic idea underlying the theory is that some people con-
strain their own personal development and actions by the belief that their poten-
tials are limited, for example by birth, early education or manner of upbringing.
Dweck has termed this disposition a “fxed mindset” and contrasted it with a
“growth mindset”, which refers to the belief that one’s intellectual abilities and
personal qualities can always be improved. It requires little justifcation that these
mindsets have motivational implications, since a fxed mindset fosters a what’s the
point? mentality and a corresponding demotivational infuence. The frst schol-
ars to highlight the signifcance of mindset theory in SLA have been Mercer
and Ryan (2010), and the differences in mindsets have been specifcally linked
to variation in L2 motivation (Lou & Noels, 2017, 2019). This makes sense in
view of the frequent claim “I am simply not good at languages”, which is a classic
manifestation of a fxed mindset and which usually indicates that the person lacks
any motivation to learn an L2. Signifcantly, the mindset paradigm lends itself
to empirical research, because learners’ mindsets can not only be empirically
assessed but can also be modifed through focused intervention (see Section 6.3).

Approach–Avoidance Perspective and Regulatory Focus Theory

People can be characterised by enduring motivational inclinations regard-
ing whether their typical driving force is the desire to approach achievement
goals or to avoid failure. As Elliot and Covington (2001) have summarised in
a review article, this approach–avoidance distinction has repeatedly surfaced
over the past millennia under different guises, signalling a basic dichotomy in
human behaviour. Despite this prominence, however, Henry and Davydenko
(2020) rightly point out in a paper devoted to this issue that approach–avoid-
ance orientations have not received systematic study in the feld of L2 moti-
vation, and it is only recently that there have been calls for research with a
focus on such regulatory forces (see Papi et al., 2019). In Section 2.1.6, we
have briefy mentioned how the approach–avoidance distinction was applied
to achievement goal theories, but in the L2 feld this regulatory distinction has
emerged in a different context, as being applied to the L2 Motivational Self
System. Inspired by Teimouri’s (2017) initial fndings as well as the recogni-
tion that past L2 motivation research has been biased in favour of promotion-
focused constructs, Papi et al. (2019) drew on Higgins’s (1987, 1997) original
conception of the ideal and ought self-guides, whereby the ideal self was associ-
ated with a promotion (i.e. approach) focus, and the ought self a prevention
(i.e. avoidance) focus; as they summarised,

Individuals with a promotion regulatory focus are concerned with the need
for advancement, growth, and accomplishments, and sensitive to the pres-
ence or absence of positive outcomes. By contrast, prevention-focused indi-
viduals are concerned with the need for security, safety, and calmness, and
sensitive to the presence or absence of negative outcomes.
(p. 340)
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 95
As we saw in the previous chapter (Section 3.3.4), the L2MSS emphasised a
markedly different aspect of the ideal/ought-to distinction that was unrelated
to the regulatory focus contrast, namely the source of vision, with the ideal self
concerning one’s own vision, whereas the ought-to self another person’s imported
vision. The interesting aspect about the approach taken by Teimouri (2017) and
Papi et al. (2019) is that they try to integrate both dichotomies by bifurcating the
ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self into own and other standpoints, resulting in a 2
× 2 model of self-guides: Ideal L2 Self/Own, Ideal L2 Self/Other, Ought L2 Self/
Own and Ought L2 Self/Other (see Concept 4.5).

CONCEPT 4.5 THE OPERATIONALISATION OF THE 2 × 2

MODEL OF FUTURE SELF GUIDES (ADAPTED FROM PAPI
ET AL., 2019)
1. Ideal L2 self/own – representing the L2 attributes that the learner would
ideally hope to possess in future (own standpoint, promotion focus).
2. Ideal L2 self/other – representing the L2 attributes that the learner’s sig-
nifcant others (e.g. family) would ideally hope the learner will possess
in future (other standpoint, promotion focus).
3. Ought-to L2 self/own – representing the L2 attributes that the learner
believes they ought to possess (e.g., obligations, duties and require-
ments) to avoid negative consequences (own standpoint, prevention
focus).
4. Ought-to L2 self/other – representing the L2 attributes that the learner
believes other people expect them to possess (e.g., obligations, duties
and requirements); the learner foresees negative consequences in
failure to meet those expectations (other standpoint, prevention
focus).

Motivation and Narrative Identity

We saw in Section 4.1 that McAdams’s personality model, the New Big Five,
contains a tier that concerns narrative identity, which led Dörnyei (2020) to
underline the potential signifcance of integrative motivational life narratives. As
argued, a well-constructed personal narrative constitutes a coherent framework
to organise and manage the multiple pulls and pushes that people encounter in
their daily lives, and by improving their self-narratives, people’s motivation can
be enhanced. Examples include the re-narration of mindsets and attributions,
and two recent studies by Hiver and his associates (Hiver et al., 2019, 2020)
have employed autobiographical narratives to explore this relatively uncharted
phenomenon. They adapted an interview template – McAdams’s “Life Story
96 What is Motivation?
Interview”1 – to develop an instrument called Language Learning Story Interview
in order to generate new theoretical insight about the impact of individuals’ per-
ceptions of their learning experience on their effort, persistence and engagement
with language learning opportunities. Although more research will be needed to
explore the full potential of this approach, the initial results have been promising.

Positive Psychological Approach

Positive psychology is a relatively new direction in mainstream psychology (for
an overview, see Snyder et al., 2020), focusing on individual and societal well-
being. The relevance of the approach has also been recognised within SLA (see
e.g. MacIntyre, Gregersen & Mercer, 2016), and Gregersen (2019) argues that
because positive psychology ultimately concerns the question of “what makes life
worth living”, it should have a place on applied linguists’ motivation research
agendas. She illustrates this with Seligman’s PERMA model, which conceptualises
well-being as the sum of fve elements – Positive emotion (including happiness),
Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and purpose and Accomplishment –
and she rightly points out that these concepts are intricately involved in both
initiating and maintaining L2 motivation. As she concludes, well-being and
motivation align with each other impeccably, because “the idea of focusing on
what goes right with language learners and what motivates them – as opposed to
an exaggerated focus on their dysfunction – is an appealing balance to strike” (p.
634). Indeed, one of the most salient outcomes of the application of positive psy-
chology to SLA has been directing the limelight onto “enjoyment” and positive
emotions (e.g. Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2016), and we have seen earlier (Sections
1.1.4 and 3.3.4) that these have a prominent role in generating motivational
energy.

QUOTE 4.8 GREGERSEN ON THE ESSENCE OF POSITIVE

PSYCHOLOGY
Simply speaking, PP [positive psychology] is “the scientifc study of
what goes right in life, from birth to death and at all stops in between”
(Peterson, 2006, p. 4). PP takes a novel approach within psychology
in that rather than focusing on human dysfunction, it explores those
aspects of life that make it most worth living. Positive psychologists
do not suggest that we turn a blind eye to human suffering and dys-
function, but rather that we begin to take a more balanced approach,
offsetting the myopic tendency of mainstream psychology to focus on
the debilities and distress of people, and understanding that along with
neurosis, psychosis, and a host of other ills, life also has an abundance
of positives.
Gregersen (2019, p. 622)
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 97
Motivational Connections
We saw in Section 2.2 that the sociocultural context has a profound impact on
motivation, and within instructed SLA some of the most prominent contex-
tual issues concern relationship patterns with the classroom. Henry (in press)
proposes that an effective way of capturing such issues can be through apply-
ing Martin and Dowson’s (2009) “Connective Instruction” paradigm. This posits
that motivation arises from three types of connection: a connection with the
teacher as a person, a connection with materials that the teacher selects/enables
students to choose, and a connection with the working methods that the teacher
promotes. Recognising the importance of relatedness in understanding students’
learning behaviours has indeed been repeatedly highlighted in L2 motivation
research ever since the educational shift in the 1990s (see Section 3.2), and it
will also be underscored as part of the “engagement” paradigm discussed in the
next section. Henry argues that the advantage of using Martin and Dowson’s
construct of connective instruction is that it “invokes the ‘who’, the ‘what’, and
the ‘how’ of teacher–student interaction”; in other words, it offers an organisa-
tional framework that links together the teacher’s personal and teaching meth-
odological impact on student motivation.

A Global Motivational Perspective of Truth, Control and Value

Drawing on a tripartite conceptual framework of motivation proposed by
Higgins (2012), Papi and Hiver (2020) outlined a unifed L2 motivational
construct made up of three components, value, truth and control. As Higgins
summarises the essence of his proposal, “People want to be effective at having
desired outcomes (value), but they also want to be effective at establishing
what’s real (truth) and managing what happens (control)” (p. 14). Although
Higgins points out that not all aspects of human motives come under this
system (with a notable exception being sensual pleasure), he still sees it as a
very broad organisational framework. This motivated Papi and Hiver to revisit
the best-known L2 motivation theories through Higgins’s principles, and as a
result of this survey they conclude that “different L2 motivation theories can be
argued to have conceptually emphasized limited representations of one or two
of these motivational dimensions” (p. 226). Accordingly, they emphasise the
need to pay attention to the dynamics of the “three axial knots of value, truth,
and control to explain in a more ecologically valid way how these intersect
over time” (ibid).

4.6 “Small Lens” Approach and Student Engagement

The fnal set of new developments reviewed in this chapter have emerged from
attempts to align L2 motivation research more closely with SLA and the pro-
cess of L2 learning and teaching. Of course, the desire to be more educationally
relevant has been at the heart of L2 motivation research since the 1990s (see
98 What is Motivation?
Section 3.2), and scholars have accumulated a great deal of knowledge of the
motivational dimension of language learning environments. However, research
has fallen somewhat short of the mark in two areas in this respect:

• There has been relatively little research linking L2 motivation theories/con-

structs to actual cognitive processes involved in the mastery of an L2 such
as attaining specifc L2 skills (e.g. motivation to develop listening compre-
hension) or acquiring concrete aspects of the L2 (e.g. motivation to learn
vocabulary). This issue was highlighted by Ushioda (2016), who called for a
“small lens” approach to L2 motivation research.
• Technological developments related to social media have dramatically
reshaped the educational landscape over the past decade, causing an expo-
nential growth of distractions for students that can hijack even high levels of
learner motivation. Consequently, there has been an increasing realisation
that traditional motivational research needs to be upgraded to be able to
respond to this instructional challenge, leading to the introduction of the
concept of “student engagement” both in the felds of SLA and educational
psychology.

Because these two new initiatives have been motivated by the desire for better
practical applications, they will be further discussed in the next chapter on moti-
vation in practice. However, they have also concerned new theoretical perspec-
tives and therefore we conclude the current chapter by looking at them more
closely.

4.6.1 “Small Lens” Approach

Ushioda (2016) has called for a new “small lens” agenda for researching lan-
guage learning motivation to “counteract our tendency in the second language
motivation feld to engage with language learning and teaching processes at a
rather general level” (p. 564). She argued for the adoption of a more sharply
focused inquiry that would allow for a better understanding of how motiva-
tion connects with specifc aspects of SLA and specifc features of linguistic
development. This call resonated widely with L2 scholars because of the com-
mon awareness that while we now have a fairly good understanding of the key
aspects of a motivational teaching practice in general, we are in a far weaker
position when it comes to providing detailed motivational guidelines on how
to enhance the teaching of concrete subject matter areas. In fact, as Dörnyei
(2020) has pointed out, the issue of connecting motivational factors with cog-
nitive processes (such as various aspects of learning) has also been highlighted
in psychology; for example, Braver (2016, p. 15) laments that the “scientifc
literature that has directly focused on the nature and mechanisms of motiva-
tion–cognition interactions, although rapidly growing, is still relatively young
and not fully mature” (which is a subtle way of saying that such research has
been insuffcient).
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 99

QUOTE 4.9 USHIODA ON THE LIMITATIONS

OF MOTIVATION RESEARCH IN SLA
[A] major reason why motivation research has remained somewhat
isolated from the core linguistic traditions of the SLA feld is because
the analysis of motivation and its role in language learning has largely
been at the level of global learning behaviours and L2 achievement
outcomes, and motivation research has tended not to address more
fne-grained processes of language acquisition or linguistic develop-
ment. As a consequence, our research can shed relatively little light
on how motivation may be relevant to internal processes of linguistic
development or to the acquisition of specifc features of the target lan-
guage (with the possible exception of features of pronunciation – see,
for example, Segalowitz, Gatbonton & Trofmovich, 2009), which
constitute core concerns of mainstream SLA. In short, the value of
investigating motivation may seem somewhat limited and tangen-
tial, of relevance only to those who, like myself and other motivation
researchers, have a particular interest in this topic area.
Ushioda (2016, p. 565)

By way of response, Ushioda (2016) has proposed an agenda for “sharpening” the
empirical research focus, that is, keeping the scope of investigations relatively nar-
row. The typical criterion measure in past L2 motivation research has been the
learners’ overall motivational disposition, whereas a sharpened target would zoom
in on specifc behavioural outcomes such as, for example, the quality and quantity of
completed homework or the amount of extensive L2 reading that a learner does. As
illustrated below, such nuanced and situated motivation studies do exist in SLA, but
they constitute the minority, because the general trend in L2 motivation research
has been to place the learner rather than the learning process in the centre. While
this practice is not necessarily wrong, the essence of the “small lens” approach is to
redress the balance by also incorporating the specifc aspects of learning that the
learner is engaged in. Thus, in an analogy with the “person-in-context relational
view” discussed in Section 3.3.3, we may see the “small lens” approach as placing the
emphasis on researching the motivation of the “learner-in-the-learning-process”.
The best way of bringing this new perspective to light is to offer some concrete
illustrations. Already Crookes and Schmidt (1991) highlighted the potential to
create a fruitful interface between motivation and the cognitive process of notic-
ing (Schmidt, 1995, 2001), but there has been little follow-up research in this
area. In other domains, however, we do fnd some relevant examples primarily,
but not exclusively, regarding L2 writing:

• Dörnyei and Kormos (2000; Dörnyei, 2002; Kormos & Dörnyei, 2004) con-
trasted the impact of motivational factors on speaking task performance in
the students’ L1 and L2.
100 What is Motivation?
• Takahashi (2005) investigated the motivational effects on L2 learners’
attention and awareness when processing pragmalinguistic features, that is,
formulaic language associated with certain language functions.
• Csizér and Tankó (2017) explored the relationship between self-regulatory
control strategies and L2 motivation in academic writing.
• Waller and Papi (2017) and Papi et al. (2019) inspected various motiva-
tional mechanisms (including different mindsets) underlying corrective
feedback in writing tasks.
• Han and McDonough (2018) examined the impact of different regulatory
conditions (prevention vs. promotion) on oral fuency and accuracy.
• Papi (2018) investigated the validity of regulatory focus theory (see Section 4.5
above) in incidental vocabulary learning in an integrated reading/writing task.
• Teng and Zhang (2018) explored role of motivational regulation in self-
regulatory strategies and EFL writing performance.
• Le-Thi, Dörnyei and Pellicer-Sánchez (in press) explored the effectiveness
of motivational strategies and mental imagery (i.e. visionary techniques) to
facilitate L2 formulaic language learning.

4.6.2 Language Learner Engagement

In today’s globalised, digital age, students are continuously bombarded with infor-
mation and communications through multiple channels, and the pace of social
life has been intensifed by social media in an unprecedented manner, resulting
in simply too many competing infuences on an L2 learner’s mind at any time. As
Mercer and Dörnyei (2020) argue, this has created a new L2 educational land-
scape, in which even strong motivation can be hijacked by the plethora of other
pressing and ever salient distractions. A major consequence of this new learning
environment is that the large amount of distraction can cancel out even strong
student motivation that used to work in the past: even when learners are inter-
ested in a task, something more appealing may come up and their motivation
might thus be pushed aside. Accordingly, if we want to truly involve our students,
we must ensure that their motivation is realised in action. This is where the notion
of “engagement” comes into the picture: if learners are engaged, it means that
their initial motivation has been successfully transformed into action despite the
multitude of distractions. Thus, “student engagement” can be seen as “motiva-
tion plus”, with the “plus” element referring to active participation in class.

QUOTE 4.10 MERCER AND DÖRNYEI ON THE

ADVANTAGE OF THE NOTION OF
“ENGAGEMENT” OVER “MOTIVATION”
The notion of “engagement” offers a crucial advantage over moti-
vation and other relevant learner characteristics, one we believe is
critical for effective teaching practice in the fast-paced reality of the
 Current Approaches in L2 Motivation Theory 101

twenty-frst century: its direct link to concrete classroom behaviours.

Most learner characteristics are not manifest directly in the students’
actions, but only indirectly; they only indicate a student’s potential for
successful learning, rather than how this potential is actually realised.
… [For example,] although a motivated student is likely to do well at
school, this cannot be taken for granted, because various distractions
can cancel out, or put on hold, even relatively strong motivational
commitments. … [Thus,] in the changing educational and social
landscape of the contemporary classroom, it may not be enough to
merely create a facilitative learning environment for students to take
advantage of (as has traditionally been recommended); we need to also
ensure that the students’ positive disposition is realised in action, with-
out being hijacked by the plethora of other pressing and ever-salient
distractions. To be sure, motivation is undoubtedly necessary for “pre-
paring the deal”, but engagement is indispensable for sealing the deal.
Mercer & Dörnyei (2020, pp. 5–6)

The above considerations do not exclusively apply to L2 classes but also to

educational groups in general, and therefore the notion of “student engage-
ment” – defned as “effortful learning through interaction with the teacher and
the classroom learning opportunities” (Christenson, Reschly & Wylie, 2012,
p. vi) – has become a popular concept in educational psychology. Indeed, in
a special issue of the journal Educational Psychologist dedicated to the subject,
engagement was characterised as “the holy grail of learning” (Sinatra, Heddy &
Lombardi, 2015, p. 1). Having said that, one may argue that the emphasis on
active task involvement is even stronger in language education than in other sub-
ject matters, because the automatisation of L2 skills requires an extended practice
period. Indeed, most L2 professionals would agree that mastering communicative
language skills simply will not take place without students “sticking their necks
out” by actively taking part in communicative classroom activities. This explains
why the term “engagement” has been appearing with increasing frequency in the
SLA literature (see e.g. Svalberg, 2018), and the concept of motivational engage-
ment is also becoming more prominent (e.g. Hiver, Al-Hoorie & Mercer, 2021;
Mercer & Dörnyei, 2020; Philp & Duchesne, 2016).

Note
1 https://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/foley/instruments/interview/

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Part II

Motivation and Language

Teaching
5 Motivation in Practice
Strategies and Approaches

This chapter will…

• summarise the main areas where the conscious enhancement of student

motivation is a realistic option and outline the strategic arsenal available for
language teachers;
• present new approaches to motivating language learners such as develop-
ing future self-guides, promoting student engagement, generating DMCs and
applying technology;
• highlight the importance of motivational self-regulation and autonomy;
• discuss the research base of motivational strategies.

In Part II, we turn our attention to the interaction between motivation research
and classroom practice, and examine (a) how the fndings of motivation research
may beneft language teachers in their day-to-day classroom practice, and (b)
what directions for research the analysis of classroom practice may raise. In the
current chapter we begin by considering the extent to which theoretical and
research insights can lead to practical recommendations for motivating students
in the language classroom and, by extension, beyond the classroom as students
engage in various forms of independent learning. We then discuss the nature and
scope of motivational strategies available to teachers, and in the second half of
the chapter we present a number of new approaches to motivating L2 learners
that we feel represent distinct theoretical perspectives. The chapter concludes
with a discussion of the research base of motivational strategies.

5.1 From Theory and Research to Classroom Practice

Although no one would doubt that an increasing understanding of student moti-
vation can have signifcant practical implications, it is not a straightforward issue
to decide whether motivation research in general has reached a level of sophis-
tication that would allow scholars to translate the results into straightforward
educational recommendations. The crux of the problem is that while there are
many effective motivational principles and guidelines that can undoubtedly help
112 Motivation and Language Teaching
practitioners, these principles do not add up to a coherent and comprehensive
theory. This is largely due to three underlying reasons:

(a) The huge diversity of possible motives energising behaviour (discussed in

Part I) implies a similarly huge variety of potential methods to positively
infuence these motives.
(b) Techniques can impact motivation on different time-scales; that is, that we
may need different procedures to energise short-term, mid-term and long-
term behaviour.
(c) As noted in Part I, processes of motivation cannot be divorced from complex
socio-contextual factors; by context, we mean not simply the broad sociocul-
tural context (e.g. English language education in Japan or Argentina), but also
the unique micro-culture, history and social dynamics of a particular classroom
or of other kinds of learning context such as self-access centres, virtual class-
rooms, distance learning structures or other independent learning settings.

In practical terms, these issues mean that pedagogical recommendations deriving

from empirical research in one context are not directly generalisable to all learn-
ing targets and classroom situations and, as with other aspects of instructional
methodology, need to be adapted in ways that are appropriate to the local learn-
ing context. Indeed, how often have we heard teachers say, for example, that
strategies that seem to work well with one group of learners they teach prove
ineffective with another? This experience has also been confrmed by research:
in university EFL classes in Japan, Sugita and Takeuchi (2010) for example have
found that the motivational strategies employed by the instructors varied in
terms of their impact on learner motivation, and that the learners’ profciency
level made a difference in this respect, with some strategies being more effective
with higher profciency students. Maeng and Lee (2015) further add that the
value of strategy use is also dependent on the teachers’ own L2 profciency, as in
their study teachers with a higher profciency utilised motivational techniques
more frequently and effectively. It appears therefore that the most educational
researchers can do at present is to raise teachers’ motivational awareness of moti-
vational strategies by providing them with a menu of potentially useful insights
and suggestions from which they can select according to their actual priorities
and concerns, as well as the characteristics and composition of their students.
Notwithstanding the variability discussed above, an explicit concern with
praxis has become established in the L2 motivation literature over the past two
decades; according to Boo, Dörnyei and Ryan’s (2015) review of studies between
2005 and 2015, while two-thirds of the 335 empirical papers surveyed focused on
theoretical rather than practical aspects of motivation, there was also a steady fow
of articles geared at increasing learner motivation in some practically minded man-
ner. Lamb (2017) rightly points out in this respect that this tendency has charac-
terised motivation research in psychology right from the beginning; indeed, in the
preface of the frst ever book to have “motivation” in its title, Wilson and Wilson’s
(1916) The Motivation of School Work, the authors stated, “The most diffcult phase
 Motivation in Practice 113
of teaching is not acquiring the necessary information nor controlling the class,
but it is discovering problems and motives for the work that will make it appeal
to and interest the pupils” (p. iv). In accordance with this recognition, there have
been several summaries of motivational techniques and skills in SLA (e.g. Dörnyei,
2001; Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014; Dörnyei & Muir, 2019; Hadfeld & Dörnyei,
2013; Henry, Sundqvist & Thorsen, 2019; Thorner, 2017).
Before embarking on an overview of the main approaches to establishing a
motivational teaching practice, let us make two general points. First, it needs
to be underlined that the importance of motivational skills for teachers is para-
mount. In a classic review of the literature on beginning teachers’ perceptions
of problems they face, Veenman (1984) found that teachers ranked problems
about motivating pupils as the second most serious source of diffculty (the frst
being maintaining classroom discipline), preceding other obviously important
issues such as the effective use of different teaching methods, a knowledge of the
subject matter and the effective use of textbooks and curriculum guides. Thirty
years later, Dicke et al. (2015) confrm that the situation has not changed much,
because, as they submit, the most serious teaching challenges arise “from issues
associated with social-psychological aspects of teaching, from classroom man-
agement issues and problematic teacher–student relationships, rather than from
instructional teaching problems (e.g. low academic student achievement)” (p. 2).
Second, several motivational approaches share the idealistic belief that
“all students are motivated to learn under the right conditions, and that you
can provide these conditions in your classroom” (McCombs & Pope, 1994, p.
vii). Unfortunately, this assumption is, at best, arguable and, at worst, naïve.
Realistically, it is highly unlikely that everybody can be motivated to learn any-
thing. Yet, our belief is that most students’ motivation can be “worked on” and
increased. Although rewards and punishments are too often the only tools pre-
sent in the motivational arsenal of many teachers, the spectrum of other, poten-
tially more effective motivational techniques is so broad that it is hard to imagine
that none of them would work. The following discussion of the range of motiva-
tional strategies at our disposal is intended to demonstrate the variety of different
ways by which motivated learning behaviour can be promoted, with particular
reference to the L2 learning context.

QUOTE 5.1 WENTZEL AND BROPHY’S DOWN-TO-

EARTH PERSPECTIVE ON STUDENT MOTIVATION
The concept of intrinsic motivation and fow are very appealing, but
they cannot serve as the primary concepts underlying models of motiva-
tion in education. … Even when people are intrinsically motivated to
learn, their learning usually features leisurely exploration to satisfy per-
sonal curiosity, rather than sustained efforts to accomplish explicit cur-
ricular goals. Finally, even when intrinsically motivated learning is more
goal-oriented, it tends to occur under autonomous and self-determined
114 Motivation and Language Teaching

conditions. These conditions are diffcult to establish in classrooms, for

several reasons. First, school attendance is compulsory and curriculum
content and learning activities refect what society believes students
need to learn, not what students would choose if given the opportunity.
… Second, teachers usually must work with classes of twenty or more
students and therefore cannot always meet each individual’s needs. As
a result, some students sometimes are bored and others sometimes are
confused and frustrated. Third, classrooms are social settings, so failures
often produce not only personal disappointment but public embarrass-
ment. Finally, students’ work on assignments and performance on tests
are graded, and periodic reports are sent home to their parents. … It’s
hard to just enjoy an activity and “go with the fow” when the activity
is compulsory and your performance will be evaluated, especially if you
fear that your efforts will not be successful.
Wentzel & Brophy (2014, p. 81)

5.2 A Framework for Motivational Strategies

As a result of the shift from social psychological to more situated perspectives
in the 1990s (see Section 3.1), L2 motivation research increasingly focused on
understanding the determinants of classroom motivation, and the business of
directly addressing language teachers’ needs and interests and seeking to engage
with this professional community began to feature more explicitly among the
purposes of research on L2 motivation. These efforts led to a number of publi-
cations on motivational techniques (Brown, 1994; Chambers, 1999; Dörnyei,
1994; Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998; Williams & Burden, 1997), culminating in a
book-length overview by Dörnyei (2001). This volume can be seen as the sum-
mary of motivational strategies in the traditional sense, focusing on classroom
techniques and strategies that teachers can deploy to deal with motivational
challenges (e.g. lethargy) and to facilitate the teaching process. Based on Dörnyei
and Ottó’s (1998) process model of L2 motivation, the collection includes 35
macro strategies, broken down into 103 specifc techniques, which are grouped
according to the main stages of the motivational process, from the initial arousal
of the motivation to the completion and evaluation of the motivated action. The
key units in this process-oriented organisation are as follows:

• creating the basic motivational conditions, which involves setting the scene for
the effective use of motivational strategies;
• generating student motivation, corresponding roughly to the preactional phase
in the model;
• maintaining and protecting motivation, corresponding to the actional phase;
• encouraging positive self-evaluation, corresponding to the postactional phase.
 Motivation in Practice 115

QUOTE 5.2 LAMB ON THE RESPONSIBILITY TO MOTIVATE

LEARNERS
The majority of teachers recognise that motivating their learners is
a part of their job, though it is probably more important for some
than for others. In certain pedagogic contexts (e.g. adult vocational
or academic settings) learners may, or may be expected to, bring with
them such high initial levels of motivation that the teacher’s focus is
exclusively on maximising the effciency of the learning processes. At
the other extreme, there are pedagogic contexts where learners are
compelled to attend, and where the teacher’s main task seems to be
to persuade them to engage in learning tasks. For teachers working in
contexts somewhere between those extremes, there will be times (e.g.
Monday mornings?) or tasks (grammar revision sessions?) when delib-
erate attempts to motivate may feel more urgent, and of course some
learners for whom such efforts will be more necessary.
Lamb (2019, p. 287)

QUOTE 5.3 USHIODA’S CAUTION ON THE USE OF SOME

MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES
I would like to argue here that we as a research community should
exercise caution in how we advocate the use of motivational strat-
egies by teachers … [because] the principle of applying strategies to
motivate students raises some important pedagogical and ethical issues
about control, power and manipulation in the classroom. In a sense,
not all motivational strategies are equal, and, ironically perhaps, not
all motivational strategies teachers use may serve language learners’
own interests. … [T]he issue is to what extent the pedagogical strate-
gies they use to shape or enhance their students’ motivation may serve,
in effect, to strengthen external infuence and control over this moti-
vation, or to foster internal growth and self-regulation of motivation.
… [Some strategies] embody more external control of motivation, as
typifed in the “carrot-and-stick” approach to controlling behaviour
using a variety of extrinsic incentives and pressures. Although apply-
ing strategic incentives and pressures to motivate students may achieve
observable short-term effects, they clearly place control of motivation
in the hands of teachers. This may mean that students become largely
dependent on their teachers to motivate them, and do not develop a
sense of personal agency and control in relation to their learning.
Ushioda (2020, pp. 68, 70)
116 Motivation and Language Teaching
5.2.1 Creating the Basic Motivational Conditions
Motivational strategies cannot be employed successfully in a “motivational vac-
uum” – certain preconditions must be in place before any further attempts to
generate motivation can be effective. The most important of these motivational
conditions are:

• appropriate teacher behaviours and a good relationship with the students;

• a pleasant and supportive atmosphere in the classroom;
• a cohesive learner group with appropriate group norms.

One may wonder why such class-group level factors are listed in the motivational
arsenal of practical classroom techniques, given that student motivation has tra-
ditionally focused on individual learners’ – rather than groups’ – values, attitudes,
goals and intentions. However, Dörnyei and Muir (2019) argue that group-level
variables play an important role in determining the behaviour of the learners in
the group and they should therefore be seen as valid motivational counterparts of
the individual level motives. This being the case, the authors conclude, “when we
discuss the learning behaviour of groups of learners, motivational psychology and
group dynamics converge” (p. 729). This is consistent with the move in motiva-
tional psychology to include social motives related to peer group infuences and
classroom goal structures in research paradigms discussed earlier (Sections 2.2.2
and 2.2.3). Correlational research has indeed confrmed the link between the
cohesiveness of language classes and the motivation of individual class members
(e.g. Chang, 2010; Clément, Dörnyei & Noels, 1994; Koga, 2010).
Dörnyei and Murphey (2003) offer a practical overview of how to generate
positive group dynamics in the L2 classroom, so here we would like to high-
light only one crucial factor in this respect, the teacher’s motivational role as
the key social fgure within the learning environment. Motivational teacher
infuences are manifold, ranging from the rapport with the students to specifc
teacher behaviours which “persuade” and/or “attract” students to engage in
on-task behaviours (see Example 5.1). Lamb’s (2017) overview shows that the
teacher’s role modelling behaviour is a universally respected motivational tool,
along with another key aspect, good teacher–student relations. This indicates
that the teacher’s personal qualities and behaviours are as important as the strate-
gies and practices they consciously apply. This has received strong support from
a pioneering study by Henry and Thorsen (2018) that specifcally examined the
motivational impact of teacher–student relationships. The authors found that
while motivational practices differed widely among the teachers they studied,
“positive teacher–student relationships were a feature of nearly all the classrooms
observed” (p. 223). Signifcantly, they documented how special moments of close
personal contact between teacher and student can generate greater engagement
and increase motivational energy on the part of the students, and how such
moments can accumulate through time, thereby strengthening the relationship
and the ensuing motivational boost progressively.
 Motivation in Practice 117

EXAMPLE 5.1 STRATEGIES CONCERNING TEACHER

BEHAVIOUR (DÖRNYEI, 2001, PP. 33, 36)
Demonstrate and talk about your own enthusiasm for the course material, and
how it affects you personally.
• Share your own personal interest in the L2 with your students.
• Show students that you value L2 learning as a meaningful experience
that produces satisfaction and enriches your life.
Take the students’ learning very seriously.
• Show students that you care about their progress.
• Indicate your mental and physical availability for all things academic.
• Have suffciently high expectations for what your students can achieve.

QUOTE 5.4 ANDERMAN AND ANDERMAN ON TEACHERS’

MOTIVATIONAL IMPACT
Teachers can and do impact student motivation! If you remember nothing
else after reading this book, please remember that. You, as a teacher,
will have dramatic and important effects on your students’ academic
motivation. Teachers infuence student motivation in many ways:
through daily interactions with students, they infuence students’
beliefs about their own abilities, their attitudes toward certain sub-
ject areas, their immediate and long-term goals, their beliefs about the
causes of their successes and failures, and their reasons for ultimately
choosing to do their academic work.
Anderman & Anderman (2014, p. 2)

5.2.2 Generating Initial Motivation

The fact is that if students could freely choose what to do, academic learning for
many would most likely feature low on their agenda. And even if a teacher were
to be lucky enough to have a class of students with high levels of academic moti-
vation, natural variation within any learner group would of course lead to some
students favouring the L2 course over all the other subjects they study, while oth-
ers not. The inescapable truth, therefore, is that student motivation cannot be
guaranteed and unless teachers are singularly fortunate with the composition of
their class group, they need to contribute actively to generating positive student
attitudes towards learning the subject matter even when the general motivational
118 Motivation and Language Teaching
conditions described above are in place. Dörnyei (2001) has divided the strate-
gies to create initial student motivation into fve broad clusters:

• enhancing the learners’ language-related values and attitudes;

• increasing the learners’ expectancy of success;
• increasing the learners’ goal-orientedness;
• making the teaching materials relevant for the learners;
• creating realistic learner beliefs.

The frst three of these follow directly from Gardner’s integrative motive (Section
3.1.1), expectancy–value theories (Section 2.1.2) and goal theories (Section
2.1.6) discussed earlier. The relevance of the teaching materials is closely related
to self-concordance (Section 4.2.2) and the notion of “authenticity” (Henry &
Cliffordson, 2017; Pinner 2016) – the core of the issue has been succinctly sum-
marised by McCombs and Whisler (1997, p. 38): “Educators think students do
not care, while the students tell us they do care about learning but are not get-
ting what they need”. Indeed, one of the most demotivating factors for learners
is when they have to learn something that they cannot see the point of because
it has no seeming relevance whatsoever to their lives. In contrast, when class-
room activities allow students to act authentically in accordance with their true
selves, their motivation will soar. This was demonstrated in a large-scale study
in Sweden by Henry and his colleagues (2018), where they analysed descriptions
of motivational activities from over 250 L2 teachers. The results unambiguously
revealed “the prominence of activities that enable students to work with authen-
tic materials (cultural artefacts produced for a purpose other than teaching) and
in ways that can be experienced as authentic” (p. 247).

QUOTE 5.5 CHAMBERS ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF

“RELEVANCE” IN L2 TEACHING
If the teacher is to motivate pupils to learn, then relevance has to be
the red thread permeating activities. If pupils fail to see the relationship
between the activity and the world in which they live, then the point
of the activity is likely to be lost on them. … If pupils do not see the
relevance of a subject, the teacher has from the outset a major challenge.
Chambers (1999, pp. 37–38)

Finally, the signifcance of learner beliefs lies in the fact that for some curious reason
most learners will have certain frm beliefs about L2 learning most of which are
likely to be (at least partly) incorrect. As such, unrealistic learner beliefs about how
much progress to expect and how fast function like “time bombs” at the beginning
of a language course either because of the inevitable disappointment that is to fol-
low or because they can clash with the course methodology and thus obstruct pro-
gress. It is therefore a key motivational issue to sort out some of the most far-fetched
 Motivation in Practice 119
expectations and get rid of any preconceived notions and prejudices that are likely
to hinder L2 attainment. An effective way of initiating discussions towards these
goals is to administer Elaine Horowitz’s (1988) Beliefs About Language Learning
Inventory (BALLI) (Concept 5.1) to the learners and use the answers as a starting
point in analysing the validity of popular beliefs and myths.

CONCEPT 5.1 HORWITZ’S “BELIEFS ABOUT LANGUAGE

LEARNING INVENTORY” (BALLI)
Horwitz (1988) developed a self-report questionnaire, the Beliefs About
Language Learning Inventory, consisting of 34 items, to assess student
beliefs in fve major areas:
• diffculty of language learning;
• foreign language aptitude;
• the nature of language learning;
• learning and communication strategies;
• motivation and expectations.
Empirical data obtained from American learners of German, French and
Spanish confrmed that certain belief systems are quite common among
learners and are consistent across different language groups.

5.2.3 Maintaining and Protecting Motivation

It is one thing to initially whet the students’ appetite with appropriate motiva-
tional techniques, but unless motivation is actively nurtured and protected when
action has commenced and is well on the way, the natural tendency to lose sight
of the goal, to get tired or bored of the activity and to give way to attractive
distractions or competing action tendencies will result in the initial motivation
gradually petering out. Therefore, an effective motivational repertoire should also
include motivation maintenance strategies that can help to prevent this from hap-
pening. The spectrum of such executive motivational strategies is broad (since
ongoing human behaviour can be modifed in so many different ways), but the
following two areas appear to be particularly relevant for classroom application:

• making the learning activities stimulating and enjoyable;

• protecting the learners’ psychological well-being.

Making the Learning Activities Stimulating and Enjoyable

Although Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (2017) rightly point out that boredom does
not seem to affect the short-term effectiveness of learning – after all, so much
of what many of us know has been mastered while being exposed to uninspiring
120 Motivation and Language Teaching
teaching – Dörnyei and Muir (2019) argue that long-term, sustained learning, such
as the acquisition of an L2, cannot take place unless the educational context pro-
vides suffcient enjoyment to stimulate ongoing motivation. That is, boring but
systematic teaching can be effective in producing, for example, good test results,
but rarely does it inspire a lifelong commitment to the subject matter. Indeed, mak-
ing the L2 tasks more interesting is one of the best-known motivational dimensions
of classroom teaching, and a great number of recommendations have been made
in the literature as to how to promote this intrinsic quality dimension, ranging
from breaking the monotony of classroom events to including novel elements and
relating the content of the tasks to the learners’ natural interests (for a review, see
Anderman & Anderman, 2014). We can capture a great deal of the essence of this
enjoyment by designing stimulating tasks (see Concept 5.2).

CONCEPT 5.2 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MOTIVATING

TASKS (BASED ON DÖRNYEI, 2019)
• Task presentation. A motivating task is introduced in a way that learn-
ers can see how it contributes to reaching their overall L2 goals/vision.
This can be achieved by (a) explaining where the activity fts in within
a sequence or bigger picture; (b) describing the specifc purpose of the
activity and what this implies with regard to how students should
respond to it; (c) pointing out how the skills learnt will be useful in
enabling students to achieve their real-life agendas.
• Task goals. Student motivation increases if the task goal concerns issues
that are in some way meaningful to the students. Linking the goal to a
tangible outcome (e.g. preparing a poster/display, a class presentation
or a student newsletter) further increases engagement.
• Task content. Having relevant and authentic content is half the battle;
the other half is adding elements of challenge, competition, novelty,
intrigue, fantasy or exotic interest, that is, the kind of entertaining
ingredients that many people enjoy, for example, when watching TV/
videos for relaxation.
• Task ownership. The level of task engagement is directly associated
with the degree of “ownership” that students feel of the task, that is,
with the degree of control they perceive to be able to exercise over
every aspect of the activity.
• Task structure. An engaging task has a clear structure: students need to
know exactly how to start, what roles to adopt, what activities are involved
and what the fnal outcome is (including the success criteria for it). It fur-
ther helps if the structure consists of distinct phases, whose completion
provides students with a clear sense of progress as they approach the target.
 Motivation in Practice 121
Protecting the Learners’ Psychological Well-Being
This involves nurturing students’ self-esteem, increasing their self-confdence
and allowing them to maintain a positive social image. Self-esteem and self-con-
fdence are like the foundations of a building: if they are not secure enough, even
the best technology will be insuffcient to build solid walls over them. The impor-
tant question, then, is how to maintain and increase the students’ self-confdence
and self-esteem in the L2 classroom, which is an inherently face-threatening
environment for the learner: as the oft-mentioned argument goes, the language
class is the only place where a student cannot even say a simple sentence without
the risk of making a big mistake and therefore appearing incompetent in front
of their peers. And if we also recall the main tenet of self-worth theory (Section
2.1.5), namely that maintaining face is a central concern for most schoolchil-
dren, it becomes obvious that a prerequisite to nurturing learners’ self-esteem and
self-confdence is to allow them to maintain a positive social image is. This can
be done not only by avoiding public criticisms and corrections that may be con-
sidered humiliating, but also by establishing group norms of tolerance and accept-
ance (see Example 5.2). An even more proactive method of making students feel
good about the L2 course and the role they play in it is to provide everybody with
opportunities to play the protagonist’s role in one way or another (e.g. by creating
situations in which students can demonstrate their particular strengths and make
a useful contribution). Finally, we should also recall that Bandura’s important
fnding was that self-effcacy can be consciously increased (a) by creating experi-
ences of success for the learners, (b) by giving them positive, constructive and
encouraging feedback and (c) by getting them to observe others succeed who are
similar to themselves (see Section 2.1.3).

EXAMPLE 5.2 A SET OF “CLASS RULES” FOSTERING

PEER ACCEPTANCE (EHRMAN & DÖRNYEI, 1998, P. 241)
• Let’s try to listen to each other.
• Let’s help each other.
• Let’s respect each other’s ideas and values.
• It’s OK to make mistakes: they are learning points.
• Let’s not make fun of each other’s weaknesses.
• We must avoid hurting each other, verbally or physically.

5.2.4 Rounding Off the Learning Experience: Encouraging Positive

Self-Evaluation
A large body of research has shown that the way learners feel about their past
accomplishments and the amount of satisfaction they experience after successful
122 Motivation and Language Teaching
task completion will signifcantly determine how they approach subsequent
learning tasks. We should realise, however, that students’ appraisal of their past
performance does not depend solely on the objective level of success but also
on how they subjectively interpret their achievement. This explains why it is so
important that teachers help learners to evaluate their past performance in a more
“positive light”, to take more satisfaction in their successes and progress and to
explain their past failures in a constructive way. This latter area is related to the
role of attributions (discussed in Section 2.1.4), and to the maxim that failure that
is ascribed to low ability hinders future achievement behaviour, whereas failure
that is attributed to a lack of effort is less detrimental in that it can be remedied.
Therefore, the general recommendation in the literature is to try and promote
effort attributions and prevent ability attributions in the students as much as pos-
sible (see also Section 6.2.2 on demotivation and remotivation). Accordingly,
in failure situations teachers should generally emphasise the low effort exerted
as being a strong reason for underachievement because this communicates to
students that they can do better in the future. In situations when failure occurs
in spite of obvious hard work on the student’s part, the best approach is to point
out the skills/knowledge/strategies that were missing and to communicate to the
student that these can be mastered.
The attributional aspect is only one (although a crucial) element of motiva-
tionally effective feedback; another unavoidable issue in most institutional learn-
ing is the controversial impact of various forms of rewards and grades dispensed by
the teacher. These have been traditionally used as “carrots” and “sticks” – that
is, incentives and punishments – to enhance achievement. The fundamental
problem with this practice is that rewards are rather simplistic devices that do
not increase the inherent value of the learning task or the task outcome and
can in fact divert students’ attention away from the real task and the real point
of learning (Concept 5.3). This negative impact can be softened by applying
certain strategies, including offering improvement grades when a student redoes
an assignment, conducting an ongoing process of evaluation (e.g. portfolio assess-
ment), complementing teacher ratings with student self-assessment and basing
the fnal rating on some form of two-way negotiation between teacher and student
(see Dörnyei, 2001).

CONCEPT 5.3 THE CONTROVERSY OF GRADES AND

COVINGTON’S “MINI-MAX PRINCIPLE”
A grade is in effect a reward that is tagged to the accomplishment of a
task. This raises two issues. First, offering a reward may be seen as an
implicit acknowledgment that achieving the outcome of a task would not
be rewarding enough in itself and that therefore the task needs to be rein-
forced externally. Second, this “reinforcement” is not making the learning
 Motivation in Practice 123

activity itself any more rewarding, but can in fact divert attention away
from the task. This becomes evident when learners spend more creative
energy fguring out how to maximise their rewards with minimal learning
effort than how to master the material, a process that Covington (1992,
p. 148) called the “mini-max principle”. Indeed, Covington points out that
many students become grade-driven, if not “grade grubbing”, surprisingly
early in their school career (Covington, von Hoene & Voge, 2017).

5.3 Promoting Motivational Self-Regulation and Learner

Autonomy
Thorner (2017) rightly points out that no matter how creative a teacher’s moti-
vational practice is, there will be limits to how far teachers can affect student
motivation, since a great deal of L2 learning takes place outside of class over a
long period of time. Therefore, students also need some form of motivational
boost that will have a lasting impact beyond the classroom, and two potent ener-
gisers of this kind are motivational self-regulation and an increased sense of owner-
ship of the learning process through learner autonomy.

5.3.1 Motivational Self-Regulation

According to Ushioda (1997), motivational self-regulation – or “self-motiva-
tion” – involves “applying positive thought patterns and belief structures so as to
optimise and sustain one’s involvement in learning. In other words, a capacity
for self-motivation may be defned as a capacity for effective motivational think-
ing” (p. 41). This invaluable capacity has been operationalised in educational
psychology in terms of self-motivating strategies, defned by Corno (1993) as “a
dynamic system of psychological control processes that protect concentration
and directed effort in the face of personal and/or environmental distractions,
and so aid learning and performance” (p. 16). That is, self-motivating strate-
gies involve ways for the learners to motivate themselves and thereby sustain
the action when initial motivation is fagging. It may require little justifcation
that these strategies are particularly important in language learning, given that
L2 learners need to maintain their commitment and effort over a long period of
time, often in the face of adversity. Accordingly, this area of research has been
active over the past few years (see e.g. Csizér & Tankó, 2017; Li, 2017; Teng &
Zhang, 2018).
What does motivational self-regulation involve? Drawing on the pioneering
work of Kuhl (1987), Corno (1993) and Corno and Kanfer (1993) in educational
psychology, Dörnyei (2001) presented a taxonomy of fve main types of self-moti-
vating strategy – described in Concept 5.4 – and argued that an important part of
124 Motivation and Language Teaching
a motivational teaching practice is to raise student awareness of these strategies
and to remind them at appropriate times of their usefulness. As Hurd (2008)
emphasises, awareness-raising of this kind is particularly important in independ-
ent learning settings (e.g. online environments and distance learning), where
students lack the kind of social–affective support provided by regular interac-
tions with other learners and the teacher, and where they often engage in L2
learning on top of full-time work and personal commitments with their associ-
ated demands and stresses. She suggests that an explicit focus on affective self-
management strategies should be written into online course materials to give due
attention to this important dimension of the learning process.

CONCEPT 5.4 THE MAIN CLASSES OF SELF-MOTIVATING

STRATEGIES (BASED ON DÖRNYEI, 2001)
1. Commitment control strategies for helping to preserve or increase the
learners’ original goal commitment (e.g. keeping in mind favourable
expectations or positive incentives and rewards; focusing on what
would happen if the original intention failed).
2. Metacognitive control strategies for monitoring and controlling concen-
tration, and for curtailing unnecessary procrastination (e.g. identifying
recurring distractions and developing defensive routines; focusing on
the frst steps to take when getting down to an activity).
3. Satiation control strategies for eliminating boredom and adding extra
attraction or interest to the task (e.g. adding a twist to the task; using
one’s fantasy to liven up the task).
4. Emotion control strategies for managing disruptive emotional states or
moods, and for generating emotions that will be conducive to imple-
menting one’s intentions (e.g. self-encouragement; using relaxation
and meditation techniques; rewarding oneself).
5. Environmental control strategies for eliminating negative environmental
infuences and exploiting positive environmental infuences by mak-
ing the environment an ally in the pursuit of a diffcult goal (e.g. elimi-
nating distractions; asking friends not to allow one to do something).

5.3.2 Learner Autonomy

As we noted in Section 3.2.2, the relationship between motivation and autonomy
has generated considerable interest in language education, as well as some debate
about the nature and direction of the relationship, not least because autonomy
can be taken to mean different things. For example, autonomy can refer to a
basic psychological need in self-determination theory whereby we experience our
 Motivation in Practice 125
behaviours as volitional and congruent with our sense of self. Autonomy can also
refer to the strategic ability to take charge of and self-regulate one’s learning, or it
can describe independent or self-directed learning, with or without the support of
a teacher or learning adviser. In its more political sense, autonomy can also refer-
ence the democratic rights and freedoms of learners within educational systems.
Yet across these varying interpretations of autonomy, a strong common thread
is a sense of personal ownership and agency in relation to one’s learning, together
with a capacity to make one’s own choices and decisions, where “capacity”
denotes both freedom as well as metacognitive know-how (Ushioda, 2014). If
we focus on these common core elements, we can readily see how learner auton-
omy is deeply connected with internally driven forms of motivation, such as the
experience of authenticity and self-concordance discussed earlier in Section
5.2.2. This implies that promoting learner autonomy needs to happen hand in
hand with promoting what Deci and Flaste (1996) describe as “motivation from
within”, that is, intrinsic and internally regulated forms of motivation. As they
explain, this means involving students in making personally relevant choices
and decisions about their learning, since this not only promotes willingness and
a sense of ownership and agency in relation to one’s learning; it also promotes
a sense of responsibility because people become responsible for the choices and
decisions they make and their consequences. Importantly, however, as Little,
Dam and Legenhausen (2017) discuss and illustrate with reference to case studies
in different classroom contexts, this process needs to happen within a carefully
structured pedagogical framework, so that students are guided in making mean-
ingful and appropriate choices that are relevant to their L2 learning and commu-
nication goals. They also need to be supported by the teacher in developing the
necessary metacognitive skills to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning and
use of the L2 to achieve these goals, so that they know how to continue learning
and advancing their L2 skills autonomously in response to changing needs and
circumstances in the future.

5.4 Generating and Sustaining a Vision for L2 Learning

We saw in Chapter 3 (Section 3.3.4) that the L2 Motivational Self System has
introduced a new approach to understanding language learning motivation, and
that an important component of this construct is the learners’ vision of themselves
in a future state. It was also argued that although vision-based future self-guides
have the capacity to motivate action, this does not always happen automatically
but depends on a number of conditions. These conditions offer a useful framework
for considering any practical implications, because satisfying them will result in
automatic motivational enhancement. Accordingly, the specifc methods of ful-
flling these conditions have been seen as de facto vision-enhancing motivational
strategies. On the basis of this, Dörnyei and Kubanyiova (2014) have developed
a motivational programme that consists of six components (for a resource book of
vision-enhancing classroom activities, see Hadfeld & Dörnyei, 2013):
126 Motivation and Language Teaching
1. Construction of the Ideal L2 Self: creating the vision. The (obvious) prerequisite
for the motivational capacity of future self-guides is that they need to exist.
Therefore, the frst step in a motivational intervention that follows the self
approach is to help learners to construct their ideal L2 self – that is, to create
an L2-related vision. The term “constructing” the ideal L2 self is not entirely
accurate because it is highly unlikely that any motivational intervention
will lead a student to generate an ideal self out of nothing – the realistic
process is more likely to involve awareness raising about, and guided selec-
tion from, the multiple aspirations, dreams, desires, etc. that the student has
already entertained in the past. Thus, igniting the vision involves increasing
the students’ mindfulness about the signifcance of the ideal self in general
and guiding them through a number of possible selves that they have enter-
tained in their minds in the past, while also presenting some powerful role
models to illustrate potential future selves.
2. Imagery enhancement: strengthening the vision. Even if a desired self-image
exists, it may not have a suffcient degree of elaborateness and vividness to
act as an effective motivator. Methods of imagery enhancement have been
explored in several areas of psychological, educational and sport research in
the past (e.g. Berkovits, 2005; Hall, Stradling & Young, 2006; Morris, 2010;
Singer, 2006), and various forms of visualisation skills training and guided
imagery can also be utilised to promote ideal L2 self-images and thus to
strengthen the students’ vision (see Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014).
3. Making the Ideal L2 Self plausible: substantiating the vision. Possible selves are
only effective insomuch as the learner perceives them as possible, that is,
conceivable within the person’s particular circumstances. Thus, in order for
ideal self-images to energise sustained behaviour, they must be anchored
in a sense of realistic expectations – they need to be substantiated, resulting
in the curious mixed aura of imagination and reality that effective images
share. This process requires honest and down-to-earth reality checks as well
as considering any potential obstacles and diffculties that might stand in
the way of realising the ideal self. Inviting successful role models to class
can send the powerful message to students that, although everybody faces
certain hurdles in reaching their ideal selves, it can be, and has been, done.
4. Developing an action plan: operationalising the vision. Future self-guides are
only effective if they are accompanied by concrete action plans. Therefore,
the ideal self needs to come as part of a “package” consisting of an imagery
component and a repertoire of appropriate scripts and strategies. Even the
most galvanising self-image might fall fat without ways of operationalising
the vision, that is, without any concrete learning pathways into which to
channel the individual’s energy. This is clearly an area where L2 motivation
research and language teaching methodology overlap: an effective action
plan will contain a goal-setting component (which is a motivational issue)
as well as individualised study plans and instructional avenues (which are
methodological in nature).
 Motivation in Practice 127
5. Activating the Ideal L2 Self: keeping the vision alive. Very little is said in the
literature about activating and re-activating the ideal self, but this is an
area where language teachers have, perhaps unknowingly, a great deal of
experience. Classroom activities such as warmers and icebreakers as well as
various communicative tasks can all be turned into effective ways of keeping
the vision alive, and playing flms and music, or engaging in cultural activities,
can all serve as potent ideal self reminders.
6. Considering failure: counterbalancing the vision. For maximum effectiveness,
the desired self should be offset by reminders of the negative consequences
of not succeeding: we do something because we want to do it and also
because not doing it would lead to undesired results. In language teaching
terms this process of counterbalancing the vision would involve considering
the limitations of not knowing foreign languages as well as regularly priming
the learners’ ought-to L2 self to highlight the duties and obligations they
have committed themselves to.

5.5 Engaging L2 Learners

We argued in Chapter 4 (Section 4.6.2) that because of the dramatic increase
of distractions that students face in the current era, even if someone has a high
level of L2 motivation, this will not necessarily translate into actual language
learning behaviour unless the person gets actively engaged in the learning pro-
cess. Accordingly, if we want to make sure that the students’ motivation is not
hijacked, we must ensure that it is realised in action.

QUOTE 5.6 THORNER ON THE NEED TO ENGAGE

STUDENTS
When we say our students are unmotivated, what we usually mean
is that they are not motivated to engage in learning behaviour. If we
asked them to play football or chat with friends, motivation may reap-
pear. In fact, they may also be generally willing to engage in learning
behaviour, but just not now. There is a big difference between making
students disposed to learning English and getting them to do it right
away. So, in addition to motivating our students to learn English, we
need to think about how to bring students to the “action” stage of
learning. To do this, we must be clear about the kind of behaviour we
want students to engage in.
Thorner (2017, p. 37)

How can we describe in practical terms what the rather general phrase “engaging
with L2 learning” involves? Dörnyei (2019) has highlighted in this respect some
obvious aspects of the learning process to engage with: school context (e.g. various
128 Motivation and Language Teaching
aspects of belonging to the school community, adopting school norms and develop-
ing general academic confdence); syllabus and the teaching materials (e.g. curiosity
about and interest in the content; match between the syllabus to the students’
needs; ownership and personalisation of the materials); learning tasks (e.g. utilis-
ing the principles of task-based language teaching; application of project/problem-
based learning; goal-setting and progress checks); one’s peers (e.g. relevant areas
of group dynamics/classroom management, particularly social acceptance, group
cohesiveness, norms of cooperation and tolerance); teacher (e.g. student–teacher
rapport; utilising insights from leadership models; confict resolution). In other
words, student engagement in general can be operationalised as the cumulative
outcome of engaging with various key components of the learning environment.
In a book-length overview of practical suggestions on how to engage L2 learn-
ers in contemporary classrooms, Mercer and Dörnyei (2020) have divided the
relevant material into three groups:

• Contextual factors affecting student engagement at various levels, including

the levels of the language and society, school as an institution, and learn-
ers’ family settings. These are, therefore, aspects of learner engagement that
teachers cannot affect directly but which they can raise awareness of and
adapt to.
• Prerequisites to student engagement, specifed as learner mindsets, teacher–stu-
dent rapport as well as classroom dynamics and culture.
• Designing engaging L2 tasks, divided into two parts: activities that initiate
engagement and ones that sustain it.

If some (or indeed, most) of the above aspects seem familiar, it is because they are
(and have already been mentioned in this book). The conception of engagement
is not a new paradigm but one that has been built on the principles of motiva-
tion theory as a kind of “motivation plus” construct. The “plus” element refers to
the actual behavioural exhibition of motivation; in Henry and Thorsen’s (2020,
p. 458) words, “Unlike motivation, engagement captures ongoing behaviour.
Since motivation rarely fows completely unhindered into action, it is the behav-
ioural outworkings of various motivational sources that are captured in the
engagement construct”. In their book, Mercer and Dörnyei (2020) present the
“plus” content in terms of specifc action points for teachers to follow in order to
enact the principles in their classrooms.

QUOTE 5.7 MERCER AND DÖRNYEI ON STUDENT

ENGAGEMENT
We know that it is highly unlikely to ever achieve 100% high engage-
ment from ALL learners at any one time. The best we can realistically
aim for is what Schlechty (2011, p. 32) explains as “most students are
engaged most of the time”. The fact that some will just be complying
 Motivation in Practice 129

but not deeply engaged and some others will be fully off task or even
engaging in rebellious behaviour is part of the daily challenges of
being a (language) teacher. … [However,] the level of student engage-
ment in a class is not a mysterious phenomenon that is attributable to
coincidence or factors completely outside our control. L2 lessons and
tasks can be designed to be more engaging, following some relatively
straightforward principles. In addition, it is worth remembering and
drawing hope from the fact that the learners themselves do not like to
be bored or passive; they would usually prefer to be engaged.
Mercer & Dörnyei (2020, p. 162)

5.6 Frameworks for Directed Motivational Currents

We saw in Chapter 4 (Section 4.2.1) that directed motivational currents
(DMCs) involve powerful motivational surges that typically involve a high level
of productivity. Can this energy source be capitalised on in L2 classrooms? Muir
(2020) produces strong evidence that DMCs can indeed be consciously induced
in learner-group contexts by describing a successful experiment in which learners
of English in Australia organised a charity event and in doing so displayed many
of the hallmarks of a DMC (while making excellent progress in their L2 learn-
ing). Such “group-DMCs” can thus be utilised in language classrooms, and the
best framework for them is offered by intensive group projects (for an overview
of the motivational capacity of project work, see Muir, 2019). As Muir (2020)
argues, projects lend themselves to launching DMCs, since the key elements of
DMCs and well-designed projects are highly analogous (e.g. centring around an
engaging goal and a clearly defned structure).

QUOTE 5.8 MUIR ON PROJECTS

Projects have a long history in education, and a recent revival has led
to a growing resurgence in research and published advice devoted to
developing understanding project design, introduction and manage-
ment. … I do not believe projects offer a panacea. Undoubtedly, there
are contexts and times at which projects are likely to be highly unsuit-
able, and for which even the most considered project design may have
little tangible “DMC potential”. … A signifcant draw of projects is that
they can offer students (and teachers) educational experiences different
to those typical of “normal” classes experienced on a day-to-day basis
… and when used judiciously, they have the potential to motivation-
ally revitalise learning environments.
Muir (2020, pp. 61–62)
130 Motivation and Language Teaching
In a detailed discussion of group-DMCs, Dörnyei, Henry and Muir (2016) present
seven practical project frameworks that have the potential to initiate intensive,
DMC-like experiences, involving for some learners at least “peak experiences”
(see Concept 5.5). These all share in common the template of having (a) a
clearly defned target in a content area that is both relevant and real to students,
and which allows them to act in ways that they experience as authentic to who
they are; (b) an intricate structure that includes an explicitly laid out pathway
with a clear set of subgoals, which are able to act as progress markers and can cre-
ate opportunities for regular feedback; and (c) positive emotionality originating from
cooperation within a mature and cohesive group. Intensive group projects where
all of these elements are salient can be viewed as optimal versions with a DMC
potential; the seven variants presented in Concept 5.5 differ in their signature
components which bear the principal responsibility for evoking the motivational
surge needed to sustain action.

CONCEPT 5.5 TEMPLATES FOR POSSIBLE GROUP

PROJECTS WITH DMC POTENTIAL (BASED ON DÖRNYEI,
HENRY & MUIR, 2016)

Description Signature Component

Eyes on the Completing a fnal product An end-goal and the

Final such as making a accompanying vision energises
Product video, staging a theatre the entire project.
performance or organising
an ambitious social event.
Step by Step Centres around an elaborate The energising power of a
award scheme whereby contingent path.
students proceed step by
step along a well-defned
pathway, gaining an award
at the completion of each
successive stage.
The BIG Issue Focusing on a serious real-life A driving question which
issue, accompanied by a provokes reactions and
challenging “call for action” energises behaviour.
to develop a local solution/
remedy.
That’s Me! Focusing on a central topic A strong sense of
that touches upon the core “connectedness” both between
identity of the students, students themselves and
with goals emerging between the learner group and
organically from exploring the project.
this highly personal issue.
 Motivation in Practice 131

Detective Based on the inherent An intriguing problem, whose

Work problem-solving solution sustains extended
predilection in people; periods of concentration and
students are given a puzzling motivated action.
issue to unravel.
Story Sequels Centres around an unfolding An engaging temporal axis
story, shared gradually and fxed around an unfolding
incrementally to build longitudinal structure.
tension and maintain
interest.
Study Abroad Preparing for a foreign A distal goal which generates
adventure so that upon initial motivational
arrival there is an elaborate momentum, subsequently
roadmap to help to engage supported by a systematic
with the L2 community. structure of subgoals.

5.7 The Motivational Capacity of Technology

Technology has been seen as an important aspect in SLA, with two journals
devoted to it (Language Learning & Technology; Computer Assisted Language
Learning), and recently even a whole handbook has been dedicated to the topic
(Chapelle & Sauro, 2017). Technology has also been perceived by many as hav-
ing defnite motivating capacity, and in fact this capacity has often been given
as the justifcation for the use of technology in L2 instruction (see e.g. Golonka
et al., 2014; Stockwell, 2013). However, technology also presents an enigma,
because despite all the hopes attached to it for decades, it does not appear to be
the case that technology-based innovations have radically transformed the feld
of SLA or have revitalised our motivational practices (Dörnyei, 2020; Stockwell
& Reinders, 2019). What is the reason for this puzzle? In order to offer an answer,
let us briefy look at both the strengths and the weaknesses of technological
applications.
On the positive side, the universal appeal of video games testifes to the attrac-
tion for many of becoming “immersed in media fows and intensely involved in
online interactions such as gaming” (Henry & Lamb, 2019, p. 599). Also, thanks
to the Internet, people can become part of virtual communities, take simulated
tours in real cultures, satisfy their curiosities in unlimited areas and link to fellow-
minded people. Henry (2019) specifcally highlights online media creation (e.g.
writing blogs) as having a particularly promising role in high levels of learner
motivation, and because this task involves creating visually appealing and
authentic artefacts that promote creative self-expression, it can also be utilised
for project work with DMC potential (Section 5.6). In a similar vein, Mercer
and Dörnyei (2020) report on a highly successful project in Canada by Shelley
Hill, in which an online bulletin board (“Padlet”) was utilised to engage leaners
in extracurricular projects in the community by setting the task of posting short
132 Motivation and Language Teaching
descriptions of their experiences, illustrated by a photo or a video. These are
incontestable motivational potentials, but they can be offset by certain diffcul-
ties that technology poses; Dörnyei (2020) presents the following fve categories
of concern:

• The defnition of “technology”. The term subsumes a wide range of devices,

computer applications and Internet services with very different properties
and affordances, and pooling them together can blur the picture and create
confusion.
• The novelty element. The novelty of using modern technological applications
for L2 learning purposes is undoubtedly inspiring, but it may not last very
long. Stockwell and Reinders (2019) also point out that while this effect
was more pronounced in the past, in the current age there is no real novelty
about computers or smart phones any more, as many students in the current
age are “digital natives” (Marek & Wu, 2019).
• Superfcial engagement and additional distractions. Ushioda (2013) highlights
a further potential shortcoming of technology when she points out that the
level of engagement with it tends to be broadly superfcial or casual rather
than deep. Furthermore, as we saw in Section 5.5 on student engagement,
technologies can bring about additional distractions as they allow for vari-
ous non-educational uses (e.g. sending or receiving quick text messages and
checking various websites).
• Student reluctance. Several reports confrm that students do not always
appreciate L2 instruction invading their digital world, as they consider the
latter a private and personal space (Henry et al., 2019; Stockwell, 2013).
Furthermore, as Stockwell and Reinders (2019) emphasise, although many
learners are quite familiar with using some aspects of technology for private
purposes, this does not necessarily correlate with their ability to use technol-
ogy effectively for L2 learning, particularly because, as these authors have
found, many learners will have had some negative experiences with learning
through technology in the past.
• Teacher reluctance. Many teachers come from a generation that had not been
part of the digital revolution. Can we honestly blame those who feel uncom-
fortable adopting technologies for their classes when their students have
more advanced skills in using them?

5.8 Researching Motivational Strategies

Research matters will be discussed in Chapter 8 and 9 in detail, but we would
like to conclude this chapter by addressing a more general research-related issue,
namely the fact that much of the practice-oriented motivation literature is based
on personal observations and wisdom developed over many years of classroom
experience without suffcient research validation – as Lamb (2019) concludes
in his comprehensive overview of the topic, “The body of published research
evidence about motivational language teaching strategies remains thin” (p. 301).
 Motivation in Practice 133
In fact, there are rather few studies evidencing even the mere fact that moti-
vational strategies can promote performance. This is partly due to the nature
of the research required: applying a motivational strategy is, by defnition, an
intervention, and the effectiveness of interventions can only be properly assessed
by means of experimental (or quasi-experimental) research designs (see Section
9.1.3). These are by defnition longitudinal in nature and require feld work, both
of which are energy- and time-consuming. Furthermore, rigorous studies in this
vein can only centre around a few strategies at a time, whereas we have seen that
the number of potentially effective motivational techniques is vast. Finally, it is
not straightforward either what kind of success criteria we should use to prove
that a motivational strategy is effective: would self-report measures suffce or do
we need observational data concerning actual motivated student behaviour? And
even if some positive impact is identifed, how long-term and sustained does it
need to be to qualify as a true result?
Despite these challenges, there have been some encouraging empirical
studies published in research journals that point to the usefulness of motiva-
tional strategies. Starting with Dörnyei and Csizér’s (1998) study on the “Ten
Commandments for Motivating Language Learners”, several papers have exam-
ined self-reported strategy use (for a review, see Lamb; 2017; 2019); however,
because of the subjective element of perception involved, these studies can be
seen at best as mere indications of broad tendencies. More rigorous results were
obtained by a handful of investigations that managed to establish a direct link
between the teacher’s use of motivational techniques and actual student behav-
iours (Guilloteaux & Dörnyei, 2008; Papi & Abdollahzadeh, 2012; Sugita &
Takeuchi, 2010; Wong, 2014), but the correlational results without any control
groups could not prove causality unambiguously. Such conclusive fndings have
been obtained only by a handful of quasi-experimental studies, conducted by
Alrabai (2016) and Moskovsky et al. (2013) to examine traditional motivational
strategies (as described in Section 5.2) and by Mackay (2019), Safdari (in press)
and Sato and Lara (2017) to explore the enhancement of the learners’ vision
(Section 5.4). Even these studies have been hampered, though, with various
issues concerning the research design (e.g. too specifc and diffcult-to-general-
ise samples; limited duration of the intervention; arguable criterion measures).
Therefore, Lamb’s (2019) overall characterisation of the slowly growing body of
literature in the area is reasonable:

A fair appraisal of MotS [motivational strategies] research at this point,

two decades on from the frst published article (Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998),
is that it has been useful, though limited in scale and impact. At least par-
tially answering Gardner and Tremblay’s (1994) original challenge, studies
have shown that both teachers and learners recognise the value of many of
Dörnyei’s (2001) MotS, but that teachers do not use them as frequently as
one would expect from their stated importance, and when they do, students
do not always recognise them.
(p. 295)
134 Motivation and Language Teaching
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6 Motivation in Context
Demotivating Infuences

This chapter will…

• discuss the notion of “demotivation” in language learning;

• review what research tells us about L2 demotivation and remotivation;
• revisit the concept of mindsets to highlight their relevance to understanding
demotivation and remotivation;
• discuss broader social-environmental factors that may have a negative
impact on L2 motivation.

In the previous chapter we discussed a range of pedagogical strategies and

approaches designed to promote, enhance and support students’ motivation in
the language classroom. It is clearly important for teachers to have recourse to
such strategies and approaches since student motivation is subject to so many
negative infuences during the learning process. These negative infuences may
relate to certain events and experiences in the classroom, such as diffcult or
boring tasks, or disappointing exam performance. They may also relate to fac-
tors in the social learning environment, such as poor group dynamics, peer
pressure or lack of teacher–student rapport. Importantly, counteracting the
demotivating impact of such classroom factors may depend not just on what
teachers do to support and strengthen their students’ motivation but also on
how language learners themselves process and respond to events and expe-
riences that negatively affect their motivation and are able to “remotivate”
themselves. Beyond the micro-context of the classroom, students’ motivation
to engage with language learning may also be negatively infuenced by factors
in the wider sociocultural environment, such as public attitudes and discourses
around migration and multilingualism, or the value of learning LOTEs in a
globalised world where English dominates.
In this chapter we will consider the “dark side” of motivation and exam-
ine the range of micro-and macro-contextual factors and internal cognitive
and emotional processes that may be implicated in demotivation. We begin
by analysing the concept of “demotivation” and offering a working defnition.
 Motivation in Context 139
We then review the body of empirical research that has investigated L2 demo-
tivation and consider issues and implications for classroom practice. Turning
our attention to the role of language learners’ own cognitions in relation to
negative motivational experiences, we revisit the concepts of fxed and growth
mindsets and discuss their particular relevance to demotivation and remotiva-
tion. Finally, we discuss critical factors in the broader macro-context of society
that may impact negatively on students’ motivation to engage with language
learning.

6.1 “Demotivation” Versus “Motivation”

In everyday life, whether in the classroom or in the workplace, most people will
encounter periods of demotivation at some stage and can give examples from
their own experience to illustrate this easily recognisable phenomenon. Indeed,
at the time of writing, when the world is in the throes of a global pandemic
affecting people’s lives, livelihoods and ways of working, there is currently much
discussion on the internet and on social media about feelings of demotivation.
Within the feld of organisational psychology, there is a specifc literature on
employee demotivation and on ways for management to deal with this or, better
still, to prevent it from happening in the frst place (e.g. Bush & Peters, 2020;
Furnham & Treglown, 2018). As this last point highlights and as Bush and Peters
(2020) emphasise, demotivation is a process that happens, and is not simply the
fip side of motivation. A basic premise in understanding demotivation is that
people come to the classroom or to the workplace with certain levels of motiva-
tion, and then something happens that reduces these levels of motivation, either
temporarily or persistently.
In other words, demotivation does not represent the complete absence of
motivation. This latter state is better characterised as “amotivation”, as concep-
tualised in Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory (Section 2.1.1).
When people experience amotivation or a complete lack of motivation in rela-
tion to a particular activity domain, it may be because they perceive themselves
to have low competence and see no point in exerting effort when the goals seem
unrealistic (see Concept 6.1). Of course, it is conceivable that persistent experi-
ences of demotivation can lead to a state of amotivation, such as when a succes-
sion of negative performance outcomes reduces a learner’s sense of self-effcacy to
such a low point that further engagement is perceived as futile. Clearly, however,
not all experiences of demotivation will result in amotivation since the factors
that cause demotivation may be short-lived or may change (e.g. if an unpopular
teacher is replaced by another teacher who is able to build better rapport with her
students), and since some aspects of a person’s motivation may remain resilient to
setbacks or negative infuences (e.g. strong intrinsic enjoyment in speaking the
L2 may remain impervious to the demotivating effects of negative feedback on a
writing task).
140 Motivation and Language Teaching

CONCEPT 6.1 DECI AND RYAN’S NOTION OF

“AMOTIVATION”
“Amotivation” as defned by Deci and Ryan (1985) refers to the relative
absence of motivation that is not caused by a lack of initial interest but
rather by the individual’s experiencing feelings of incompetence and help-
lessness when faced with the activity. According to Vallerand’s (1997)
overview, it can have four sources. People can be amotivated because
• they think they lack the ability to perform the behaviour (“capacity–
ability beliefs”);
• they do not consider the strategies to be followed effective enough
(“strategy beliefs”);
• they think the effort required to reach the outcome is far too excessive
(“capacity–effort beliefs”);
• they have the general perception that their efforts are inconsequential
considering the enormity of the task to be accomplished (“helplessness
beliefs”).

Thus far we have established a working defnition of demotivation as a negative

process that reduces or diminishes a person’s motivation in relation to a behavioural
intention or an ongoing action. This process account is similarly refected in how
Keita Kikuchi (2015, p. 4) has defned demotivation in relation to L2 learn-
ing, in possibly the frst published research monograph dedicated to this topic:
“While language learning motivation concerns the process that involves goals
and requires activities to arouse and sustain motivation, demotivation concerns
the negative process that pulls learners down”. This core idea of “pulling learners
down” or damaging their motivation in some way is important to bear in mind,
since not all negative factors will necessarily have this detrimental effect and can
be classifed as demotivating. For example, powerful distractions may not demoti-
vate in the same sense as, say, public humiliation. Instead of reducing motivation,
their distracting effect is due to presenting more attractive options, such as the
pleasure of spending time playing video games or socialising with friends, which
may divert one from the goal of writing an essay in French. As we saw in Section
2.1.6, this is an example of competing motivations or parallel goal pursuit, as peo-
ple juggle multiple goals and need to fnd ways of self-regulating their motivation
for one activity against various distractions. Such competing distractions make it
challenging to keep one’s motivation on track (see also the earlier discussions on
language learner engagement in Chapters 4 and 5), but do not necessarily trigger a
process of demotivation per se.
An important question is whether the negative factors and infuences that trig-
ger a process of demotivation are always external to the learner. In the previous
 Motivation in Context 141
edition of this text (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011, p. 139), we defned demotivation
in terms of “specifc external forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a
behavioural intention or an ongoing action”. Our argument was that a phenomenon
such as a gradual loss of interest in an activity is different from the experience
of demotivation, since it may refect an internal process of deliberation on the
activity’s diminishing value, appeal or relevance to one’s changing interests and
skills. For example, children may gradually lose interest in a particular toy or
game as their cognitive and motor skills develop and they look for something
more challenging to master. This diminishing interest is a natural outcome of
children’s developmental progress, rather than a process of demotivation trig-
gered by a specifc event or experience. On the other hand, if a small child plays
a game with an older sibling who constantly wins and gloats about winning, we
can imagine that the younger child may lose motivation and not want to play
the game any further. This example illustrates the role of an external force (older
sibling) in triggering demotivation.
However, in line with research fndings on L2 demotivation in the Japanese
educational context, Kikuchi (2015) argues for a view of demotivation that
incorporates internal as well as external forces that reduce or diminish a person’s
motivation, where internal forces might include factors such as loss of self-conf-
dence or negative self-perceptions as sources of demotivation. For example, one
can imagine that an internal factor such as striving for perfectionism or setting
oneself excessively high standards may lead to feelings of demotivation when one
does not manage to live up to one’s internal ideals. Indeed, the damaging psycho-
logical consequences of a perfectionist mindset may be signifcant and serious,
potentially leading to issues with mental health and motivation for life in general
(Rutherford, 2019). Later in Section 6.3, we will consider the role of maladap-
tive mindsets in relation to L2 demotivation. In the next section, we will review
the current body of research on L2 demotivation and explore further the role of
internal versus external factors in the demotivation process.

6.2 Research Findings on L2 Demotivation

It can be argued that one of the reasons why the study of language learning moti-
vation has generated and continues to generate such extensive research interest
is because motivation is often experienced (by teachers and by students alike) as
a problem in language learning. Learning a new language is cognitively demand-
ing, requires a great deal of effort, practice and hard work over months and years,
and yet often ends in failure to achieve even functional levels of communicative
competence. Even if language learners are motivated to begin with, studies inves-
tigating global changes in motivation over time or across groups at different stages
of learning have consistently illustrated a general decline in motivation as the
initial novelty of learning a new language wears off, and as increasing cognitive,
linguistic and curricular demands set in (e.g. Busse & Walter, 2013; Chambers,
1999; Gardner et al., 2004; Inbar, Donitsa-Schmidt & Shohamy, 2001; Tachibana,
Matsukawa & Zhong, 1996; Williams, Burden & Lanvers, 2004).
142 Motivation and Language Teaching
6.2.1 Identifying and Classifying Demotivators
Despite the prevalence of demotivation in language learning, however, the range
of research that has sought specifcally to investigate and theorise L2 demotiva-
tion remains quite limited, in comparison with the extensive and diverse body of
research on L2 motivation. Not surprisingly, perhaps, much contemporary research
on L2 demotivation has been situated in contexts where students are learning
English as a compulsory subject, with a large proportion of the studies located
in Japan (e.g. Falout, 2012; Falout, Elwood & Hood, 2009; Kikuchi, 2013, 2015,
2017; Sakai & Kikuchi, 2009), as well as Korea (e.g. Kim & Seo, 2012; Song &
Kim, 2017) and various Asian contexts such as Iran, Pakistan and Turkey (e.g.
Akay, 2017; Hassaskhah, Zafarghandia & Fazelia, 2014; Sher Ali & Pathan, 2017;
Zeynali, Pishghadam & Hosseini Fatimi, 2019). Broadly speaking, such studies
have sought to identify and analyse the factors that cause demotivation – that is,
“demotivators” – and in some cases to examine approaches to remotivation.
For example, in their large-scale investigation, Sakai and Kikuchi (2009)
reviewed a number of locally published studies of demotivation in the Japanese
EFL context and identifed six common demotivating features:

• teachers (e.g. attitudes, behaviour, teaching competence, language prof-

ciency, personality, teaching style);
• characteristics of classes (e.g. course content and pace, focus on diffcult gram-
mar and vocabulary, monotonous lessons, focus on university entrance
exams and memorisation);
• experience of failure (e.g. disappointing test scores, lack of acceptance by
teachers and others, inability to memorise vocabulary and idioms);
• class environment (e.g. attitudes of classmates and friends, compulsory nature
of English study, inappropriate level of the lessons, inadequate use of school
facilities and resources);
• class materials (e.g. unsuitable or uninteresting materials, too many reference
books or handouts);
• lack of interest (e.g. perception that English learnt at school is not practical or
necessary, lack of admiration for English-speaking people).

Based on these six areas, Sakai and Kikuchi developed a 35-item questionnaire
to investigate demotivators among students (N = 656) from four Japanese sen-
ior high schools and factor-analysed the data. Five clear factors emerged: (1)
Learning Content and Materials; (2) Teachers’ Competence and Teaching
Styles; (3) Inadequate School Facilities; (4) Lack of Intrinsic Motivation; (5)
Test Scores. The results showed that the two factors with the highest mean rat-
ing for demotivation were Learning Content and Materials, and Test Scores.
Contrary to expectation and previous research including cross-cultural research
on demotivation in college education in general (e.g. Zhang, 2007), teacher
variables did not emerge as the strongest demotivating factors but were on a par
with a cluster of internal variables classifed as Lack of Intrinsic Motivation. This
 Motivation in Context 143
latter fnding led Sakai and Kikuchi to question whether demotivation was the
product of external contextual forces only, or whether it might also implicate
factors internal to the learner.
Other studies in the Japanese EFL context have similarly indicated that the prin-
cipal demotivators are not teachers or teacher behaviours but rather various systemic
factors such as course diffculty level or the grammar-translation method used (e.g.
Falout et al., 2009; Kikuchi, 2015). In contrast, studies on Arab learners of English
(Keblawi, 2005) and Vietnamese learners of English (Trang & Baldauf, 2007), for
example, have highlighted teachers’ behaviours and practices as signifcant sources
of demotivation. Elsewhere, in more critically oriented research focusing on teacher–
student power relationships in the L2 classroom rather than specifcally demotiva-
tion (e.g. Lantolf & Genung, 2002; Norton, 2001), we similarly fnd evidence that
negative teacher behaviours and practices can affect learners to the extent that they
may want to disengage from class altogether. In this regard, as Thorner and Kikuchi
(2019) have commented in a useful critical review of L2 demotivation research in
different countries, it is diffcult to draw meaningful conclusions from this body of
research since demotivators and their relative prevalence and weight vary from con-
text to context, and even among different learner groups within the same context.
Furthermore, as they additionally point out, all such research is based on learners’
self-reported perceptions of demotivating factors, and it may thus lack reliability in
terms of determining actual causation of demotivation.
Finally, the kinds of descriptive studies whose main objective is to identify and
classify demotivating factors do not help us to understand why not all language
learners in the same context will experience or respond to such factors in the
same way, or why some show resilience and are able to maintain or recover their
motivation while others cannot (see also Section 4.2.2 on “motivational break-
down cover”). In order to develop this research area further, we clearly need to
move beyond the basic quest to identify demotivators and seek instead to exam-
ine and theorise the complex interplay of social-environmental and internal pro-
cesses that shape demotivation and remotivation. After all, from a pedagogical
perspective, understanding why demotivation happens is of little value if we do
not also understand how remotivation can happen.

6.2.2 From Demotivation to Remotivation: Dynamics of Past, Present

and Future Selves
Let us consider a promising line of inquiry pursued by Joseph Falout and his col-
leagues in Japan (e.g. Falout, 2012, 2016, 2021; Falout et al., 2009; Falout et
al., 2013), which has examined how processes of demotivation and remotiva-
tion might be theorised within the language learner’s self-concept system. Falout
(2021) provides a helpful narrative account of the series of classroom research
studies that has shaped this work over several years.
In summary, what Falout and his colleagues initially found was that low-prof-
ciency learners of English at university in Japan who reported past demotivation
144 Motivation and Language Teaching
tended to report current dislike of English, while high-profciency learners of
English who reported past demotivation tended to report liking English. In follow-
up research analysing what learners reported as demotivating, it was found that
low-profciency learners tended to attribute their demotivation internally, blam-
ing themselves for their disappointing performance in, for example, not being able
to learn vocabulary or grammar rules well. In contrast, high-profciency learners
tended to attribute their demotivation to external factors, such as the course con-
tent or the teachers. This internal attribution among low-profciency learners led
Falout and his colleagues to focus on the role of the learner’s self-concept in demo-
tivation. Essentially, if learners’ self-concept in relation to their ability to learn
English is damaged by these internal attributions, this may impede their capacity
to respond adaptively to further negative experiences. Subsequent research showed
that students who carried negative emotional baggage from their previous language
learning history, or what Falout (2016) calls their past selves, tended to evidence
the most demotivation and self-blame and tended to be less able to remotivate
themselves, resorting to self-motivational strategies that were not effective or not
sustained. In contrast, students with positive emotional baggage or past selves were
better able to overcome current challenges in their learning and to self-regulate
their motivation. In short, learners’ past selves seemed to play a signifcant role in
shaping the subsequent negative or positive evolution of their motivation.
As Falout (2021) discusses, raising learners’ awareness of their past selves and
how these connect with and yet are differentiated from their current selves and
their future selves may be pedagogically important in this respect. For students
with negative emotional baggage, the process of sharing their language learning
history with classmates and hearing others’ stories too may help them to re-eval-
uate and reframe their past learning experiences in a more positive light (see also
Section 4.5 on motivation and narrative identity). Such awareness-raising may
also help them to acquire new and better past experiences as their current learn-
ing journey progresses, which, in turn, may help them to develop more positive
and constructive expectations for their future selves.
In framing the processes of demotivation and remotivation in relation to the
dynamics of the learner’s self-concept, this line of inquiry is valuable in shift-
ing attention away from simply classifying demotivators as either external or
internal, and in focusing instead on language learners’ self-related cognitions
and emotions as they process negative experiences, and on how these cognitions
and emotions can be changed. In the next section, we will revisit one particular
subset of cognitions – language mindsets (see Section 4.5) – that may play a par-
ticularly important role in how learners respond adaptively or maladaptively to
negative experiences.

6.3 The Relevance of Fixed and Growth Mindsets

While the work of Falout and his colleagues has usefully highlighted the role of
internal ability attributions (see Section 2.1.4) in contributing to the demotiva-
tion of low-profciency language learners, an important underlying question is
 Motivation in Context 145
how learners actually conceptualise ability. If they view it as something fxed and
predetermined (i.e. you either have a gift for languages or have not), this is likely
to have more negative consequences for their motivation than if they view such
ability as something that everyone possesses and can grow and develop. As we
saw earlier in Section 4.5, these contrasting belief systems, or implicit theories,
have been characterised as fxed and growth mindsets, and according to mindset
theory (Dweck, 2017), people’s motivation to learn and develop their potential
may be affected by whether they believe their capacity to do so is limited (fxed
mindset) or not (growth mindset). For example, if we hold the frm belief that
learning to speak a new language fuently is impossible if we do not start when we
are very young or if we do not live in the host L2 environment, we may not see
much value in trying.
These last examples illustrate what Lou and Noels (2019) characterise as a
language mindset, that is, a domain-specifc subset of the mindsets that people
have about their psychological attributes, such as ability or personality, and
the degree to which these are fxed or malleable. They make the point that
this domain-specifc mindset is likely to be more strongly associated with lan-
guage learning motivation than general intelligence mindsets, as evidenced in
Lou and Noels (2017). After all, people may possess fxed mindsets about their
capacity to learn languages and become quickly demotivated when they experi-
ence little progress despite their efforts, and yet they may simultaneously sustain
a growth mindset in relation to developing their potential in other domains of
learning such as science or music. Importantly too, as Lou and Noels (2019)
highlight, language learners may sustain not just one mindset system consist-
ently throughout the L2 learning process, but they may shift their beliefs adap-
tively or maladaptively in response to different social learning situations. For
example, in classroom settings that promote performance (rather than mastery)
orientations (see Section 2.1.6) and competitive goal structures (see Section
2.2.3), the social focus on comparative ability levels means that learners with
fxed mindsets are more likely to activate and strengthen these beliefs. By the
same token, in a supportive learning context where the focus is on self-paced
personal mastery and progress, such learners may be brought instead to shift
towards a growth mindset. In addition, as Mercer and Ryan (2010) have dem-
onstrated, language learners may hold different mindsets for different aspects of
L2 learning, such as a growth mindset for learning grammar but a fxed mindset
in relation to improving pronunciation.
As Lou and Noels (2019) emphasise, language mindsets thus represent a more
complex and nuanced construct than a simple dichotomous categorisation, since
learners may shift dynamically between fxed and growth mindsets depending
on the social learning environment or the specifc learning focus. In relation to
demotivation, the adaptive or maladaptive nature of these shifts is likely to play a
signifcant role, especially when confronting experiences of poor performance or
failure, since the type of mindset learners activate will shape how they perceive
and respond to such negative experiences and whether they can regulate their
motivation or not.
146 Motivation and Language Teaching

QUOTE 6.1 LOU AND NOELS ON FAILURE MINDSETS

AND THEIR IMPACT ON MOTIVATION
Fixed and growth mindsets also guide people to construe failure in
different ways, above and beyond controllable versus uncontrolla-
ble attributions. When performance is unsatisfactory, learners with
growth mindsets are more likely to positively reappraise their set-
backs, to refect on their mistakes, and to look for ways to improve.
… Conversely, learners with fxed mindsets tend to regard failure as
debilitating; they assume the failure is lasting and uncontrollable.
Lou & Noels (2019, p. 546)

The potential for learners to shift between different mindsets brings with it, of
course, the potential for supportive pedagogical interventions that promote adap-
tive rather than maladaptive belief systems to help learners deal positively and
constructively with experiences of failure or poor performance (Ushioda, 2014).
Research on mindsets within SLA (Lou & Noels, 2017) as well as more broadly
in educational psychology (Dweck & Yeager, 2018) suggests that focused inter-
ventions (i.e. teaching students specifcally about growth mindsets) can indeed
have signifcant positive outcomes and help counteract demotivation and facili-
tate remotivation.

6.4 Critical Factors in the Broader Sociocultural Context

As our discussion in the preceding sections has highlighted, focusing on learners’
own cognitions and emotions in how they process negative learning experiences
is important for understanding why some learners may succumb to demotivation
while others may remain relatively resilient. Furthermore, as we have seen, this
theoretical focus on learners’ cognitions in relation to demotivation is important
for understanding how to design supportive pedagogical interventions to facili-
tate adaptive thinking and the internal capacity for remotivation. Returning to
the question we posed earlier (Section 6.1) about whether the factors that trigger
demotivation are always external to the learner, we can appreciate that the situa-
tion is rather more complex and nuanced than this, since learner-internal factors
play a signifcant role too in whether demotivation is felt or not, and whether it
is short-lived or not.
From a pedagogical and educational perspective, however, one can argue that
there may be ethical concerns in partly locating the causes of student demotiva-
tion or disaffection internally – that is, in effect laying the blame to some extent
on language learners themselves. This was the position taken by Terry Lamb
(2009) over a decade ago, who maintained that we need to adopt instead a criti-
cal perspective in which the education system, rather than the students, should
be viewed as the problem. Conceptualising disaffection as a “search for a voice
 Motivation in Context 147
in the context of disenfranchisement” (p. 68), Lamb discussed focus group data
from motivated and demotivated young teenage language learners in a northern
English school, who voiced a desire to be able to exercise choices about their
learning and who talked openly about issues of control, power and responsibility
in their relations with their teachers. Drawing on these learners’ voices, Lamb
presented the case for developing participatory classroom structures through
which learners can express their opinions and be heard as well as negotiate and
compromise; through which they can resist the imposition of learning which
is not perceived to be relevant or where the relevance is not made clear; and
through which they can articulate appropriate and viable learning alternatives.

QUOTE 6.2 TERRY LAMB ON A CRITICAL

THEORY PERSPECTIVE ON DEMOTIVATION
I take the position that locating the problem of poor motivation in
learners themselves is socially unjust. Blaming the learners or their
families for underachievement or lack of motivation is problematic,
especially given the differential levels of achievement and engagement
between children of different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds.
… Rejection of such defcit theories leads to a more critical perspec-
tive, in which the education system itself (curriculum, structures, etc.)
is construed as the problem, clearly failing particular sections of the
population.
Lamb (2009, pp. 67–68)

Lamb developed his argument in the context of secondary education in

England, a context where issues of declining motivation for learning foreign
languages were, and continue to be, especially acute (e.g. Lanvers, 2017;
Lanvers & Chambers, 2019; Tinsley, 2018). While part of the problem may
reside in the educational system and structures as Lamb suggested, it is also
likely that we need to look further afeld to the attitudes, discourses and ide-
ologies that prevail in the wider sociocultural context, and that may impact
negatively on students’ motivation to learn foreign languages. This argument
was put forward by Coleman (2009) in his incisive critique of why the British
do not learn foreign languages, in which he drew explicit connections between
school pupils’ declining motivation for foreign language learning and the dis-
courses of British insularity, monolingualism and anti-Europeanism that were
increasingly pervading political debate and policy-making as well as the popu-
lar print and broadcast media in the UK ten years ago. A decade later, in our
current socio-political climate shaped by Brexit as well as voices representing
anti-immigration and anti-globalisation, the negative discourses and ideologies
have become even more pronounced, and have been linked to a further marked
decline in young people’s motivation to learn languages in the UK (Tinsley &
148 Motivation and Language Teaching
Dolezal, 2018). Similarly in the United States, as Thompson (2017) discusses,
the motivation to learn Spanish (the mostly commonly studied LOTE in the
US context) has become subjected to increasingly negative discourses and ide-
ologies for a number of reasons.
However, despite the non-supportive socio-political culture in many coun-
tries, not everyone will necessarily experience a decline in their motivation to
learn foreign languages (especially non-global ones). In the UK educational
context, as Coffey (2018) and Lanvers, Doughty and Thompson (2018) criti-
cally highlight, the upward or downward direction that language learning moti-
vation takes may also interact with students’ social class or socio-economic
status. Essentially, children from independent (i.e. fee-paying) schools are
more likely to choose to study foreign languages beyond the age of 14 (when
foreign languages cease to be compulsory in England) than those from state-
funded schools, and especially from schools where a high proportion of children
are entitled to free school meals (which is identifed as a measure of social dep-
rivation). As Lanvers and her colleagues discuss, this socially marked difference
in children’s uptake of foreign languages can be attributed not only to differ-
ences in resource and opportunity (e.g. for travel, study abroad, intercultural
experiences), but also to important differences in the value systems into which
they are socialised. Using a Bourdieuan framework, they explain how “language
skills are dominantly valued (as cultural, social, and economic capital) by privi-
leged minorities” (p. 780); in contrast, children from lower socio-economic
backgrounds, who have less exposure to the values of language learning that go
beyond the merely instrumental, “are encultured into a monolingual mindset
or habitus” (ibid). In this respect, as Coffey (2018) emphasises, beliefs about
the value of language learning are highly situated, formed and reproduced in
the local realities and culture through which young people are socialised. For
those encultured into a monolingual mindset or habitus, wider socio-political
or media discourses promoting nationalistic sentiments or devaluing the need
for learning foreign languages in a world where English dominates may thus
resonate strongly and be more likely to accelerate the decline in motivation to
engage with L2 learning.
As Lanvers, Doughty and Thompson (2018, p. 788) comment, this “stark
social segregation in language learning” constitutes a particular challenge for
language education in the UK context. Yet in language learning contexts in
other parts of the world too, we see growing critical discussion of a social divide
between “elite” forms of elective bilingualism and multilingualism among the
more privileged sectors of society, and “non-elite” or “grassroots” multilingual-
ism among the more socially disadvantaged or marginalised sectors (e.g. Barakos
& Selleck, 2019; Ortega, 2019; Stavans & Hoffman, 2015). In this respect, an
important implication for researching, theorising and addressing demotivation in
language learning must be to take into critical account these wider social perspec-
tives that may impinge on how language learners from different sectors of society
respond to negative experiences and setbacks in their motivational journey.
 Motivation in Context 149
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7 Teacher Motivation

This chapter will…

• analyse the unique characteristics of the “motivation to teach”;

• characterise what we know about the motivation of language teachers;
• discuss the relevance of teacher motivation to student motivation and their
interrelationships.

As the preceding chapters have made clear, teachers’ behaviours, practices and
relationships with language learners in the classroom play a hugely signifcant
role in what happens to the motivation of these learners and in infuencing
the positive or negative direction that this motivation can take. Of course, an
assumption is that teachers are, by the nature of their professional vocation,
committed to helping students to learn, and that this is a primary motivation
for being a teacher and for developing one’s practice to be as effective as possi-
ble. However, as we know from our explorations so far, motivation is rarely such
a straightforward matter, especially when we take into account the dynamic
social realities in which it is situated. What motivates teachers in different
parts of the world to pursue this profession and what happens to their motiva-
tion as their experiences evolve are complex and worthwhile areas of inquiry
in themselves that extend well beyond the scope of this book. Thus, it is not
our aim here to provide a comprehensive overview of this diverse and grow-
ing body of literature (for a recent review of empirical studies in mainstream
educational research from 2007 to 2016, see Fray & Gore, 2018). Instead, in
keeping with our core focus on the motivation of language learners, our interest
in teacher motivation in this book is largely confned to understanding how it
impacts on and interacts with student motivation and learning in the language
classroom. We will begin by examining the concept of teacher motivation and
analysing the characteristics of the “motivation to teach” and how these have
tended to be theorised. Turning our attention to the language teaching profes-
sion, we will then discuss insights from explorations of teacher motivation in
this context, and identify some critical issues arising. In the fnal part of this
chapter, we consider how teacher motivation is relevant to student motivation
and learning.
 Teacher Motivation 153
7.1 Conceptualising the “Motivation to Teach”
The concept of “motivation to teach” has been conceptualised in relation to
various theoretical frameworks commonly applied to explaining motivation
and human behaviour in the workplace. These include many of the general
psychological models of motivation that we have previously discussed, such
as achievement goal theory (e.g. Butler, 2012, 2014), self-effcacy theory (e.g.
Tschannen-Moran & Johnson, 2011; Zee & Koomen, 2016), self-determination
theory (e.g. Roth, 2014; Stupnisky et al., 2018), expectancy-value theory (e.g.
Watt & Richardson, 2007; Watt, Richardson & Smith, 2017a) and possible
selves theory (e.g. Hamman et al., 2013).
At the same time, however, it is recognised that people’s motivations for pur-
suing teaching as a career “are not formed in a sociocultural vacuum” (Watt,
Richardson & Smith, 2017b, p. 3), and that various social-environmental, struc-
tural and systemic factors will also shape these motivations. In other words, to
explain and understand teacher motivation, we clearly need to look beyond
internal psychological factors such as intrinsic motivation or self-effcacy beliefs,
and consider the wider sociocultural context of pathways into teacher education,
career development structures, as well as teachers’ social positioning, professional
status and working conditions.

QUOTE 7.1 WATT, RICHARDSON AND SMITH ON

EXTERNAL STRUCTURAL FACTORS SHAPING THE
MOTIVATION TO BE A TEACHER
In countries where teaching is highly valued, it is unlikely that pro-
spective teacher education candidates will “fall back” into the career
because they were not able to enter their career of choice or because
they could not think what else they could do. This should be even
more the case where pathways into teacher education are highly selec-
tive and educational requirements to qualify are comprehensive and
demanding. … By contrast, other motivations for career choice may
surface in systems that are not highly selective at the point of entry
and characterised by high variability in prior academic achievement,
allowing multiple pathways into teacher education without processes
in place to assess interpersonal qualities critical to being a teacher.
Watt, Richardson & Smith (2017b, pp. 3–4)

Importantly too, as with all forms of motivation, there is a temporal dimension in

teachers’ motivational journeys as they move through successive stages of profes-
sional development and experience, and as they negotiate various challenges and
constraints in the classroom and in their working lives. At the time of writing,
for example, teachers across the world are having to contend with the impact of
a global pandemic on education, as they negotiate the challenges of switching
154 Motivation and Language Teaching
to teaching online in virtual classrooms, or of teaching in physical classrooms
while maintaining social distancing, or of managing signifcant disruptions to the
rhythm of the academic year and to examination schedules. While these current
circumstances are certainly extraordinary, it is no exaggeration to say that, even
under normal conditions, teaching is considered to be among the more stress-
ful occupations, with high rates of attrition commonplace in many educational
contexts (Geiger & Pivarova, 2018). This negative picture is refected, for exam-
ple, in a recent report on the teacher labour market in England in which 20 per
cent of the teachers surveyed acknowledged feeling tense about their job most
of the time, compared to 13 per cent of similar professionals (Worth & Van den
Brande, 2019). Thus, in analysing teacher motivation, it is perhaps not surpris-
ing that the literature base extends also to research on health and personality
psychology, particularly in relation to issues of stress and burnout (e.g. Kiesche &
Schaarschmidt, 2008; von der Embse et al., 2019).

7.1.1 The Multidimensional Nature of the Motivation to Teach

As is clear from the preceding discussion, teacher motivation is complex, socially
situated, dynamic and multidimensional, and (as with accounts of human motiva-
tion in general) no single theoretical framework can possibly encapsulate this com-
plexity in all its entirety. Hence, there exist various theoretical accounts of teacher
motivation in mainstream educational research. Of relevance to our concerns in
this book is how the multidimensional nature of the motivation to teach has been
conceptualised across these various frameworks: it is useful to examine whether
mainstream theoretical accounts of teacher motivation encompass all the elements
that may shape language teacher motivation, or whether language teacher motiva-
tion may have distinctive domain-specifc characteristics that require particular the-
orisation, in much the same way that L2 learning motivation has historically been
theorised to have characteristics specifc to this domain of learning (see Chapter 3).
We will begin creating an appropriate theoretical base by exploring a major
infuential programme of research that has sought to capture the multidimen-
sional nature of the motivation to teach – that is, the motivation to choose teach-
ing as a career – and to apply this comprehensive framework to the analysis of
teacher motivation in a wide variety of international settings. This research pro-
gramme was initiated by Helen Watt and Paul Richardson (2007, 2012) with the
development of a FIT-Choice [Factors Infuencing Teaching Choice] framework,
drawing on an expectancy–value theoretical account of identity goals and life
choices (Eccles, 2009). The following brief overview of the FIT-Choice model
of teacher motivation is based on the summary account of its main components
provided by Watt, Richardson and Smith (2017b, pp. 6–7).

Watt and Richardson’s FIT-Choice Framework

At its core, the framework includes the “altruistic-type” motives that are com-
monly highlighted in the empirical literature to be of intrinsic importance for
 Teacher Motivation 155
teachers (e.g. Dinham & Scott, 2000), and that emphasise a sense of social pur-
pose and social contribution in choosing teaching as a vocation:

• shape the future of children or adolescents;

• enhance social equity;
• make a social contribution;
• work with children or adolescents.

Alongside the social utility value of teaching, this theoretical model of teacher
motivation also includes its personal utility value relating to more extrinsic quality
of life issues such as:

• job security;
• time for family;
• job transferability.

The framework furthermore incorporates the motivational value of teaching as

a fallback career, refecting the possibility that some individuals may resort to this
profession as an alternative option when other career pathways do not work out.
In addition, the FIT-Choice model takes account of the fact that the moti-
vation to become a teacher is likely to be shaped by how teaching is viewed as
a profession in terms of its anticipated demands (expertise and diffculty) and
anticipated rewards (social status and salary), and by how individuals perceive their
own teaching abilities or self-effcacy in this regard. Finally, and importantly, the
framework integrates the various socialisation infuences that may be contributing
factors, including prior teaching and learning experiences as well as experiences
of social dissuasion or infuence in one’s choice of teaching as a career.
The FIT-Choice model has been operationalised as a measurement instru-
ment that has been empirically validated (Watt & Richardson, 2007) and that
has been used by these and other researchers to investigate teacher motivation
across many geographical and educational settings. This has enabled a compre-
hensive programme of comparative international research, as illustrated recently
in a collection of studies from 12 countries (Watt, Richardson & Smith, 2017a).
While these studies do indeed point to the varied and multidimensional nature
of the motivation to teach and its complex interactions with local social-envi-
ronmental and cultural factors, the fndings also consistently underline the core
motivational importance of a desire to contribute to a better society, along with a
sense of self-effcacy as a teacher and a personal interest in teaching. Collectively,
the studies suggest that extrinsic rewards such as salary and status tend not to be
signifcant drivers of teacher motivation in general.
In a concluding commentary chapter in this edited collection of studies,
Butler (2017) discusses how this common motivational profle among teach-
ers is broadly consistent with “general tendencies for people to perceive them-
selves as more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated in personally important
domains” (p. 380). As she notes, this pattern is mirrored also in studies of teacher
156 Motivation and Language Teaching
motivation that adopt self-determination theory rather than expectancy–value
theory as a theoretical framework, where teachers typically report high levels of
autonomous or intrinsic motivation for teaching (e.g. Roth, 2014; Roth et al.,
2007). A similar pattern is observed in studies of teacher motivation that draw on
achievement goal frameworks (see Section 2.1.6), as refected in the tendency for
student teachers and practising teachers to prioritise mastery goals (developing
skills and competence) rather than performance goals (demonstrating ability or
avoiding demonstration of low ability) in their approach to professional develop-
ment and to teaching (Butler, 2014).
Regarding achievement goals, however, Butler (2012) also underlines the
importance of relational as well as mastery goals in explaining teacher motiva-
tion, given that teaching is a highly interpersonal rather than simply personal
endeavour. As her research shows, relational goals, whereby teachers strive to
connect with and develop close and caring relationships with students, have
been found to predict students’ reported perceptions of teacher social support
and mastery instruction.

The Relational Aspect of Teacher Motivation

This emphasis on relational goals in teacher motivation aligns clearly with our
earlier discussion (Section 5.2.1) of how building positive interpersonal relation-
ships and moments of connectedness with students in the language classroom
can enhance the quality of students’ own motivation and engagement (Henry
& Thorsen, 2018; see also Gkonou & Mercer, 2018, on the relational beliefs
and practices of language teachers). With specifc reference to the L2 teach-
ing domain, it is likely that relational goals in teacher motivation may include
unique characteristics because of how language is simultaneously the focus and
the medium of interpersonal communication in the classroom. In particular, how
L2 teachers accomplish such relational goals may partly depend on whether they
share the same language and cultural background with their students or not. If
they do, they may, for example, strategically code-switch to the shared L1 in
informal asides during classroom talk to build rapport with their students; they
may also perhaps share personal stories of their own struggles and experiences in
learning the L2, in order to connect with students’ perspectives. On the other
hand, where teachers are frst language speakers of the target language and do
not share the same linguistic and cultural background as their students, accom-
plishing relational goals in the classroom may also entail intercultural skills in
managing their interpersonal relationships with students and showing sensitivity
to culturally appropriate norms and behaviours in this regard. These relational
and intercultural processes are likely to be even more complex when working
with language learners from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds in the
same classroom. In short, the relational and interpersonal dimensions of general
teacher motivation may require more particular theorisation when applied to the
specifc domain of language teacher motivation.
 Teacher Motivation 157
In addition, when we consider subject-specifc teacher motivation, we may
fnd that general frameworks do not provide a suffciently nuanced analysis. In
commenting on the empirical studies that have used Watt and Richardson’s
(2007) FIT-Choice framework, Butler (2017, p. 379) makes the critical observa-
tion that “interest in the subject matter” tends not to be included in most studies,
even though a scale tapping into subject matter interest was developed (Watt,
Richardson & Morris, 2017) as an additional component of the FIT-Choice
model. As Butler notes, interest in the subject matter or discipline is likely to
be of motivational relevance especially to those teaching in secondary schools
(and, one might add, for those teaching in the higher education sector), and as
she reports, subject-specifc interest has been found to be distinct from general
intrinsic interest in teaching in factor analytic analyses of teacher motivation
(e.g. Schiefele, Streblow & Retelsdorf, 2013). For those who pursue language
teaching as a career, subject-specifc interest as well as the nature of one’s own
personal relationship and history with the language (e.g. as an L1, L2 or multi-
lingual speaker) and its associated culture will undoubtedly be of motivational
relevance to some degree.

7.2 The Motivation of L2 Teachers

Having explored general accounts of teacher motivation and also some of their
limitations, let us now turn to examining the specifc case of L2 teacher moti-
vation. This domain has grown signifcantly through the second decade of this
century, with comparatively little published research before this period (most nota-
bly perhaps, Doyle & Kim, 1999; Hayes, 2008; Kubanyiova, 2009). This recent
growth in interest is refected in a remarkable proliferation of published studies on
L2 teacher motivation in various parts of the world, though this body of research is
dominated by a focus on teachers of English rather than of other languages. Such
research includes, for example, an analysis of motivation and quality of work life
among secondary school EFL teachers in Iran (Baleghizadeh & Gordani, 2012);
a study of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors among EFL teachers work-
ing in Turkish private educational institutions operating in Iraq (Koran, 2015);
studies of initial career motives and demotivation among EFL teachers in South
Korea (Kim & Kim, 2015) and in Turkey (Taşçı, 2019); a longitudinal case study
of English language teacher motivation in Beijing from a complex dynamic sys-
tems perspective (Kimura, 2014); a study of teacher and student motivation in a
Spanish EMI (English-medium of instruction) university context, drawing on the
L2 Motivational Self System (Doiz & Lasagabaster, 2018); studies of motivation
among pre-service teachers of English in Finland using visual narratives to explore
how they envision their future classes (Kalaja & Mäntylä, 2018); studies that draw
on possible selves theory to examine motivation among teachers of English in
Slovakia (Kubanyiova, 2012), South Korea (Hiver, 2013), Armenia (Sahakyan,
Lamb & Chambers, 2018) or in rural regions of China (Gao & Xu, 2014); a col-
lected volume of studies of teacher motivation in China, Japan and South Korea
158 Motivation and Language Teaching
(Kimura, Yang & Kim, in press); and an international comparison of career choice
infuences on the motivation of pre-service foreign language teachers in the United
States, Germany and China (Kissau et al., 2019).
This current tide of interest in L2 teacher motivation can be linked to rising
interest in language teacher psychology more broadly, which has now become
established as a feld of inquiry in its own right, distinct from, yet also comple-
menting, the long-established feld of research into language learner psychology.
These contemporary developments are refected in the recent surge in books,
edited volumes and journal special issues focusing on various aspects of language
teacher psychology (e.g. Benesch, 2017; de Dios Martínez Agudo, 2018; Gkonou,
Dewaele & King, 2020; Gkonou & Mercer, 2017; Gregersen & MacIntyre, 2017;
Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015; Mercer & Kostoulas, 2018), or on language learner
and language teacher psychology together (e.g. Sampson & Pinner, 2021).
Current interest in the motivation of L2 teachers thus aligns and interacts with
current interest in several other dimensions of language teacher psychology such
as teacher cognitions, emotions, attitudes, self-effcacy beliefs, well-being, agency
and identity development (see e.g. Mercer & Gregersen, 2020).
At the same time, however, and in keeping with approaches to conceptualis-
ing teacher motivation in general, current interest in L2 teacher motivation is
also informed by wider social-environmental perspectives that go beyond inter-
nal psychological factors. As Kubanyiova (2019) comments in her overview of
the current landscape of language teacher motivation research, these wider per-
spectives include a more critical orientation to language education and language
teacher education. While teacher motivation is not necessarily a specifc focus of
inquiry in such work, core aspects of teacher motivation such as language teach-
ers’ sense of social purpose or their relational goals may connect deeply with
critical issues raised, for example, around legitimating teachers’ and learners’
multilingual identities and resources, or around teachers’ efforts to decolonise
language curricula when working with marginalised or minoritised communities
of learners (e.g. De Costa & Norton, 2017; Varghese et al., 2016).
In short, the study of L2 teacher motivation currently encompasses a very
broad range of psychological, social-environmental and critical perspectives,
and it is not our intention here to review these in depth. (More comprehensive
overviews of the literature can be found in Hiver, Kim & Kim, 2018, and in
Kubanyiova, 2019.) As noted earlier, our primary interest in teacher motivation
in this chapter lies in understanding how it intersects with the motivation of lan-
guage learners. In what follows in this section, we will therefore select a few per-
spectives that are especially relevant in this regard. We will begin by discussing
work that has extended the application of possible selves theory from the analysis
of language learner motivation to the analysis of language teacher motivation.

7.2.1 Language Teacher Motivation and Possible Selves

As we saw in Section 3.3.4, possible selves theory has been used extensively
to examine language learners’ motivation, particularly through the prism of
 Teacher Motivation 159
Dörnyei’s (2005) L2 Motivational Self System; hence it is perhaps not surpris-
ing that this infuential theoretical lens has also been directed to focus on the
motivation of those who teach language learners. It is worth noting that, within
mainstream educational research too, possible selves theory has been applied to
the analysis of future-oriented thinking and professional development among
teachers, especially during pre-service education (e.g. Hamman et al., 2013), and
therefore its application to the analysis of language teacher motivation is not
unique.
In relation to the language teaching domain, it was Kubanyiova (2009, 2012)
who paved the way through her work in articulating the connections among
teacher cognition, teacher motivation and teacher development, with a particu-
lar focus on exploring conceptual change in language teachers who are engaged
in professional development. Drawing on Dörnyei’s work and the notion of future
self-guides, Kubanyiova developed the concepts of an Ideal Language Teacher Self
(i.e. the personal identity goals and aspirations of language teachers), and an
Ought-to Language Teacher Self (i.e. language teachers’ cognitive representations
of their professional responsibilities and obligations, which may be shaped by
contextual and normative pressures and expectations). In addition, she devel-
oped the concept of a Feared Language Teacher Self (i.e. what teachers fear they
might become if they do not live up to their own ideal or perceived responsibili-
ties and obligations).
Kubanyiova (2009, 2012) reports on a longitudinal study of eight Slovakian
teachers of English who undertook an in-service course introducing them to
motivation-sensitive and autonomy-enhancing teaching approaches. Her fnd-
ings suggest that the extent to which teachers actively engage with the training
input and develop their own practice may depend on (a) how far this input and
its pedagogical principles are consistent with their own intrinsic aspirations or
Ideal Language Teacher Selves; (b) how far they recognise a dissonance between
their current and desired end-states; and (c) how much they are motivated to
reduce this gap. Teachers who experience such dissonance between their current
and ideal selves and who espouse the pedagogical principles of the training input
are more likely to employ self-regulatory strategies to minimise the impact of
contextual constraints on their development. With some teachers, on the other
hand, their working self-concept may be dominated by context-related Ought-to
Language Teacher Selves or Feared Language Teacher Selves; these are likely to
inhibit engagement with a new approach to teaching (e.g. giving students more
autonomy) if they do not conform with local expectations (e.g. students may
believe that the teacher is not serious or competent enough if she gives them too
much autonomy), or if contextual pressures and constraints are perceived as too
great.
A particular strength of Kubanyiova’s analysis is that it unravels individual
complexities in how a teacher’s motivation may be affected by contextual con-
ditions and demands, such as perceptions of what students want and expect. In
essence, it seems that the impact of local contextual factors on teacher motiva-
tion will depend very much on the particular confguration of possible selves
160 Motivation and Language Teaching
constituting the teacher’s working self-concept, which will also shape their level
of responsiveness to the training input they receive.

QUOTE 7.2 KUBANYIOVA ON TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

AND POSSIBLE SELVES
The data of this research project indicate that the fear of not meeting
students’ expectations becomes a factor inhibiting change when it is
associated with an imminent threat to the teachers’ identity goals, irre-
spective of whether or not the students’ real expectations are at play.
Similarly, the extent to which a variety of contextual demands, such
as heavy workload or the unsupportive school culture, produce detri-
mental dissonance depends on the teachers’ internal appraisal of their
conditions. These are, in turn, determined by those possible selves that
are most central in their working self-concept. Therefore, in order to
understand the detrimental impact of sociocultural contexts on teacher
development, we need to examine the degree to which the teachers
had adopted contextually primed ought-to selves as their self-guides.
Kubanyiova (2009, pp. 327–328)

In the rather different context of South Korea, Hiver (2013) similarly explored
the role that possible language teacher selves may play in shaping Korean English
language teachers’ decisions to engage in continuing professional develop-
ment. While all seven teacher participants in his study had a clearly elaborated
Ideal Language Teacher Self, it seems that this future self-image as an ideal or
expert language teacher was fundamentally associated with a future self-image
as an expert English language user. In other words, they perceived language self-
effcacy to be core to teacher self-effcacy, and for those teachers whose Feared
Language Teacher Self was the most dominant in their working self-concept, lan-
guage insecurity was a signifcant factor. For teachers of English in this context,
therefore, it seems that the desire to improve their own language profciency pro-
vides the main motivation for engaging in continuing professional development.
Commenting on this fnding, Hiver (2013) speculates as to whether teachers
in other subject disciplines would similarly attribute such motivational impor-
tance to their own competence in the subject. While it may be the case that
they do, perceived subject competence or insecurity may have unique relevance
for language teachers who are not frst language speakers of the target language.
This relevance may depend on how they feel positioned as “non-native” speaker
teachers within their local educational contexts by other people, such as by their
own students (e.g. Aslan & Thompson, 2017) or by other teachers. In some
social and educational settings, teachers who are not frst language speakers of
the target language may feel less threatened by and more accepting of their “non-
native-speaker” status, remaining content with a future Feasible Self rather than
Ideal Self, as reported by Sahakyan, Lamb and Chambers (2018) in their study
 Teacher Motivation 161
of English teachers in Armenia. In many other settings, however, such teachers
may feel more prone to feelings of insecurity (or a sense of “impostor syndrome”,
as characterised by Bernat, 2008) about their language competence and their
status within the profession, as refected in contemporary critical debates around
“native-speaker” versus “non-native-speaker” teachers of English in particular
(e.g. Kamhi-Stein, 2016).
In concluding his study, Hiver (2013, p. 221) makes the point that “pri-
vate, egocentric factors” (i.e. enhancing one’s English language self-effcacy
and teacher self) were more important than external factors and obligations in
motivating his Korean teacher participants’ decisions to engage in continuing
professional development. This casts an interesting and potentially critical light
on “egocentric” forms of motivation in English language teacher development
that may connect particularly with the status of English as a global language
and the powerful status it accords people who learn to speak it. In a biographical
study of teachers of English from less developed rural regions of China who were
pursuing master’s studies in a central Chinese university, Gao and Xu (2014)
identifed a clear social mobility motive as well as English language competence
as signifcant elements of these teachers’ Ideal Self visions and of their decisions
to undertake teacher education programmes. The researchers speculate that a
professional commitment to teaching itself might not necessarily be associated
with these participants’ core visions of their Ideal Self, which related rather to
“the career prospects and social mobility that a good command of English brings
to them” (p. 159). Even for those teachers who come to associate teaching with
their Ideal Self visions after experiencing how they can have a positive impact on
their learners, their commitment to teaching in rural secondary schools seems to
dissipate in the face of local constraints and challenges and they accordingly look
for better opportunities elsewhere.

7.2.2 Critical Perspectives on Language Teacher Motivation

The above considerations bring us to consider critical perspectives on language
teacher motivation more broadly, with particular reference to how teachers
respond to various social-environmental factors and external constraints that can
impact negatively on their motivation. As noted earlier in Section 7.1, teach-
ing is considered to be among the more stressful occupations, with high rates
of burnout and attrition, and the case of language teaching is no exception. In
a sense, the various issues we have raised in this part of the book regarding the
pedagogical challenges of motivating language learners and keeping them moti-
vated underline the challenges also for language teacher motivation. In many
classroom contexts, after all, language teachers work with groups of learners who
have not necessarily chosen to be there, especially in the case of English as a core
curriculum subject. Language teachers also often have to contend with prepar-
ing students for high stakes exams, and with the logistical challenges of creating
opportunities for individualised language practice and feedback when working
with large mixed ability classes and with limited time and resources. Language
162 Motivation and Language Teaching
teachers may also experience restricted autonomy in relation to, for example,
the textbooks and materials they can choose, or the instructional methods they
are allowed to use, and they may be accountable to offcial curriculum policies,
directives and standards that do not take into consideration local social realities
and classroom constraints (e.g. Banegas, 2019). Beyond the life of the classroom,
language teachers may also face challenges to motivation caused by lack of oppor-
tunities for career development and progression, especially if they do not want
to move into educational leadership and management roles. For many language
teachers working in the higher education and adult education sectors, moreover,
there is a perennial challenge to motivation caused by casualised contracts, low
pay and lack of long-term job security and associated benefts (e.g. Breshears,
2019; Fuisting, 2017).
Given such circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising that critical interest is
growing in the social-environmental challenges to language teacher motivation,
particularly from the perspective of teachers’ capacity to deal adaptively with
these challenges, manage their emotions, and exercise resilience in order to pro-
tect their own motivation and sustain their students’ motivation and learning.
There is now a well-established body of research on the emotional dimension
of language teachers’ professional lives, classroom practices and relational work
(e.g. Benesch, 2017; Gkonou, Dewaele & King, 2020), which intersects with
issues of teacher motivation, burnout and attrition (e.g. De Costa, Li & Rawal,
2020). There is also developing conceptual and empirical work in relation to
language teacher resilience (Hiver, 2018; Kostoulas & Lämmerer, 2018, 2020) and
language teacher immunity (Hiver, 2015; Hiver & Dörnyei, 2017; see Concept 7.1)
that is clearly relevant to issues of teacher motivation.

CONCEPT 7.1 LANGUAGE TEACHER IMMUNITY

Language teacher immunity is conceptualised by Hiver and Dörnyei (2017)
as a metaphor to describe an underlying defensive system (akin to its bio-
logical counterpart) that is activated in response to signifcant external
threats (such as stressful events originating in the classroom or with man-
agement), and that enables teachers to maintain their professional equilib-
rium and emotional well-being and to sustain their practice. In this respect,
language teacher immunity in its adaptive sense connects with the notion
of language teacher resilience, which is understood as a process of drawing
on existing resources to maintain personal well-being, agency, purpose and
professional productivity in the face of adversity (Gu & Day, 2013).
However, language teacher immunity also has its maladaptive “dark
side” (like its biological counterpart) since the immune system may go into
overdrive in a counterproductive manner and fght against all perceived
threats to equilibrium, even those that represent opportunities for positive
 Teacher Motivation 163

change and professional development. In this respect, the metaphor of lan-

guage teacher immunity integrates not only the notions of psychological
well-being and agency that are relevant to teacher motivation, but also the
notion of openness to change and learning that is core to teachers’ motiva-
tion for professional growth.

However, while language teachers’ adaptive capacity to exercise resilience or

immunity in the face of adverse conditions is clearly important in sustaining
their motivation and well-being, this kind of adaptivity may prove largely imma-
terial when the threats to motivation implicate their fundamental moral and
educational values as language teachers. For example, in the context of language
education in Australia, Scarino (2014) comments critically on how the largely
instrumentalist ideologies shaping curriculum policy goals may be diffcult to
countenance for language teachers wishing to promote a different set of values
and to sustain “a social, educational, humanistic rationale” (p. 291) for learn-
ing languages. This issue of language teachers’ own value-oriented positionality
in relation to the purposes of language education is one that Kubanyiova and
Crookes (2016) argue to be increasingly important in their critical re-envisioning
of language teachers’ roles in the 21st century. In a world where language skills
have become commodifed (Heller, 2010) and where language assessment is often
used as a gatekeeping tool in social, educational and employment policy, those
motivated to teach languages because of their intrinsic passion for the language
and culture or their altruistic desire to shape their students’ personal develop-
ment and growth may experience a deep sense of dissonance, especially if their
students are focused primarily on the instrumental value of language learning or
the need to pass exams.
Fundamentally, of course, this critical perspective highlights how the motiva-
tion of language teachers is inextricably linked to the motivation of the students
they teach, and it is to an exploration of this interplay that we now turn.

7.3 Teacher Motivation and Student Motivation: Exploring

Their Interplay
Although the motivational dimension of language teacher psychology is clearly
an area that is attracting increasing research interest, it is only relevant to this
book inasmuch as teacher motivation affects and interacts with language learner
motivation. The link between these two types of motivation is probably most
obvious if we look at it from the reverse angle frst: it seems unlikely that teachers
who are deeply unmotivated or demotivated will have a positive impact on their
students’ motivation, though of course this may depend on a teacher’s level of
professionalism and their skill in regulating their negative emotions so that these
do not affect interactions with students. This self-regulatory process of emotional
164 Motivation and Language Teaching
labour (Hochschild, 1983) in service-oriented professions entailing relational
work with people has long been of research interest in studies of teacher motiva-
tion, stress and burnout in mainstream education (e.g. Näring, Briët & Brouwers,
2006), and has recently begun to be explored in relation to language teachers’
experiences (e.g. Acheson & Nelson, 2020; Benesch, 2020; King & Ng, 2018).
The fact that teachers with a low level of motivation to teach are unlikely
to enthuse their learners does not necessarily mean that the opposite is true and
that high teacher motivation will increase student motivation and, subsequently,
student achievement. Although the latter sounds like a reasonable assumption,
curiously there is relatively little empirical evidence for this positive connec-
tion in the SLA literature. In refecting on this paucity of research, Dörnyei and
Ryan (2015) suggest that the limited output is due to the indirect nature of the
link between the notion of “motivation to teach” and student achievement: in
order to substantiate this association, one needs to show frst that an increase in
teacher motivation leads to the teacher’s improved motivational practice, which
in turn promotes student motivation, which eventually results in enhanced stu-
dent performance. Although the chain is intuitively convincing, the manifold
confounding variables at each connection level make it diffcult to get empirical
confrmation for it. Fortunately, there has been a considerable amount of schol-
arly work in educational psychology on teacher motivation, and taking together
the main fndings in this area with the relevant work in SLA offers an unambigu-
ous indication that teacher motivation is one of the most important determi-
nants of student motivation and learning.

7.3.1 Teacher Passion and Enthusiasm

Let us start our overview of the impact of teacher motivation on student motiva-
tion with an account of a long-standing theoretical perspective that has focused
on the phenomena of teachers’ enthusiasm for the subject and their passion for
teaching. In a thought-provoking article, Csikszentmihalyi (1997) observed that
the most infuential teachers – those who are remembered and who make a real
difference in their students’ development – are not the ones who have the most
status and power, and they may not even be the most intelligent or knowledge-
able instructors a student has. Instead, they are usually the teachers who love
what they are doing, who show by their dedication and their passion that there
is nothing else on earth they would rather be doing, and whose enthusiasm for
the subject becomes “infectious” and instils in students a similar willingness to
pursue knowledge. In a whole book dedicated to the topic, Day (2004, p. 2) has
argued that having such a passion for teaching is not an optional quality but is
“essential to high-quality teaching”, and the positive infuence of this quality on
students’ levels of motivation has been evidenced in a number of studies in gen-
eral education (e.g. Carbonneau et al., 2008; Gilal et al., 2019; for a review, see
Ruiz-Alfonso & León, 2016).
The notion of teacher passion is closely related to teacher enthusiasm, which
is usually conceptualised as a multifaceted construct subsuming the teachers’
 Teacher Motivation 165
expressive behaviours as well as verbal expressions of excitement and interest in
the subject matter (for a review, see Keller et al., 2016). It is generally considered
one of the main determinants of effective teaching – Keller, Neumann and Fischer
(2013) for example report on a study in which “enthusiasm for teaching” came
up as the second most important characteristic of an effective teacher, surpassed
only by “being student-oriented”. There is indeed consistent empirical evidence
showing that teacher enthusiasm has a positive impact on a range of desirable out-
comes, including the student’s motivation, performance and rating of their teach-
ers’ effectiveness (e.g. Frenzel et al., 2019; Keller et al., 2016; Lazarides, Buchholz
& Rubach, 2018). Ding’s (2009) pioneering study of fve enthusiastic language
teachers has also confrmed this positive infuence within the domain of SLA.

7.3.2 How Does Teacher Motivation Impact the Students?

Thus, research has consistently identifed teachers’ dedicated passion and enthusi-
asm as a key facet of effective instruction as well as a strong determinant of students’
motivation and emotional experiences. How is this impact mediated between
teachers and students? Over the past decades several avenues have been suggested,
and an early explanation by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) that highlights the
role of teacher expectations illustrates well the complex subtlety of the possible
mechanisms involved. In a famous experiment, these researchers demonstrated
that teacher expectations can function to some extent as a self-fulflling prophecy
(also referred to as the “Pygmalion effect” after Bernard Shaw’s play), with stu-
dents living up or “down” to their teachers’ expectations (Concept 7.2). According
to the theoretical explanation, the teachers’ expectations of their students trigger
various events and teacher behaviours which, in turn, infuence student perfor-
mance in a corresponding fashion. These mediating infuences can be direct (e.g.
extra learning opportunities or challenges) or indirect (e.g. more detailed perfor-
mance feedback which, in turn, changes student attitudes and motivation). If they
are consistent over time, these infuences are likely to have a cumulative effect
on the student’s academic self-concept, level of aspiration, achievement strivings
and quality of interaction with the teacher, leading ultimately to a change in the
student’s achievement (e.g. Szumski & Karwowski, 2019).

CONCEPT 7.2 ROSENTHAL AND JACOBSON’S EXPERIMENT

TO DOCUMENT THE “PYGMALION EFFECT”
In a famous experiment, Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) administered an
intelligence test to primary school children at the start of the academic
year. Teachers were told that the purpose of this test was to predict which
students would “bloom” intellectually during the academic year. The
researchers, however, deceived the teachers because instead of providing
166 Motivation and Language Teaching

them with the true test scores, they identifed 20 per cent of the sample as
potential “intellectual bloomers” randomly, that is, regardless of their actual
intellectual potential. The results of the experiment were quite remark-
able: by the end of the year there were signifcant differences between the
“bloomers” and the control students whereas at the beginning of the year
they were similar in every respect except in the way they were labelled by
the researchers. Rosenthal and Jacobson explained the emerging difference
by arguing that the (false) information about the students created differen-
tial teacher expectations concerning them and these expectations acted as
self-fulflling prophecies in that students lived up to them.

In a similar way, teachers’ enthusiasm, dedication and passion for the subject
and the students – that is, their overall quality of motivation to teach – will
impact their classroom behaviour and thereby the learners’ motivation, which,
in turn, will be expected to boost student participation, effort, learning and
achievement (Watt & Richardson, 2013). More specifcally, motivated teach-
ers are likely to provide their students with more support and more mastery-
oriented activities (see Section 2.1.6), and Keller et al. (2016) further highlight
two psychological processes relevant to this transmission, “value induction”
and “emotional contagion”. The former explains the teachers’ positive effect
through their role-modelling function, which is a powerful tool for passing on
values, attitudes and beliefs, originating in Bandura’s (1977) seminal work on
social learning theory (for a discussion of its role in SLA, see Muir, Dörnyei
& Adolphs, in press). Emotional contagion concerns a process whereby affec-
tive states are transmitted from one person to another. Its relevance to teacher
motivation lies in conveying the teacher’s enjoyment to the students, and
indeed, Frenzel et al. (2009) found that the relationship between teacher
enjoyment and student enjoyment was specifcally mediated to the whole class
by the teachers’ displayed enthusiasm during teaching. Phenomena of positive
emotional contagion and teacher–student motivational synergies have also
begun to be explored in the context of language education (e.g. Moskowitz &
Dewaele, in press; Pinner, 2019; Sampson, 2016a, 2016b). Signifcantly, practi-
tioner research studies by Pinner and Sampson illustrate the dynamic interplay
between teacher motivation and student motivation in that the impact is not
unidirectional but is a relational, organic and systemic process cumulatively
affecting both teacher and students. Indeed, as Sampson (2016b) explains, his
original action research study (2016a) was designed to engage his Japanese
learners of English in classroom activities that would encourage them to refect
on their motivation, but this then became refocused as an autoethnographic
case study of how his own motivation as a teacher evolved co-adaptively with
his students’ motivation.
 Teacher Motivation 167

QUOTE 7.3 MERCER AND GREGERSEN ON THE

RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WELL-BEING
AND MOTIVATION OF STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
[I]f teachers are happy and satisfed with their lives and work, they
are much more likely to communicate that verbally and non-verbally
to those around them. Teachers’ moods, emotions, and motivation
are highly “contagious” for their learners; learners pick up on their
teacher’s emotions, and they often also mirror them. Quite simply,
then, happy teachers make for happy learners. Importantly, this works
both ways. When students are happy, it is usually more rewarding and
motivating to teach them; thus, teachers are also more likely to draw
positivity from their learners. Such mutually reinforcing positivity cre-
ates a win-win situation for all. …
If teachers are motivated and passionate about their work, the
chances are much higher that their learners will be, too. In addition,
as all teachers can attest, an essential source of motivation for them-
selves emanates from their learners, from the relationships they share,
and from the delight they derive from students’ progress and learning.
The motivation of teachers and learners is tightly intertwined in a
reciprocal relationship.
Mercer & Gregersen (2020, pp. 2, 52)

Finally, we would also like to underline the mediating role of the overall class-
room climate. Schiefele (2017) points out that the teacher’s impact does not depend
exclusively on individual learners’ evaluation and uptake but also on how the class
as a whole rates the particular instructor. In other words, in his study teacher enthu-
siasm promoted peer enthusiasm, and an investigation by Kim and Schallert (2014)
also found that other students’ interest played a substantial role in individual par-
ticipants’ catching enthusiasm. This makes intuitive sense, as it suggests that the
teacher’s enthusiasm is transmitted through the general tenor of the class, with the
ensuing positive “vibes” playing a transformative role in individual learners. This is
in line with Frenzel et al.’s (2009) fnding mentioned above, namely that students’
class-level perceptions of teacher enthusiasm explained the link between teacher
and student enjoyment (see also Lazarides et al., 2018)

7.3.3 Vision in the Language Classroom

With the notion of vision entering the motivational arena (Section 3.3.4), it has
been a logical assumption that teachers can strategically shape their students’ dis-
positions not only through the conscious employment of vision-building strate-
gies (Section 5.4) but also through their own sense of purpose and transformative
vision that they bring to their interactions with students. Indeed, Dörnyei and
168 Motivation and Language Teaching
Kubanyiova (2014) maintain that the teachers’ own vision about their students’
learning is an important component of their motivation to teach; that is, their
ability to develop and sustain a clear vision for themselves as teachers who can
inspire their learners to reach their potential is an integral part of their overall
motivational capacity. Accordingly, they claim that “igniting, or if necessary re-
igniting, the fame of teacher vision is therefore the single most important step
in any motivational agenda for language teachers” (p. 125). At the heart of this
vision to teach is the generation of an image of the desired future teaching self,
and in order to “see” with clarity and conviction the future person that one wants
to become, language teachers need to explore their past and present experiences;
more specifcally, they need to engage with three processes:

1. Developing a deeper understanding of who they are: Dörnyei and Kubanyiova

(2014) argue that the seeds of any future teaching vision are contained in
the teachers’ past experiences as learners, teachers and parents; therefore,
the generation of a vision to teach ought to start with self-refection on
one’s skills, passions and learning/teaching experiences, including the initial
stimuli that encouraged one to choose this profession in the frst place.
2. Refecting on why they are doing what they do as language teachers: the
vision to teach needs to be rooted in a solid foundation of values and pur-
poses; however, as Dörnyei and Kubanyiova (2014) point out, too many L2
teacher education programmes start precisely from the opposite direction,
focusing on what to teach (subject matter) and how (methods, techniques).
3. Constructing a visual image of their ideal teaching selves: Dörnyei and
Kubanyiova (2014) argue that teachers routinely generate images of them-
selves and their practice, a process which can be shaped purposefully to
make the emerging vision more vivid, specifc and coherent, thereby leading
in the desired direction.

The ultimate signifcance of the teachers’ own vision-building process in moti-

vating students lies in the fact that the essence of vision cannot really be taught
to them but only modelled. This in turn means that the teachers themselves are the
message: whether teachers are aware of it or not, they are continuously enacting
implicit messages and sending subconscious signals, and students are sensitive to
these and are likely to respond to them.

QUOTE 7.4 DÖRNYEI AND KUBANYIOVA ON THE

INTERPLAY BETWEEN TEACHER VISION AND
STUDENT MOTIVATION
We are interested in transforming classrooms into learning environ-
ments that truly facilitate the study of foreign languages. Such a trans-
formation of classroom practice has to begin with the teachers, because
they are the people in the best position to shape classroom life. As
 Teacher Motivation 169

evidenced by so many inspiring examples around the world, teachers

can become transformational leaders, and the engine of this transfor-
mational drive is the teacher’s vision for change and improvement.
The good news about this vision is that it is highly contagious: it has
the potential to infect the students and generate an attractive vision
for language learning in them.
Dörnyei & Kubanyiova (2014, p. 3)

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Part III

Researching Motivation
8 Making Motivation a
Researchable Concept

This chapter will…

• describe the distinctive features of motivation research, including its inher-

ent challenges;
• discuss the main methodological decisions one has to take when launching
a research project;
• address some key principles of designing L2 motivation studies.

Having looked into the nature of L2 motivation in the previous chapters and
having analysed its educational relevance, in Part III we turn our attention to a
third aspect of the notion of motivation, its researchability. L2 motivation research
is aimed at understanding the operation of motivational factors/processes in the
learning of second languages as well as exploring ways to optimise student moti-
vation. We saw in Chapter 3 that the study of L2 motivation was initially shaped
by a pioneering social psychological perspective, spearheaded by Robert Gardner
and his associates in Canada (Section 3.1). A welcome consequence of this ori-
entation was that right from the beginning the feld adopted the high professional
standards of psychological research, which was further augmented by the fact that
Gardner himself was a specialist in statistics (see e.g. Gardner, 2001). As a result,
the assessment of L2 motivation utilised advanced procedures and Gardner
and his colleagues also developed a standardised questionnaire, the Attitude/
Motivation Test Battery (Gardner, 1985), whose availability contributed greatly
to the increase of research on L2 motivation.
Thus, L2 motivation research has a rich research methodological history, but
this should not intimidate any new scholars entering the feld. Research is, after
all, nothing but trying to fnd answers to questions – an activity that everybody
does regularly, both in their personal and professional life. What distinguishes
scientifc research from the everyday exploration of the world around us is that in
scientifc research we place a special emphasis on being systematic, reducing the
effects of personal subjectivity and other infuencing factors to a minimum. That
is, “research” in the scientifc sense is fnding systematic answers to questions; or, in
other words, research is disciplined inquiry (cf. Dörnyei, 2007). In the most general
sense, there are two ways of fnding answers to research questions:
178 Researching Motivation
1. By looking at what other people have said about the particular issue. This
is usually called secondary or conceptual research and is an essential form of
inquiry because it would be a waste of time and energy to “reinvent the
wheel” again and again.
2. By conducting one’s own investigation, which involves collecting some sort
of information (or “data”) and drawing some conclusions. This is called pri-
mary research and it is important for two main reasons:
• No two learning situations are exactly the same and therefore the guide-
lines offered by external sources rarely provide the exact answers to
one’s specifc questions.
• It is an exciting and illuminating process to fnd one’s own answers, and
being engaged in this process can be one of the most effective forms of
professional development (also called “action research”). In addition,
primary research also allows other people to beneft from one’s research
endeavours.

QUOTE 8.1 ANNE BURNS ON ACTION RESEARCH

AR [action research] is part of a broad movement that has been going
on in education generally for some time. … in AR, a teacher becomes
an “investigator” or “explorer” of his or her personal teaching context,
while at the same time being one of the participants in it. … The cen-
tral idea of the action part of AR is to intervene in a deliberate way in
the problematic situation in order to bring about changes and, even
better, improvements in practice. …
Many teachers have been put off by research … it takes time and
it might mean making changes that take us out of our comfort zone.
However, for a teacher who is refective, and committed to developing
as a thinking professional, AR is an appealing way to look more closely
at puzzling classroom issues or to delve into teaching dilemmas.
Burns (2010, pp. 2, 6)

The two chapters in Part III will focus on the second type of investigation only,
that is, on primary, data-based research. Our aim is not to compile a “mini
research manual”, because good research methods texts are widely available in
our feld. Instead, we will highlight the unique characteristics, challenges and
research strategies that are specifc to the empirical study of language learning
motivation.

8.1 Inherent Challenges of Motivation Research

Doing motivation research can be a most rewarding but at the same time diffcult
task. There are three features of the notion of motivation in particular that may
pose an especial challenge to the researcher:
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 179
1. Motivation is abstract and not directly observable. “Motivation” is an abstract
term that refers to various mental (i.e. internal) processes and states. It is
therefore not subject to direct observation but must be inferred from some
indirect indicator, such as the individual’s self-report accounts, overt behav-
iours or physiological responses (e.g. change of blood pressure). This means
that there are no objective measures of motivation; all the motivation indi-
ces used in research studies are inherently subjective, and one of the most
diffcult tasks of the motivation researcher is to keep this level of subjectivity
to a minimum.
2. Motivation is a multidimensional construct. Motivation is a multifaceted con-
cept that cannot be represented by means of simple measures (e.g. the results
of a few questionnaire items). Researchers need to bear this in mind when
conceptualising and assessing motivation variables, and they should also be
aware of the fact that the specifc motivation measure or concept they are
focusing on in their study is likely to represent only a segment of a more
intricate psychological construct.
3. Motivation is inconstant and dynamic. We have seen earlier that motivation is
not stable but changes dynamically over time as a result of personal progress
as well as multi-level interactions with environmental factors and other
individual difference variables. It is therefore questionable how accurately a
one-off examination (e.g. the administration of a questionnaire at a single
point of time) can represent the motivational basis of a prolonged behav-
ioural sequence such as L2 learning.

Although the unobservable, multifaceted and dynamically changing nature of

motivation makes its study admittedly complicated, there are a variety of research
tools at our disposal to help us with our enquiries and to avoid any pitfalls. If we
make informed decisions about which aspect of motivation to focus on and which
methods to use when collecting and analysing our data, motivation research can
produce meaningful and valid results even for the novice researcher. Let us look
at some key issues that motivation researchers need to bear in mind and some
broad, far-reaching choices that they need to make when designing a project.

8.2 Linear Cause–Effect Relationships Versus Dynamic

Interdependence
We saw in Chapter 1 that the notion of motivation has been introduced in psy-
chology to cover the antecedents of behaviour, and therefore it is tempting to
treat various motives as the straightforward causes of some action. For example,
we have heard many times teachers stating that their students’ motivation to
learn the L2 is to get a good job. Without doubting that this may be true to some
extent, there are two problems with making such a statement: frst, it reduces the
complexity of language learning motivation to the desire of a single factor, in this
case the desire for a prosperous career. This is a massive simplifcation, because
most learners’ overall disposition is also affected by a host of other factors; if
180 Researching Motivation
the situation was so straightforward, could we simply say that those who display
weaker motivation are people who care less about their future careers? This would
unlikely be true in many cases.
The second and related issue with such a simplistic statement is more subtle
but equally problematic, as it concerns the implied causality that underlies it.
Saying that someone’s motivation is the aspiration for a better job suggests
a rather linear cause–effect relationship between motivation and the desired
outcome. “Linear” simply means a directly proportional link, that is, the more
someone desires the job, the stronger the person’s overall motivation. While
such a response might sound logical, if we think about it there are too many
exceptions to it, as many times people want something strongly without this
want translating into equally strong motivation. Thus, a simplistic linear con-
ception is often an inadequate cause–effect explanation, and in order to offer
a more adequate account, we must consider the interference of several other
motives that are relevant to the behavioural domain in question. This again
highlights the fact that action is typically determined by the joint impact of
several factors related to it.
As soon as we acknowledge the role of multiple factors shaping a motivational
phenomenon, we are entering the paradigm of motivational dynamics, as discussed
earlier in relation to complex dynamic systems theory (Section 4.1). Recall that
this latter theory addresses the kind of systems “where cognitive, social and envi-
ronmental factors continuously interact … where fux and individual variation
abound, [and] where cause–effect relationships are nonlinear, multivariate and
interactive” (Ellis, 2007, p. 23). In an insightful paper on researching such sys-
tems in educational psychology, Hilpert and Marchand (2018, p. 185) submit
that

[t]here is a gap between educational psychology theories of motivation,

cognition, and engagement and the common research methods used to test
and refne them. … Although dominant theories in educational psychology
refect many CS [complex systems] perspectives, they are not typically explic-
itly framed, developed, or empirically investigated within a CS framework.

This mismatch, according to the authors, is due to the fact that complex phe-
nomena are typically reduced to theoretical models to allow for linear empiri-
cal testing, and the issues with the Dörnyei–Ottó process model discussed in
Section 3.3.1 are a case in point. Moreover, Hilpert and Marchand further
argue that such “linearised” theoretical models often become so complicated
in order to take into account the various modifying factors and conditions
that they do not lend themselves to quantitative assessment using traditional
statistical methods (which was again the case with the Dörnyei–Ottó process
model). Therefore, the theoretical constructs often undergo further reduction
so that statistical models can be applied (e.g. as often happens in structural
equation modelling; see Section 9.1.2). As a result, “a gap between theory and
model is produced that restricts understanding and theory refnement” (Hilpert
& Marchand, 2018, p. 187).
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 181

QUOTE 8.2 HILPERT AND MARCHAND ON DYNAMIC

SYSTEMS APPROACHES IN EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
Theories in educational psychology describe complex, dynamic, and
emergent processes that shape intra- (e.g. cognition, motivation and
emotion) and inter- (e.g. teacher–student, student–student, parent–
child interactions, collaborative teams) person phenomena at multiple
levels. These processes are fundamental characteristics of complex sys-
tems (CS). However, theory in educational psychology that implicitly
or explicitly treats phenomena of interest to educational psychologists as
complex is rarely examined using CS methodology, or tends to translate
CS to linear cause–effect models that do not adequately describe the
theory. CS approaches to research can be used to improve the alignment
between theory and research method in educational psychology.
Hilpert & Marchand (2018, p. 185)

How can we offer a solution to this widespread issue? Hilpert and Marchand
(2018) propose a necessary shift in the researchers’ mindset, whereby they place
the emphasis on exploring the changing relationships among individuals and
observations over time, as well as on interactions amongst multiple levels of analy-
sis. Accordingly, the authors submit that research designs should display one of
three key characteristics: being time-intensive, relation-intensive or time–relation-
intensive (see Concept 8.1); this useful categorisation will be applied in Section
8.5.2 to the discussion of appropriate research questions.

CONCEPT 8.1 HILPERT AND MARCHAND’S (2018) NOTION

OF THE THREE MAIN APPROACHES TO DYNAMIC SYSTEMS
RESEARCH DESIGN
• Time-intensive approaches make inferences about system behaviour
using closely spaced observations over time. Such observations of a
single variable are used to examine changes at the micro-level and thus
to make inferences about macrosystem behaviour.
• Relation-intensive approaches make inferences about the system behav-
iour based on measures of the relationships between variables. Cross-
sectional descriptions of the relationships among all the elements in
the system (i.e. persons and variables) are used to examine its overall
structure and internal network.
• Time–relation-intensive approaches make inferences about system
behaviour using “closely spaced, simultaneously collected observations
of both within-element change and changing between element rela-
tionships” (p. 192).
182 Researching Motivation
In summary, the behaviour of a complex dynamic system is a function of the parts
as well as of their interrelationships, and because the parts continuously impact
each other through complex patterns of positive and negative feedback, their
overall behaviour will often defy simple cause–effect logic (see also Kaplan, Katz
& Flum, 2012). Accordingly, assuming straightforward linear cause–effect rela-
tionships is no longer suffcient to explain the complex patterns often observed
in L2 motivational data. This, however, does not mean that systems are always
in a state of unpredictable fux – as will be shown in the next chapter, we can
often identify relatively stable phases and recurring patterns in system behav-
iour – but as Waninge, Dörnyei and de Bot (2014) conclude, in most L2 motiva-
tion research linear predictability cannot be taken for granted as a default.

8.3 Group- Versus Individual-Level Measurement

Quantitative research in the social sciences typically relies on statistical tests con-
ducted on aggregated – that is, group-level – data. This is why “sampling” is so
important in research methodology, and this also explains why the sample size
of the participants often determines whether a seemingly meaningful result can
reach statistical signifcance or not. However, we need to realise that focusing
on the group means can be highly misleading. For example, if a treatment affects
some people positively and some others negatively, these effects might cancel
each other out and the aggregate result might be zero, even though the treatment
did have measurable impact on the individual participants. Yet, in a group-based
study the researcher will report only the composite fndings – that is, the “central
tendency” – and therefore in this case they will have to conclude that the treat-
ment was ineffective. An oft-cited illustration of the group-level distortion of SLA
processes has been provided by Larsen-Freeman (2006), who studied the language
development of fve Chinese learners of English. First she identifed a composite
developmental trajectory of this group, but when she disaggregated the group data,
she found unique and different developmental paths for each student, neither of
which coincided with the group results. This demonstrated that in some situations
the central tendency may not be true of any particular person in the participant
sample (see also de Bot, Lowie & Verspoor, 2007; Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2006).
The above considerations raise the question of how meaningful group-level
fndings are for describing human characteristics. Research topics clearly vary
in this respect, because for some issues it is undoubtedly benefcial to look at
the commonalities found in larger groups. For example, if we want to explore
the extent of racism in a community, we would naturally look at the pooled
responses of a participant sample. However, when we are interested in indi-
vidual differences proper, there is a strong argument that human variation is
a function of the way by which all the relevant factors work together and form
unique patterns in every individual case; Larsen-Freeman (2006) summarises
this clearly when she states that “children differ in language learning skill not
because of domain-specifc knowledge that they either have or don’t have,
but because of variations in how and when the pieces of the process were put
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 183
together during learning” (pp. 615–616). This would suggest that the average
index of a motivational variable in a sample – which is what L2 motivation
research typically aims to assess – may not be meaningful in itself.
Group-based research is particularly susceptible to hiding important individ-
ual patterns when we study human development, such as the change in people
following some treatment or learning experience. In a recent study, for example,
Vlaeva and Dörnyei (in press) employed a vision-building programme to develop
the mental imagery skills – and thus the L2 motivation – of a group of EAP
learners. They found that different participants experienced and processed the
imagery training in diverse ways; indeed, even those learners who beneftted from
the treatment displayed variation in how long they took to fully internalise and
automatise the technique of visualisation, with some only realising the positive
potential of the method several weeks after the conclusion of the vision-building
training. As the authors conclude, a group-based questionnaire survey would not
have been able to capture the dynamic nature of the impact of the treatment,
including the observed temporal fuctuation.
Accounting for the different characteristics of individual- versus group-level
analysis has been an emerging topic in psychology (see e.g. Fisher, Medaglia &
Jeronimus, 2018; Kosslyn et al, 2002; Molenaar & Campbell, 2009), but the
measurement issues involved are admittedly advanced and are also subject to
ongoing debate. L2 motivation scholars therefore need to exercise their com-
mon sense when choosing the appropriate unit of analysis (i.e. individual learn-
ers or specifc learner groups) for their research design. Similar to quantitative
and qualitative research, it might be best to consider single-subject research and
group-level research as complementary methods with different strengths and
weaknesses, appropriate for answering different kinds of research questions (an
issue we shall return to in Section 8.5.4).

QUOTE 8.3 MOLENAAR AND CAMPBELL ON THE

SIGNIFICANCE OF, AND ISSUES WITH, INDIVIDUAL-
LEVEL ANALYSIS
Psychological processes like cognitive information processing, percep-
tion, emotion, and motor behaviour occur in real time at the level
of individual persons. Because they are person-specifc, these pro-
cesses differ from variables occurring in a population of human sub-
jects – variables such as sex, socioeconomic status, or experimental
condition (so called between-subject variables). Much psychological
research is concerned with variation at the level of the population.
However, whenever person-specifc processes are involved … their
analysis should be based on intraindividual variation. …
We are at the brink of a major reorientation in psychological meth-
odology, in which the focus is on the variation characterizing time-
dependent psychological processes occurring in the individual human
184 Researching Motivation

subject. It will require substantial efforts from the community of psy-

chological scientists to effectuate this reorientation. At present, there
is very little literature on multivariate time-series designs and analysis
techniques tailored to dealing with non-ergodic psychological pro-
cesses. An additional problem lies in the lack of established curricula
to teach students of psychology in state-of-the-art statistical tech-
niques and methodologies for the analysis of intraindividual variation.
Molenaar & Campbell (2009, p. 116)

8.4 Context-Sensitive Approaches to Understanding Motivation

Whether the empirical focus is on the individual or the group, an important con-
sideration in contemporary approaches to researching motivation is how to take
account of contextual factors when designing the study and analysing the fndings. In
traditional quantitative studies based on linear cause–effect models of motivation,
“context” has usually been defned in terms of a fxed independent background
variable, such as the type of cultural, linguistic or educational setting in which the
study is located. This enables researchers to investigate the applicability and gen-
eralisability of particular models of motivation across different contexts or settings
(e.g. in cross-country comparative studies such as Taguchi, Magid & Papi, 2009),
or to identify motivational variables relevant to specifc cultural contexts, such as
You and Dörnyei’s (2016) fnding that “loss of face” is a signifcant motivational
factor for language learners across various regions of China.
However, treating context simply as an independent background variable
implies both a conceptual separation between individual and context, and a uni-
directional process of infuence of the context on the individual. Such a view
clearly does not take account of the fact that people are also inherently part
of their social and cultural contexts and contribute to shaping their contexts
through their motivated actions and behaviours. As we have seen (Sections
1.1.2, 2.2 and 3.3), contemporary approaches to theorising motivation empha-
sise its dynamic multi-level interactions with social-environmental factors, in
accordance with the interdependent and co-adaptive relationship between indi-
vidual and context. In terms of researching motivation, this necessitates develop-
ing more context-sensitive approaches to exploring these dynamic interactions
and relational processes in the social ecology of the classroom and beyond.
This necessity presents signifcant challenges for research design and method-
ology, especially in relation to (a) defning and delimiting the contextual factors
involved, and (b) capturing and analysing relevant individual–environmental
interactions and relational processes. With regard to (a), as Ushioda (2015)
discusses, a pragmatic approach is needed to constrain the contextual focus
(e.g. to a particular group of learners), while recognising that this ecosystem is
nested within and interconnected with the wider ecosystems of the classroom
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 185
and sociocultural environment. With regard to (b), it seems clear that a multi-
perspective approach is needed to capture individual and social-environmental
factors and their dynamic interrelationships. Illustrative approaches include, for
example, the use of “multiple threading” to trace how individual students’ emo-
tional journeys (documented through learner journals) contribute to the emo-
tional trajectory of a classroom group as a whole (Sampson, 2020), or the use of
sociograms to capture students’ relationships with other students in the social
ecology of the classroom and link these to the analysis of motivation and group
dynamics (Pinner, 2020).

8.5 Principles of Designing L2 Motivation Studies

Having reviewed some general considerations regarding the researchability of L2
motivation, let us now zoom in on some specifc aspects of designing an L2 moti-
vation study. The following overview will not be comprehensive but will address
certain issues and themes that have consistently emerged in on our own research
or when working with our research students.

8.5.1 Deciding on the Particular Aspect of Motivation to Focus on

Because of the broad spectrum of the various components of motivation, the
starting point in any research in this area is the clarifcation of how the concept
of “L2 motivation” will be conceptualised in the particular study, that is, which
aspects of L2 motivation will be specifcally targeted. Although this may sound
obvious, the failure to consider this issue explicitly has resulted in a great deal of
disappointing results and frustration in past research. To start with, we need to
bear in mind that motivation has been introduced in psychology as the anteced-
ent of action. Therefore, in order to select the specifc aspect of motivation that is
appropriate for a particular study, it is necessary to start by defning the specifc
behavioural domain one is interested in. Here are three practical steps to help to
achieve this:

• Defne the target behavioural domain (i.e. the kind of actual learner behav-
iours in which you are interested) as narrowly as possible. Broad domains
such as “L2 learning” involve so many diverse behaviours (e.g. participat-
ing actively in the language class, paying attention to lectures/explanations,
writing up home assignments, memorising new vocabulary) that their useful-
ness for research purposes is rather limited – this is an area where the “small
lens approach” (Ushioda, 2016) discussed in Section 4.6.1 becomes highly
relevant.
• List the various motivational infuences that are likely to affect the behaviours
in question. An initial exploratory interview (or two) might be a useful vehi-
cle for this purpose.
• Set up priorities among the relevant motivational infuences. Because it is
unlikely that any single project can cover all the relevant factors, narrowing
186 Researching Motivation
down the motivational focus is justifable as long as the process is explic-
itly described and explained (rather than merely stating in the report that
“Motivation was measured by means of…”).

8.5.2 Formulating Appropriate Research Questions

Research questions are typically seen as the starting point in designing an inves-
tigation, and while in actual practice this starting point is often formulated not
so much in a question format as in the form of a research topic or a hypothesis
(see Dörnyei, 2007), it is important to highlight two points regarding this initial
step. First, research questions need to be interesting: Mackey and Gass (2015, p.
20) are right to emphasise the danger of a “so what” response to one’s research,
and therefore we will come back to this issue in detail in the fnal section of this
chapter (Section 8.7, “How to Make Motivation Research Fruitful”). The sec-
ond important feature of an appropriate research question concerns the dynamics
of motivation discussed in Section 8.2. MacIntyre, Dörnyei and Henry (2015)
submit that framing a suitable research question might be one of the crucial and
arguably most diffcult aspects of designing a study in the complex dynamic sys-
tems era; as they emphasise, the key to an appropriate question is to focus on a
process in motion, as in the following examples:

“What makes motivation rise and fall during a conversation/lesson/unit/semes-

ter?”, or “How does a learner vacillate between approaching and avoiding a native
speaker?”, or “How does a specifc encounter with a native speaker in the past feed
back into the motivation system years later?”
(p. 425).

In a similar vein, Hilpert and Marchand (2018) also underline that research
questions should address change over time and/or the dynamic interaction between
elements. More specifcally, they recommend that research questions concern
time-intensive, relation-intensive or time–relation-intensive processes (see
Concept 8.1 in Section 8.2):

• Research questions that refect time-intensive processes focus on the dynamic

change of individuals or variables that is expected to unfold over time. A
useful guiding principle is to target any potential shift of patterns or other
forms of anticipated transformation.
• Research questions about relation-intensive processes focus on examining the
relationships between the elements in the system (e.g. peer relationships),
exploring the nature and value of their interactions (e.g. quality of collabora-
tion) as well as the formation of further connections or networks.
• Research questions about time–relation-intensive processes focus on both
individual changes and between-element changes over time; typical exam-
ples might be examining how network characteristics evolve, assessing the
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 187
longitudinal outcome of social partners’ reciprocal infuence, and exploring
changes in aspects of group dynamics over time.

8.5.3 Selecting the Criterion/Dependent Variable

A large proportion of past L2 motivational studies have looked at the relation-
ship between motivation and learning achievement, using some measure of per-
formance/accomplishment (e.g. grades or test scores) as the criterion or dependent
variable. The interest in this connection is justifable, since – following the spirit
of the saying, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” – the ultimate goal of
much research in applied linguistics is to explain the observed variation in L2
learning success. However, the motivation–achievement relationship should be
treated with caution because we cannot assume a direct link between the two
concepts (see Concept 8.2); accordingly, the absence of some expected results
can simply be due to the wrong criterion measure selected for the study. If we
want to draw more meaningful inferences about the impact of various motives,
it is more appropriate to use some sort of a behavioural measure as the criterion/
dependent variable (cf. e.g. Guilloteaux & Dörnyei, 2008, and the subsequent
discussion by R. Ellis, 2009, and Guilloteaux & Dörnyei, 2009). Examples of
potential criterion variables of this sort include:

• language choice;
• course attendance;
• enrolment in the next course;
• volunteering answers;
• extent of task engagement;
• direct measures of motivated L2 behaviour (such as the number of words
used in a task, or the quality and quantity of home assignments);
• extracurricular language use.

That is, there is a great range of behavioural manifestations of motivation that

can be used as criterion variables in a motivation study instead of the global and
less direct measures of course achievement or language profciency.

CONCEPT 8.2 ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

MOTIVATION AND ACHIEVEMENT
From a theoretical point of view, the relationship between motivation and
achievement is not straightforward. Motivation – by defnition – is the
antecedent of action rather than achievement. It is true that motivated
learners will demonstrate more effort and persistence in their task behav-
iour, which in turn can lead to increased achievement, but this relationship
188 Researching Motivation

is indirect, because achievement is also infuenced by a host of other factors,

most notably by
• the learners’ ability;
• learning opportunities;
• the instructional quality of the learning tasks.
As an extreme, we can imagine a situation when learners spend all their
time performing a “learning” task with great vigour, yet they will show no
resulting development because the task in question was not adequate for
the purpose of learning. In this case, although there will be a non-signif-
cant correlation between motivation and achievement, to interpret this as
the indication of a lack of motivational impact would be incorrect.

In several questionnaire studies the dependent variable has been a self-report

measure (typically assessed in the same questionnaire), for example the learn-
er’s “intended effort” or perceived “motivational intensity”. One may wonder
about the legitimacy of such subjective indices – and there have indeed been
criticisms of their use in the L2 motivation literature – so let us examine this
matter in more detail. Using self-reports of behaviour – also referred to as
“behaviorid measures” (Wilson, Aronson & Carlsmith, 2010, p. 72) – has a
long history in social psychology, going back to Ajzen and Fishbein’s (1980)
theory of reasoned action. As Wilson et al. (2010) summarise in the Handbook
of Social Psychology, a basic decision facing any researcher is whether to rely on
the participants’ self-reports or on external observations as a criterion measure.
Simply stating that self-reports of behaviour are convenient and less precise
proxies for measuring actual behaviour misses the mark, because both options
have strengths and weaknesses. Wilson and his colleagues offer several reasons
why social psychologists frequently use indirect measures of behaviour, one of
which is undeniably convenience: given that research is almost always a trade-
off between ideal solutions and the researcher’s limited resources, it is often
simply impractical, or indeed unfeasible, to obtain direct behavioural measures
(e.g. in a large-scale survey of, say, 10,000 participants in 100+ venues). (We
should note in brackets that it is for the same reason that studies using con-
venience samples such as frst-year university students are so widespread, and
despite the obvious shortcomings of these samples, they are usually acceptable
in research journals.) Moreover, in certain situations, for example in sensi-
tive or intimate spheres of activity, conducting any direct observation of overt
behaviour could even be obtrusive or counterproductive. Therefore, Ajzen and
Fishbein (1977) submit that self-report measures can be regarded as acceptable
behavioural criteria “when it would have been diffcult or impossible to obtain
a direct measure of the behaviour in question” (p. 889).
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 189
Moreover, there are also many situations where indirect measures can in fact be
more precise than indexes of overt behaviour. This is because human behaviour
is often complex and multifaceted (with L2 learning behaviours being a case in
point), and it is not always straightforward to decide which specifc aspect to meas-
ure in order to achieve a representative index of the overall behavioural domain.
Also, Fishbein and Ajzen (1974) point out that there are differences between (a)
a single observation of a single act, (b) an index based on repeated observations of
the same single act and (c) a multiple-act criterion (i.e. single or repeated obser-
vations of different behaviours). While the latter appears to offer the most useful
information, deciding which acts to include in this composite measure and how to
assess them can raise as many questions as self-reported measures do.
Thus, we may conclude that the question of whether dependent behavioural
variables can be operationalised indirectly – as “self-reported behaviour”,
“behavioural intention”, “motivational intensity” or “intended effort” – has no
simple answer. While we would not like to encourage any corner-cutting in this
area, and we should note Wilson et al.’s (2010) recommendation that “the frst
choice of a dependent measure in a social psychological experiment is usually
overt behaviour” (p. 72), we ought to bear in mind that it has been long estab-
lished in social psychology that “accurate behavioural prediction is possible
when appropriate measures of behavioural intentions are obtained” (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 1973, p. 49).

8.5.4 Selecting the Overall Approach of Inquiry

There is no “best” method for researching motivation; each type of research has
advantages and disadvantages. This being the case, let us summarise here some
general guidelines and considerations regarding the basic methodological selec-
tion, and in the next chapter we will provide an overview of the main types of L2
motivation research.
As stated earlier, the main purpose of primary research is to collect original
information about a topic and to draw inferences from the obtained material. The
original information obtained is usually referred to as “data”. One way of looking
at the main differences between distinct types of research methods/approaches is
to differentiate the types of data gathered through them. At least two basic ques-
tions need to be answered at this stage. First, do we want to collect quantitative
data (e.g. by using tests and questionnaires) or qualitative data (e.g. drawing on
interviews and learning journals) or a mixture of the two? This does not depend
entirely on the research topic, because we have found that most topics can be
examined meaningfully following both qualitative and quantitative approaches;
other important factors to consider are the researchers’ past experience and train-
ing, their general orientation (e.g. world view) and inclination (e.g. aptitude for
dealing with numbers or people), as well as the planned audience of the study
and the kind of participant sample and research support available (e.g. super-
visors, resources). Because the contrast between the quantitative/qualitative
research paradigms has become a much discussed issue in applied linguistics, we
190 Researching Motivation
will not elaborate on this matter further here beyond going on record to state
that either – or a mixture of them – can offer rigorous and fruitful insights into L2
motivational issues (for more discussion, see Sections 9.1 and 9.2).
The second strategic decision we need to take is whether we want to spend an
extended period following the participants’ development over time, thereby col-
lecting longitudinal data (e.g. a case study over a term) or whether we want/need to
restrict data collection to examining a cross-section of the participants’ thoughts
and emotional stances at a particular point in time (e.g. a one-off survey study).
Making a decision regarding this issue will of course involve not only content-
based considerations but also practical ones in terms of resources and the time
that is available. Regrettably, as the relative absence of longitudinal studies in
L2 motivation research indicates, few researchers have the necessary resources,
or choose to accept the long waiting period associated with longitudinal designs.
Longitudinal research describes a family of methods whose common features
are as follows:

• Data are collected for two or more distinct time periods.

• The cases (participants) analysed are the same or are comparable (i.e. drawn
from the same population) from one period to the next.
• The analysis involves some comparison of data between periods.

Thus, as Dörnyei (2007; Chapter 4) describes, besides the “classic” longitudinal

design of panel studies in which the same participants (e.g. a cohort) are inves-
tigated on two or more occasions, the broadly conceived rubric of longitudinal
research also includes repeated cross-sectional studies (or “trend studies”) of the
same population, retrospective longitudinal studies (i.e. retrospective reporting of
past events), simultaneous cross-sectional studies of different age groups and experi-
mental studies that involve pre- and post-tests (for more discussion, see Sections
9.1.4 and 9.2.1).

QUOTE 8.4 TWO NOTEWORTHY QUOTES ON

LONGITUDINAL RESEARCH
Many social science research questions can be adequately answered using
cross-sectional data. Most social science research projects can be improved
by incorporating suitable longitudinal data. Some social science research
questions can only be sensibly answered using longitudinal data.
Gayle & Lambert (2018, p. 2)
It is also the case that longitudinal research can, in principle, do much
that cross-sectional research cannot, but that there is little or noth-
ing that cross-sectional research can, in principle, do that longitudinal
research cannot.
Menard (2002, p. 80)
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 191
Longitudinal designs have recently received a new emphasis on account of their
capability to document the ongoing change and transformation aspect of complex
dynamic systems. Accordingly, in their pioneering paper “Research methodology
on language development from a complex systems perspective” Larsen-Freeman
and Cameron (2008) advocate a “longitudinal, case-study, time-series approach”,
and MacIntyre et al. (2017) also list “longitudinal qualitative interview design”
as a recommended option for investigations in a dynamic vein. It is important to
note here that longitudinal research, even with small participant samples, does
not have to be qualitative but can also be conducted in a quantitative man-
ner – as highlighted by Ortega and Iberri-Shea (2005) and Barkaoui (2014) – and
for example Hiver and Al-Hoorie (2020) recommend latent growth curve model-
ling and time series analysis, amongst others, as potentially fruitful methods in
this vein (see Section 9.1.4).

8.6 Motivation Research and Impact on Society

Whatever decisions we make about our research focus, research questions and
research approach, it is also important to ask ourselves why we should want to
conduct the research in the frst place – that is, what its fundamental purpose and
value will be. Of course, as discussed earlier, a basic purpose of research is to fnd
systematic answers to questions and, in this way, to contribute to the advance-
ment of academic knowledge in a specifc domain. The signifcance and origi-
nality of this contribution to knowledge will be important when evaluating the
quality of the research, as all of us know when submitting papers for peer review
to academic journals or when submitting doctoral theses for examination. On a
personal level, of course, an underlying purpose of the research may be to satisfy
our own interests – for example, our interests in the topic of motivation itself – or
to build and enhance our academic research profle. Having a strong degree of
personal interest and investment in the research is clearly important, given the
signifcant amount of effort and time that will be needed.
However, beyond the academic and personal value of our research, we should
not forget that in a discipline such as applied linguistics, the value of our research
is also gauged in terms of its value or meaningfulness for society, that is, in terms
of how the fndings of our research can usefully contribute to addressing problems
and issues in the real world where language and communication come into play.
Since our specifc research focus is on language learning motivation, this implies
that the research we do should be designed to bring about positive change and
benefts for particular communities of language learners and teachers who face
motivational challenges. After all, as Ushioda (2020) pointedly comments, if our
research serves only our academic and personal interests, we may well ask whose
motivations we are really interested in: our own motivations or the motivations
of the language learners we are researching. In this regard, sustaining a mean-
ingful balance between the academic and social impact of our research seems
especially relevant when our research topic is motivation, and this implies that
if we want our motivation research to be truly “education-friendly”, the needs
192 Researching Motivation
and interests of the learners, teachers and classrooms we investigate should con-
tribute to shaping our research focus, research questions and research design.
As Larsen-Freeman (2015) has suggested, the potential for applied linguistics
research to have a positive impact on language teaching and learning seems sig-
nifcantly greater if research takes teachers’ (and we might add learners’) own
interests and priorities as the starting point, rather than the interests and priori-
ties of the researcher.

8.7 How to Make Motivation Research Fruitful

The title of this section could have been “How to Make Motivation Research
Less Boring” but it sounded somewhat irreverent. Nevertheless, we would like to
conclude this chapter by underlining this issue, which is rarely spoken about in
research contexts, namely that research needs to be interesting! There are many
studies that meet the requirements of reliability and validity and still fall short
of the mark because they are simply unimaginative and, frankly, boring. They
might represent good craftsmanship but nobody will be suffciently interested to
read them (let alone cite them). We would like to submit in this respect that the
key to doing interesting research is not the application of sophisticated research
methodology but having good research ideas. These may involve, for example,

• an intriguing hunch or intuition;

• a curious observation;
• something unexpected or controversial;
• something which, if true, can have a great deal of practical or theoretical
potential;
• something that is personally signifcant.

The ultimate (and unscientifc) litmus test of the engaging quality of a research
topic is that if you talk about it to a friend or colleague, they will show genuine
keenness to learn about what you have found rather than giving you a glazed look
and a polite “How interesting!”.
Let us illustrate the contrast between what we would consider a good and a
less-good research idea with a couple of examples. We often come across pro-
posed research topics entitled something along the lines of “The motivation
of Hungarian/Bolivian/Vietnamese/etc. language learners”. Let’s be honest:
announcing this topic to friends in a pub is unlikely to stir up a great deal of
excitement, but giving it some relatively small twist may bring life into it; revised
topics might include for example “The motivation of Hungarian language learn-
ers who beat the odds in adverse conditions”, “The motivation of exceptional
language learners in Hungary”, “Unusual motives to learn English in Hungary”
or even “Motivated learners versus demotivated parents in language education
in Hungary”. In a similar vein, a generic (and rather uninspiring) research topic
such as “Motivation and self-esteem” can be changed to “What happens to moti-
vation when self-esteem plummets?” or “Can we save motivation by promoting
 Making Motivation a Researchable Concept 193
our learners’ self-esteem?” or even “‘I don’t want to learn English and I’m proud
of it!’ – When self-esteem works against motivation”.

QUOTE 8.5 DÖRNYEI ON THE QUALITIES OF A GOOD

RESEARCHER
Over the years I have come to believe that the primary characteristic
of good researchers is that they have a genuine and strong curiosity
about their topic. Good researchers are always after something that
they fnd intriguing or puzzling or about which they have a hunch (or
in research terms, a “hypothesis”). … The second important feature of
a good researcher is common sense. … The third aspect of successful
research that I would like to underline is having good ideas. It seems
to me that no amount of sophisticated research design or complex
analytical technique can be a substitute for creative thinking that is
grounded in reality. Many of the best known studies in applied linguis-
tics are not at all complicated in terms of their research methodology
but are based on fairly simple but original insights, making us sigh,
“Why didn’t I think of this…!”
Dörnyei (2007, p. 17)

Whether a research project is interesting or not does not merely depend on the
quality of the initial idea but also on that of the research design. The main prin-
ciple here is that interesting research can only be achieved through a creative
research design. Perhaps the most unimaginative research design we tend to come
across is a one-off administration of a questionnaire to a somewhat mixed con-
venience sample (which rarely produces any exciting fndings). Even here some
immediate improvements can be achieved by selecting a more special sample or
by administering the instrument more than once. Adding an interview compo-
nent to the study to explore some of the results more deeply is again an avenue
for enhancement, and if one is particularly creatively inclined, the questionnaire
responses can be used as the starting point for a retrospective interview in which
the respondent is asked why they have given the particular score for each item. In
a similar vein, another unimaginative research design – doing single interviews
in a convenience sample – can be enriched by administering multiple interviews
with each participant, by applying some principled sampling procedure or by fol-
lowing a truly emergent process by seeking out additional interviewees who may
disagree with what has been said before. We can go even further in terms of
design creativity, for example by running the frst interviewee’s ideas past the
next participant, and so on.
Finally, we have seen recently an increase in the use of mixed methods research
as an attempt to improve one’s research design. While sometimes the mixture of
different methodologies is warranted (see Section 9.3), one has the feeling that
all too often the mixed methods design is merely there to cover up the uninspiring
194 Researching Motivation
nature of the study. Indeed, mixing methodologies does not make an investiga-
tion more idea-rich or interesting – to be absolutely blunt, mixing methods is not
good per se and can in fact be a distraction to good research! This brings us back
to our starting point: professional research skills do not guarantee good research:
there are too many well-crafted and very boring studies that nobody in their right
mind would want to hear about. Motivation studies should be motivating!

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9 Main Types and Methods
of Motivation Research

This chapter will…

• describe the main research methods used to analyse L2 motivation in the

past;
• outline some promising future research directions;
• present a rich selection of sample research studies to serve as templates.

Having looked at some of the key issues of research design in the previous chap-
ter, we will now present a brief overview of the main methodological options
available for L2 motivation researchers. As in Chapter 8, we are not aiming for
a comprehensive account of all the research tools available for the purpose of
investigating L2 motivation, but will focus on the most useful methods employed
in the feld in the past, while also outlining some research approaches that we
believe hold particular promise for the future. In order to bring the theoretical
principles alive, we shall present detailed outlines of 20 selected empirical studies
of L2 motivation, which can serve both as illustrations and research templates.

9.1 Quantitative Motivation Studies

In an overview of quantitative research in SLA, Gass, Loewen and Plonsky (in
press) explain that the feld has been moving towards increased sophistication
of the research methodology applied, and indeed, Khany and Tazik (2019) pre-
sent fgures which fully support this observation: according to these authors, over
the previous 20 years the percentage of studies employing statistical procedures
that have gone beyond the basic set (i.e. descriptive statistics, correlation, Chi-
Square test, t-test and ANOVA) had doubled (from roughly 20 per cent to 40
per cent). This is highly relevant to L2 motivation research, given that – as we
saw in Chapter 8 – the genesis of this research domain was closely linked to
quantitative research methodology. Despite these methodological developments,
however, the social psychological legacy of Robert Gardner and his associates is
still tangible in that the primary research method used in the area has remained
survey research utilising questionnaires. Therefore, it is appropriate to start our
overview by describing this method, followed by two essential research designs,
experimental and longitudinal studies.
198 Researching Motivation
9.1.1 Questionnaire Surveys
Survey research is a quantitative research method which aims to collect self-
report data from individuals, and the typical instrument used for this purpose is
the written questionnaire. As a result of the advancement of the feld, it is not
useful anymore to break down the domain of survey research into a few domi-
nant research designs for processing questionnaire data (e.g. correlational design
or factor analytical studies) as we did in the previous editions of this book – as
Boo, Dörnyei and Ryan’s (2015) review shows, innovative practices have become
widespread and currently investigations based on standard statistical procedures
make up only about half of the relevant studies. Instead, let us emphasise a few
points pertinent to survey research in general (for a more detailed overview, see
Dörnyei & Dewaele, in preparation):

• Representativeness. To start with a basic issue that lies at the heart of survey
research, a questionnaire study aims at describing the characteristics of a popu-
lation by examining a subset of that group, the sample, at a single point of time.
The prerequisite of a successful survey is that we choose a sample that is similar
to the target population in its most important general characteristics (e.g., age,
gender, ethnicity, educational background, academic capability, social class,
socioeconomic status, etc.) in order for it to be representative of the whole pop-
ulation. Various sampling procedures have been developed to ensure this, and
researchers must be careful not to overstate the generalisability of their fndings.
• Superfcial respondent engagement. Questionnaires are rather crude measure-
ment instruments, because rather than exerting cognitive energy interpreting
and rating questionnaire items, respondents tend to rely on quick, gut-level
evaluations. Accordingly, these instruments are best-suited for testing robust
trends while nuances and subtle differences in item wordings often get lost.
• Questionnaire format and administration. The respondents’ shallow engagement
can be increased by the care with which the questionnaire is formatted – with
a professional, business-like format soliciting more respondent attention – as
well as how it is administered. These aspects often do not receive suffcient
attention in a typical research project.
• Item wording. Partly because of the superfcial engagement with the item con-
tent, the wording of questionnaire items plays a disproportionate role in that
even a slight change of the wording can result in different responses. Past
research has accumulated a list of dos and don’ts of how to write good items.
• Multi-item scales. Because minor differences in how items are formulated can
produce different results, there is a general consensus among survey special-
ists that more than one item is needed to address each identifed content
area. These multiple items targeting the same content form a “multi-item
scale”, which is thus a cluster of somewhat differently worded items that are
in effect creative paraphrases of each other. For a scale to work well, it is nec-
essary for someone who scores high (or low) on one item to have a similarly
high (or low) score on all the other items within the scale. The hope is that
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 199
the commonality amongst the similar items in a multi-item scale (expressed
for example by the scale mean) captures the essence of the targeted concept
and irons out any idiosyncratic wording differences.
• Reliability. The extent to which the items within a multi-item scale hang
together can be quantifed through the scale’s internal consistency reliability
fgure (usually the Cronbach alpha, but see Study 9.2 for an alternative). For
all practical purposes, this reliability fgure also acts as the scale’s validity
measure. SPSS offers a handy procedure, “Reliability analysis”, to calculate
the Cronbach alpha coeffcient of a multi-item scale and to help to improve
the scale’s reliability by excluding some poorly functioning items.
• Obtaining a suitable survey instrument. Unlike tests of cognitive abilities and
skills (e.g. language aptitude or L2 profciency tests), motivation question-
naires are highly context-dependent and therefore even well-established bat-
teries cannot be simply transferred to learning situations other than where
they were originally developed without making adjustments. Consequently,
motivation questionnaires are often constructed from scratch or, when an
existing instrument is adopted, substantially modifed (see Concept 9.1).
When drawing on established questionnaires, researchers need to submit
the borrowed items/scales to the same set of item analysis procedures as the
newly written ones. In Chapter 11 we describe the IRIS repository of instru-
ments for research in SLA (Section 11.4), which offers an extensive resource
of questionnaires used in past research.
• Limitation in terms of conscious self-reports. A fnal point we must emphasise
about questionnaire data is that because it is based on self-reports, it can
only contain what people are consciously aware of about their internal beliefs,
attitudes and motives. However, as we have seen in Section 4.3, most people
cannot recognise, let alone report, the causes of their behaviours accurately,
and this being the case, relying on conscious self-reports may easily convey
a distorted picture of a person’s overall motivational setup. Consequently,
a more accurate understanding of human motivation may require comple-
menting self-report questionnaires with implicit measures of unconscious moti-
vation, a point which will be addressed in Section 9.4.2.

CONCEPT 9.1 MAIN STEPS OF CONSTRUCTING A

QUESTIONNAIRE
Constructing a good questionnaire involves a series of steps and proce-
dures, including:
• deciding on the general features of the questionnaire depending on the
context where it will be administered, such as the length, the format
(most notably whether online or hard copy) and the main parts;
• writing effective items/questions and drawing up an initial item pool;
200 Researching Motivation

• submitting the items to initial item analysis (e.g. by friends, colleagues,

a group of students);
• selecting and sequencing the items to be included in the instrument,
and writing appropriate instructions;
• formatting the questionnaire carefully;
• translating the questionnaire into the target language if it was not
originally written in that language;
• piloting the questionnaire in a pilot sample similar to the target popu-
lation, and conducting further item analysis;
A concise summary of the details of these procedures is offered by Dörnyei
and Csizér (2012).

STUDY 9.1
You, C. J. & Dörnyei, Z. (2016). Language learning motivation in China: Results of
a large-scale stratifed survey. Applied Linguistics, 37(4), 495–516.

Purpose
To obtain a comprehensive overview of English language learning motiva-
tion in China within the framework of the L2 Motivational Self System.

Participants
The fnal sample size was 10,413, stratifed according to the permutations
of geographical region (East, Centre, West) and teaching contexts (urban
secondary schools, rural secondary schools, key universities, ordinary uni-
versities, English majors, non-English majors). The limited resources did
not allow for random sampling within each stratum of the sampling frame.

Instrument
A questionnaire was specifcally developed for the study, containing 73
six-point Likert scale items and seven background questions. The motiva-
tion domain targeted by the questions included three domains: (a) aspects
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 201

of the L2 Motivational Self System, (b) intended effort and (c) language
learning vision. The English version was translated into Chinese and was
then back-translated into English, resulting in the modifcation of several
items.

Procedures
Participants were recruited by an extensive search, using the researchers’
contacts as well as a snowball sampling procedure. Once a potential institu-
tion was identifed, it was approached by email or phone, and after obtain-
ing permission all the teachers of the participating classes were individually
contacted and asked for their cooperation. Printed copies of the question-
naire were mailed or personally delivered to each institution, along with an
administration manual. Students flled in the questionnaires during class
time.

Data Analysis
Several checks were run to spot any outliers and errors (see Dörnyei, 2007)
and visual inspections of the hard copies of the questionnaires were also
performed to fnd indications of meaningless questionnaire completion
(e.g. making the marks on the sheets into a visual pattern such as an “X”).
Then a reliability analysis of the multi-item scales was conducted, and the
fnalised scale scores were analysed by t-tests, ANOVAs and correlation
analysis.

Results
The L2 Motivational Self System offered a valid framework for inves-
tigating motivation in China. Learners on average displayed positive
ideal self-images associated with English and equally positive attitudes
towards L2 learning, and reported high levels of intended effort. Female
learners exceeded their male counterparts in most motivation variables,
but the gender difference was partially overridden in the most commit-
ted sample, English majors. The motivational set-up of Chinese learn-
ers of English was found to be geographically bipolar, with the levels
observed in the East typically being higher than those in the less devel-
oped West.
202 Researching Motivation

STUDY 9.2
Sudina, E., Brown, J., Datzman, B., Oki, Y., Song, K., Cavanaugh, R., Thiruchelvam,
B. & Plonsky, L. (in press). Language-specifc grit: Exploring psychometric
properties, predictive validity, and differences across contexts. Innovation in
Language Learning and Teaching.

Purpose
To explore the construct of L2 grit by investigating the factor structure
of the L2-Grit Scale, examining the predictive validity of grit (and three
other ID factors) in relation to English profciency.

Participants
The fnal sample included 454 participants enrolled in six universities in
four countries: Canada, Japan, South Korea and the United States.

Instrument
An online questionnaire consisting of fve scales with a total of 25 Likert-
type statements. Additionally, seven questions were included to collect
demographic and biographical data, and a one-item self-perceived L2 pro-
fciency scale asked participants to self-report their profciency from begin-
ning to more advanced levels.

Procedures
The fnal version of the online survey was distributed to participants via
professional teacher networks, either by email or by web link depending
on the request of the instructor. The data were collected over two weeks.

Data Analysis
Reliability analysis was carried out by computing Revelle’s omega total
(ω), which is less prone to the violation of various assumptions than the
widely used Cronbach alpha coeffcient. To analyse the Grit Scale’s struc-
ture, exploratory and confrmatory factor analyses (EFAs and CFAs) were
conducted. The ESL and EFL samples were compared by t-tests using a
Bonferroni adjusted alpha, and predictive validity evidence was obtained
by means of two parallel standard multiple regression analyses.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 203

Results
Taken together, the results of the EFA, CFA and reliability analyses
provided a compelling argument for L2 grit as a relevant and valid con-
struct. Factor analysis revealed a two-dimensional structure of the L2-Grit
Scale, with the L2 grit subscales having differential predictive validity:
Perseverance of Effort was a signifcant positive predictor of profciency in
the EFL context, while Consistency of Interest was a signifcant negative
predictor in the ESL context.

9.1.2 Studies Applying Structural Equation Modelling

Although structural equation modelling (SEM) is not a research design but a
statistical procedure employed to process questionnaire data, we have decided
to address it in a separate section, because in many ways it can be seen as the
most sophisticated method of traditional (i.e. variable-based and linear) quan-
titative data processing (for good introductions, see e.g. Byrne, 2016; Kline,
2015) – indeed, many scholars feel that analysing their quantitative data via
SEM is superior to conducting correlation, regression or factor analysis. This
being the case, SEM has had a signifcant impact on modifying the design of
survey studies in a manner that they should satisfy the procedure’s statistical
requirements. SEM is a powerful analytical tool as it allows researchers to test
cause–effect relationships based on cross-sectional, correlational data without
having to go to the trouble of designing an experimental or longitudinal study
(Sections 9.13–9.14). Furthermore, SEM can be run through the AMOS com-
ponent of the SPSS package, which makes the process relatively easily avail-
able, even though it requires more investment in terms of learning time than
other SPSS analytical procedures.
Because SEM is concerned with the adequacy of hypothesised theoretical
constructs (i.e. abstract or latent variables), it is particularly suitable for study-
ing the notion of motivation and related issues. Accordingly, SEM models have
been used in L2 motivation research since the early 1980s. It is important to
emphasise that in order to start applying SEM to motivational data, researchers
need an explicitly stated theoretical model in which the directional relationships
between the main variables are clearly stated. The SEM procedure is then used to
confrm or reject the validity of this model – thus, SEM is not an exploratory but
a confrmatory technique: based on the testing of the adequacy of the submitted
model, SEM provides various goodness-of-ft measures (although it is also capable
of suggesting certain adjustments to the model tested by providing “modifcation
indices”). Despite its obvious strengths, SEM also has certain limitations, and
particularly two issues need to be borne in mind:
204 Researching Motivation
1. Goodness of ft and possible alternative models. SEM provides multiple indices
to show how satisfactory the ft of the fnal model is and these can be used
to compare alternative models or to reject ill-ftting models. However, even
a solution with an adequate ft is only one of many that might ft the data
equally well. Thus, SEM is not the “be-all and end-all to research endeav-
ours concerned with inferring causation from correlational data” (Gardner,
1985, p. 155). Strictly speaking, SEM does not identify causation but only
informs the researcher whether a hypothesised cause–effect relationship is
conceivable based on the total amount of data.
2. Oversimplifcation of causal relationships. Causal models with unidirectional
relationships (indicated in the SEM output by arrows) can oversimplify the
complex relationships of certain psychological variables which operate in an
interactive mode in a continuous, cyclical fashion. As we saw in Section 8.2,
if we adopt a dynamic systems perspective, we have to be particularly cautious
about assuming linear relationships between distinct variables. Thus, even
though SEM can handle a large number of factors in a system, the procedure
is not suitable to test the dynamically evolving relationships amongst them.

STUDY 9.3
Yashima, T., Nishida, R. & Mizumoto, A. (2017). Infuence of learner beliefs and
gender on the motivating power of L2 selves. Modern Language Journal, 101(4),
691–711.

Purpose
To investigate the L2 Motivational Self System in terms of the relation-
ships between visions of the ideal and ought-to L2 selves, intended effort
and L2 profciency, as modifed by learner beliefs and gender differences.

Participants
The participants were 2,631 frst-years majoring in 11 different faculties at
a university in Japan.

Instrument
A questionnaire made up of 22 items forming two belief scales, two motiva-
tion scales and an intended effort scale.

Procedures
The respondents took the TOEFL-ITP as part of curricular requirements, and
the questionnaire (in Japanese) was distributed to them at the same time.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 205

Data Analysis
Structural equation modelling (SEM) was conducted to test the hypothe-
sised model, and multiple-group SEM was conducted to compare the model
ft between men and women.

Results
The ideal and ought-to L2 selves signifcantly affected intended effort,
which in turn accounted for objectively measured L2 competence. Different
learner beliefs about optimal language learning methods facilitated the for-
mation of future visions differently: those who valued usage-based com-
municative approaches tended to have clearer visions of an ideal self, while
those who valued explicit learning of grammar and translation tended to
have a stronger sense of ought-to self.

9.1.3 Experimental Studies

Many research studies in applied linguistics are intended to uncover causal links
by answering questions such as “What’s the reason for…?”, “What happens if/
when…?” and “What effect does something have on…?” However, to establish
frm cause–effect relationships is surprisingly diffcult because in real life noth-
ing happens in isolation and it is hard to disentangle the interferences of vari-
ous related factors. For example, if we try out a new teaching technique that
appears to work, we still cannot claim with absolute certainty that the improved
outcomes are solely the result of the particular technique, because we cannot
exclude the impact of other potential causes. Fortunately, research methodology
has succeeded in developing a way of getting around this problem by means of the
experimental design. The idea is ingenious in its simplicity:

1. Take a group of people, administer some intervention (or “treatment”) to

them and check the outcome; naturally, as stated above, even if we fnd
some signifcant change, there is no way to tell the extent to which the
treatment was responsible for generating it.
2. Compare the results with those obtained from a group that is similar in
every respect to the treatment/experimental group except for the fact that it
did not receive the treatment (this group is usually called the “control group”).
If there are any differences between the results of the two groups, these can
now be unambiguously attributed to the only difference between them, the
intervention/treatment variable.

Thus, this is a rigorous version of the natural human inquiry of “trying out some-
thing to see what happens” (e.g. changing the daily routines of a child if they
206 Researching Motivation
have problems going to sleep at night) by applying a consciously manipulated
process in a tightly controlled research environment. A typical experimental
design would be an “intervention study”, in which some sort of instructional
treatment (e.g. special communicative L2 training) is administered to a group
of learners and the observed effects of the training are compared to the rate of
development in a control group that has not received the treatment. If there is
signifcantly more progress in the experimental group than in the control group
(which can be determined by applying an ANCOVA of the post-test results with
the pre-test results being the covariates, or an ANOVA of the “gain scores”, i.e.
the difference between the post-test and pre-test scores; see Dörnyei, 2007), we
can conclude that the intervention was successful and that the treatment vari-
able was the cause of the outcome.
Of course, there are several methodological challenges behind the “simplicity”
of the experimental design, most notably the issue of how to make the control
group similar to the treatment group. As Cook and Campbell (1979) summarise
in their seminal work on the subject, one of the great breakthroughs in develop-
ing the method was the realisation that the random assignment of participants to
experimental and control groups can provide a way of making the average par-
ticipant in one group comparable to the average participant in the other group.
However, in most educational settings random assignment of students by the
researcher is not possible or practical and therefore researchers often have to
resort to a “quasi-experimental design” (Concept 9.2).

CONCEPT 9.2 QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS

Quasi-experiments are similar to true experiments in every respect except
that they do not use random assignment to create the comparisons from
which treatment-caused change is inferred. Because of the practical con-
straints, working with “nonequivalent groups” has become an accepted
research methodology in feld studies where randomisation is impossible
or impractical (e.g. in many educational contexts). However, in such cases
we cannot rely on the neat and automatic way the true experiment handles
various threats to validity but have to deal with these threats ourselves.
In practical terms, in order to be able to make causal claims based on a
quasi-experimental study, the effects of the initial group differences need to
be taken into account. This requires that we measure the main sources
of difference between the treatment and control groups, such as aptitude,
L2 profciency, initial motivation or past task experience. Once we have
obtained these measures, various computer procedures will allow us to
make statistical adjustments accordingly, that is, to screen the unwanted
effects out of the outcome measure (e.g. by means of ANCOVA).
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 207
As Ryan and Legate (2012) report in the Conclusion of the Oxford Handbook
of Human Motivation, the contributors of the volume identifed experimental
designs as one of the most recommended future research directions, because con-
trolled and randomised clinical trials allow scholars to measure potential causes,
mediators and moderators of obtained effects. The principal area in L2 motiva-
tion research where experimental studies have been utilised in the past has been
the testing of the effectiveness of motivational strategies (i.e. testing whether
the application of certain motivational techniques does indeed result in a higher
level of student motivation; see Section 5.8). However, the design can be applied
more widely to investigate a range of issues, for example the motivational con-
sequences of methodological interventions (e.g. comparing the motivation of
learners who participate in different instructional activities or task conditions),
intensive language programmes and induced L2 contact (e.g. a trip to the L2
host environment). The key requirement in all these cases is to include in the
research paradigm a control group which receives a comparable amount of input
but without the specifc treatment in question.

STUDY 9.4
Alrabai, F. (2016). The effects of teachers’ in-class motivational intervention on
learners’ EFL achievement. Applied Linguistics, 37(3), 307–333.

Purpose
To investigate the effects of motivational strategies on learner motiva-
tion and achievement in English language classes in Saudi Arabia, using a
quasi-experimental research design.

Participants
437 Saudi male EFL learners, divided into two groups: experimental versus
control.

Instrument
Four instruments were designed: (a) a 62-item questionnaire listing dif-
ferent motivational strategies; (b) an observation sheet containing 44
categories to record teacher motivational practices and learner motivated
behaviours on a fve-point frequency scale ranging from Very Often to
Never; (c) a 66-item motivation questionnaire containing eight multi-
item scales, administered at the beginning and the end of the treatment;
(d) language tests measuring learner achievement in four skills: listening,
speaking, grammar and writing.
208 Researching Motivation

Procedures
As a frst step, 204 EFL teachers were recruited to identify (by means of the
frst questionnaire described above) the most important motivational strate-
gies for the Saudi EFL classroom context. The selected strategies were then
targeted in the treatment of an experimental design over a ten-week period.
Learner achievement was measured three times during the study period.

Data Analysis
The impact of the treatment was tested by means of an ANCOVA com-
parison of the post-test data (obtained by the motivation questionnaire
described above) between the experimental and control groups, with the
pre-test data acting as the covariates.

Results
The fndings revealed that the motivational intervention in the experimen-
tal group led to increased learner motivation, which in turn led to higher
achievement. Thus, the study validated the positive association between
EFL teacher motivational practices and learner motivation observed in
previous studies (e.g. Guilloteaux & Dörnyei, 2008; Moskovsky et al.,
2013), also confrming the existence of a cause–effect link.

STUDY 9.5
Le-Thi, D., Dörnyei, Z. & Pellicer-Sánchez, A. (in press). Increasing the effectiveness
of teaching L2 formulaic sequences through motivational strategies and mental
imagery: A classroom experiment. Language Teaching Research.

Purpose
To investigate the effectiveness of applying motivational strategies and men-
tal imagery (i.e. visionary techniques) to facilitate the learning of L2 vocabu-
lary (formulaic sequences), using a quasi-experimental research design.

Participants
150 Vietnamese intermediate students of EFL in nine intact university
classes, divided into three groups: motivational group, visionary group and
control group.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 209

Instrument
A vocabulary test specifcally designed to assess the knowledge of the target
lexical items.

Procedures
Four treatment sessions were integrated into a six-week language course,
each lasting 55 minutes. The three groups had the same amount of time (40
minutes) for the explicit instruction of the target lexical items with an addi-
tional 15 minutes for other activities: the control group further discussed
the items, the motivational and visionary groups completed various moti-
vational tasks drawing on Dörnyei (2001) and Dörnyei and Kubanyiova
(2014). Participants’ vocabulary knowledge was assessed before the experi-
ment (pre-test), after the experiment (post-test) and three weeks after the
experiment (delayed post-test).

Data Analysis
The three conditions were compared by means of an ANOVA of the gain
scores.

Results
Both the motivational strategies and the visionary techniques proved to
be effective in improving the learning of the target lexical items, but the
visionary condition was superior to the use of motivational strategies, and
the benefts of deeper engagement associated with mental imagery were
also corroborated by the delayed post-test.

9.1.4 Quantitative Longitudinal Studies

We have already addressed briefy longitudinal research designs in Section 8.5.4,
where we pointed out that the concept of longitudinal research can be broadly
conceived to include collecting any data that has a temporal dimension (see e.g.
Gayle & Lambert, 2018); that is, the category also includes design types other
than the classic “longitudinal panel study” where the same set of cases are exam-
ined in each time period. Such a broad conception allows for the inclusion of
quintessentially quantitative methods such as cross-sectional surveys in a longi-
tudinal study if the same instrument is administered repeatedly within the same
population, and as we shall see below, even panel studies investigating relatively
small samples – which have traditionally been studied using qualitative longi-
tudinal methods (see Section 9.2.1) – can be meaningfully examined by means
210 Researching Motivation
of quantitative methods. For a detailed discussion of the relevant measurement
issues please consult the Handbook of Longitudinal Research (Menard, 2008) or
Barkaoui’s (2014) overview of relevant research in SLA; in the following we
highlight a number of approaches that are particularly well-suited for L2 motiva-
tion research.
To start with some established and therefore more familiar methods, experi-
mental studies addressed in the previous section represent a type of longitudinal
design as they offer a comparison of pre-treatment and post-treatment measures.
In a similar vein, comparing variable means that have been obtained at differ-
ent points of time (e.g. by means of paired-samples t-tests and repeated meas-
ures ANOVAs) can also be used to evaluate longitudinal development to some
extent. Repeated cross-sectional studies (or “trend studies”) are also fairly traditional
in that they involve, in effect, a series of questionnaire surveys administered over
time, and this method has had a long history in L2 motivation research, with the
L2 Motivational Self System emerging from such an investigation conducted in
Hungary between 1993 and 2004 (see Csizér & Dörnyei, 2005; Dörnyei, Csizér
& Németh, 2006). In addition to these established research methods applied to
longitudinal designs, there are also some specialised longitudinal data analytical
procedures, all supported by SPSS, which have been underutilised in our feld; let
us highlight three of these here:

• Latent growth curve modelling can be seen as a variant of structural equation

modelling (Section 9.1.2) in which the latent (i.e. unobserved) variable
is time. The method analyses repeated measures (usually three–six occa-
sions) of the same dependent variables (in the same sample) as a function
of time and other measures. Csizér and Piniel (2015) have applied the
method to examining the changes that took place in students’ motivation,
anxiety and self-effcacy during a university academic writing course (see
Study 9.6).
• Multi-level modelling is a general statistical technique to analyse data obtained
at various levels (e.g. individuals nested within contextual/aggregate units
such as classes and schools), and it can be applied to the analysis of repeated
measures data. In some ways it presents an alternative to repeated measures
ANOVA, but it is more fexible in several aspects; for example, as Hiver and
Al-Hoorie (2020) explain, if our dataset has clusters in it – for example, the
participants attend different classes – this violates the ANOVA assumption
that the cases are independent, whereas multi-level modelling can adjust for
such an interdependence. Sasaki, Kozaki and Ross (2017) have applied the
method to investigating the motivational determinants of the development
of 1,000+ Japanese learners of English over an academic year at both the
individual and the class levels (see Study 9.7).
• Time series analysis examines only a few cases (often only a single case)
but many assessment points (usually over 20 and often over 100), and it
allows for fnding signifcant patterns of change across time periods. This
would thus be a useful method to examine whether a person’s motivation
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 211
changes, for example during a formative life event or an intervention,
relative to the time before and after the episode. Currently we are not
aware of any studies that have applied the method to exploring L2 moti-
vation, and as Jebb et al. (2015) report, time series analysis has been
rarely used even in mainstream psychological research (they identifed
only 37 published studies). However, some studies employing time series
designs have been conducted in SLA to assess L2 development (see
Barkaoui, 2014).

STUDY 9.6
Piniel, K. & Csizér, K. (2015). Changes in motivation, anxiety, and self-effcacy
during the course of an academic writing seminar. In Z. Dörnyei, P. D. MacIntyre
& A. Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 164–194).
Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Purpose
To analyse the ways in which motivation, anxiety and self-effcacy change
during the course of a university academic L2 writing course using several
quantitative longitudinal data analyses.

Participants
21 Hungarian undergraduate students studying for a degree in English lan-
guage and literature.

Instrument
Motivational data were collected through a questionnaires mapping stu-
dents’ general disposition (37 items in six multi-item scales), and a shorter
questionnaire assessing current states of motivation, anxiety and self-eff-
cacy at six points in time.

Procedures
Data was collected over a period of one academic term lasting for 14 weeks.

Data Analysis
Latent growth curve modelling was used to detect overall changes and
to identify the change trajectories; longitudinal clustering was applied to
defne the distinct groups of students in each trajectory.
212 Researching Motivation

Results
Change affected the investigated variables in a different manner: when
mean-based linear changes were investigated, only one scale showed signif-
cant results, self-effcacy, which decreased throughout the semester, prob-
ably owing to the increased diffculty of the tasks. When the data were
tested for curvilinear changes, there was evidence of signifcant nonlinear
overall change in language learning experience, the ought-to L2 self and
writing anxiety, while the ideal L2 self and motivated learning behaviour
remained stable over time.

STUDY 9.7
Sasaki, M., Kozaki, Y. & Ross, S. J. (2017). The impact of normative environments
on learner motivation and L2 reading ability growth. Modern Language Journal,
101(1), 163–178.

Purpose
To investigate how Japanese frst-year university students develop in L2
reading ability over one academic year using multi-level modelling, with an
emphasis on various environmental factors that potentially infuence their
motivation to study the L2.

Participants
1,149 university students, nested in 44 EFL classes at eight different
Japanese universities; all frst-year students with an L2 reading ability level
ranging from novice-mid to intermediate.

Instrument
Motivational factors were assessed by a 22-item questionnaire targeting
seven variables, some focusing on how students evaluated their own and
their classmates’ career-related dispositions, others assessing individual-
level motivational characteristics. The individual-level variables were
included to account for within-class variation in L2 profciency growth
rates, whereas the class-level variables were included for assessing between-
class variation.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 213

Procedures
The participants’ L2 reading ability was measured three times throughout
the academic year (April, July, December), and the motivation question-
naire was administered in November.

Data Analysis
Change across the nested sample was assessed by means of hierarchical
multi-level modelling.

Results
It was found that the norms/ethos shared by class members had considera-
ble explanatory power regarding the individual students’ growth rates, with
the students’ perception of their classmates’ normative career aspirations
explaining particularly substantial variation.

9.2 Qualitative Motivation Studies

In a review of research papers in applied linguistics between 1986 and 2015,
Khany and Tazik (2019) document the coming of age of qualitative research:
whereas in their extensive dataset there were twice as many quantitative studies
as qualitative ones in the 1986–1995 period, 20 years later (between 2006 and
2015) the number of qualitative studies overtook that of the quantitative ones
(1,234 vs. 1,197). In a similar vein, Boo et al.’s (2015) ten-year survey of the
L2 motivation feld (from 2005 to 2014) also highlights “a major research para-
digm shift” (p. 153) towards more qualitative studies during this period, and this
trend continues to strengthen as our interest grows in capturing the complex situ-
ated dynamics of L2 motivation. In contrast to the quantitative tradition, whose
strength lies in detecting general patterns across learners, qualitative investiga-
tions are more suited to uncovering the complex interaction of social, cultural
and psychological factors within individual learners, in the situated context of
their lived experiences and local realities. While quantitative studies of L2 moti-
vation may be valuable for distilling general concepts and principles, qualitative
studies can, in turn, reveal:

• how these general principles are refected in people’s actual lives, and how
people experience and make sense of these;
• what patterns emerge through the dynamic interplay of internal and exter-
nal motivational factors, social relations, personal priorities, time and local
contextual realities;
214 Researching Motivation
• what other, thus far undetected or unexplored, confounding factors shape
student motivation and demotivation.

Thus, qualitative research methods lend themselves especially well to investigat-

ing the motivations of individual learners, and to enabling rich in-depth analyses
that take account of how learners’ motivational journey interacts with their lived
experiences and local contextual realities. While there is a wide range of qualita-
tive research techniques and designs (e.g. case studies, think aloud protocols, diary
studies, etc.), by far the most commonly used qualitative method for researching
L2 motivation has been the interview (for comprehensive overviews of interview
methods, see Brinkmann, 2014; Rubin & Rubin, 2012; Mann, 2016). Interviews
can be seen as the qualitative self-report counterparts of questionnaires, but they
come in several forms, not all of which may generate rich qualitative data. In par-
ticular, structured interviews, where the researcher closely follows a prepared set of
standardised questions to be covered with every interviewee (like an oral ques-
tionnaire), are unlikely to yield in-depth qualitative data. Structured interviews
are often used in market research to elicit, for example, customer preferences in
relation to particular products or services. Interview methods that generate richer
qualitative data and that are used in L2 motivation research generally comprise the
following formats:

• Unstructured interviews give interviewees maximum fexibility to dictate the

content and shape of the interview, with minimal direction by the inter-
viewer. The intention is to create a relaxed atmosphere in which respond-
ents feel willing to open up about personal experiences and perspectives,
with the interviewer assuming a listening role and conversational tone. A
detailed interview guide is not prepared in advance, though the researcher
usually thinks of a few open-ended questions (sometimes called “grand tour”
questions) to begin with.
• Semi-structured interviews offer more control for the researcher to shape
the structure of the interview through a prepared set of guiding questions
and prompts (usually open-ended in format), while giving scope to follow
up on interesting directions during the course of the interview that may
have been unanticipated or seem worth exploring. This type of interview
is suitable when the researcher has a good overview of the phenomenon
or domain under focus and is able to develop broad questions about the
topic in advance but does not want to use ready-made response categories
that would limit the depth and breadth of what respondents might say.
This format therefore needs an “interview guide” or template that should
be developed and piloted in advance to ensure that it covers the ground
appropriately and elicits rich and relevant data. It is, of course, useful to
build in plenty of fexibility when constructing the interview questions and
to allow new questions to emerge in response to the developing content of
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 215
the interview – an approach that has also been characterised as convergent
interviewing (see Dick, 1990).
• In narrative interviews, the emphasis is not so much on asking questions to
elicit answers but rather on inviting participants to tell their own stories
or recount their personal experiences relevant to the issues under focus.
Such interviews thus tend to follow a temporal (rather than topical) struc-
ture in how they are organised. They are designed to elicit stories or narra-
tive texts that can then be interpreted through narrative analysis, with a
view to understanding how individuals construct and interpret their lived
experiences. Refecting what Pavlenko (2007, p. 164) characterised as a
“narrative or discursive turn”, the feld of applied linguistics has seen wide-
spread interest in narrative research in recent years (e.g. Barkhuizen, 2013;
Barkhuizen, Benson & Chik, 2014), and the area of L2 motivation research
is no exception.
• Stimulated recall (or retrospective) interviews are used to invite participants
to refect back on and talk through their experiences and their thinking
and emotional processes after a specifc event, such as a language task
or a particular episode during a lesson. The process requires the aid of
some kind of visual or audio support (typically a recording of the event)
to stimulate recall (hence the term). If carried out immediately (or not
long) after the event under focus, such interviews may yield rich intro-
spective insights into, for example, the motivational processes shaping
learner engagement in a language task. However, as with all introspective
methods, stimulated recall interviews are limited to eliciting data only
on processes that participants are consciously aware of and are able to
articulate. (For an overview of stimulated recall methodology in second
language research, see Gass & Mackey, 2017.) An interesting twist to such
retrospective interviews is presenting learners with their responses to a
motivation questionnaire and asking them to explain why they awarded
the particular score to each item.
• Focus group interviews involve groups (usually 6–12 people) discussing some
shared concern, with the interviewer acting as moderator. This format is
based on the collective experience of group brainstorming, where partici-
pants think together, inspire and challenge one another, and react to the
emerging issues and points. The aim of the interview is to understand the
collectively constructed ideas and perspectives that emerge through the
discussion, rather than to identify individual viewpoints or stories. Focus
group interviews can be very useful, for example, during the initial ground-
work stages of a research project to elicit relevant stakeholders’ insights
and perspectives that might then help to shape the direction the study
takes, or help to inform the design and content of a survey instrument. (For
overviews of focus groups methods, see Hennink & Leavy, 2014; Krueger
& Casey, 2014.)
216 Researching Motivation

STUDY 9.8
Henry, A. (2017). Rewarding foreign language learning: Effects of the Swedish
grade point average enhancement initiative on students’ motivation to learn
French. Language Learning Journal, 45(3), 301–315.

Purpose
To examine the motivational impact of a Swedish government initiative
to award extra credits to upper secondary students who continue learning
foreign languages (other than English), thereby enhancing their GPA for
entry to higher education.

Participants
Six upper secondary students learning French at a school in Sweden.

Instrument and Data Collection Procedures

An initial interview was conducted with the class teacher to characterise stu-
dents’ approaches and attitudes to learning French and identify three learner
profle types. Students then answered a single open-ended questionnaire item
asking them to list and rank the things that made them motivated or less
motivated to learn French. Based on cross-referencing students’ responses
with the learner profles identifed by the teacher, two students representing
each profle were selected for interview: one who had prioritised personal
interest in learning and using French and another who had prioritised the
opportunity to gain extra credits. A series of semi-structured interviews (10–
25 minutes) was conducted with individual students at one-month intervals
between November 2011 and June 2012 towards the end of a lesson in which
their classroom behaviours had been observed by the researcher. Interviews
were conducted in Swedish, recorded and transcribed.

Data Analysis
An interpretive approach was used to analyse the data, following three
stages: (a) individual transcripts were read several times, with notes made
of interesting features; (b) transcripts were re-read, this time drawing on
concepts from self-determination theory and motivational self-system
theories to transform the initial notes into theoretically resonant themes;
(c) themes were developed into larger categories and connections sought
across the dataset.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 217

Results
For the three students whose motivation to learn French was primar-
ily intrinsic or self-determined, the provision of GPA-enhancing credits
appeared to have little impact on their choice to continue learning French
or on their effortful behaviour. In contrast, for the other three students the
availability of the additional credits was almost the only source of moti-
vation, and because their decision to continue learning French was not
self-determined, their learning lacked personal meaning and value beyond
achieving a passing grade.

STUDY 9.9
Harvey, L. (2017). Language learning motivation as ideological becoming. System,
65, 69–77.

Purpose
To offer a new conceptualisation of motivation that is based on the dia-
logical theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, and that takes account of how language
learning motivation is meaningful to young people’s lives as a process of
“ideological becoming” that is bound up with their personal development
and life-learning.

Participants
Six UK-based international university students from non-English back-
grounds; the study reported on in this paper focuses on one participant case.

Instrument and Data Collection Procedures

Four interviews (one–two hours) were conducted with each participant
over 16 months, using a narrative approach. The frst interview opened
with the question, “Please tell me about a memorable experience you have
had connected with learning English”, and was then followed up by asking
participants to recount their language learning histories. The focus of sub-
sequent interviews evolved in relation to the themes emerging from the
analysis of the frst interviews, and in relation to participants’ commentar-
ies on the researcher’s constructed narratives of their language learning
histories.
218 Researching Motivation

Data Analysis
Following a thematic analysis of the frst interviews, the emerging themes
were discussed with participants in the second interviews, leading to the
development of a set of synthesised themes from across the dataset. This
collective set of themes was then discussed with participants in the third
interviews, giving them the opportunity to refect on whether other stu-
dents’ perspectives resonated with their own experiences. Narratives of
participants’ language learning histories were then constructed by the
researcher and shared with them individually in the fourth and fnal
interview.

Results
The story of one focal case (a Russian learner of English) illustrates how
his relational and interactional experiences of engaging with the language
and the people who speak it contributed to his motivation for learning the
L2 and developing his own voice in English, and also contributed, in a
broader holistic sense, to his motivation for learning to be in the world and
to develop and grow as a person.

STUDY 9.10
MacIntyre, P. D., Baker, S. C. & Sparling, H. (2017). Heritage passions, heritage
convictions, and the Rooted L2 Self: Music and Gaelic language learning in
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Modern Language Journal, 101(3), 501–516.

Purpose
To explore the role of music and dance in motivating Gaelic language
learning on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Participants
Ten adult participants among a group of traditional musicians living
locally, coming from families in which members are traditional musicians
or dancers; all but one had Gaelic heritage but none spoke Gaelic as a
frst language, with their Gaelic profciency levels ranging from beginner
to complete fuency.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 219

Instrument and Data Collection Procedures

In-depth interviews of 60–90 minutes with each participant, using a con-
vergent interviewing technique organised around two basic questions:
“How did you come to be a traditional musician, and how did you come to speak
Gaelic?” Interviews were recorded and transcribed, and feld notes were also
taken during the interviews.

Data Analysis
The interview transcripts were analysed using text-mining software
(Leximancer 4.0) to identify an initial set of concepts by extracting seman-
tic and relational co-occurrence of information automatically. From this
set, researchers drew out concepts relevant to the focus of the study, and
they also added further concepts drawn from their feld notes.

Results
Three interrelated concepts emerged that characterise community-level
processes of motivation: a rooted L2 self defned by connections to place and
speakers of the language; heritage passions, refecting emotional bonds, core
values and strengths; and heritage convictions, refecting deeply held beliefs,
attitudes and mindsets. The fndings resonate with aspects of Gardner’s
notion of integrative motivation, Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System
and Ushioda’s person-in-context relational perspective on the connections
between learners and contexts.

Apart from interview methods, other qualitative tools for researching L2 moti-
vation may include the use of language learner (or teacher) journals to record
day-to-day personal refections on the language learning (or teaching) process
(e.g. Sampson, 2016; Study 9.12), or the elicitation of written autobiographi-
cal accounts of students’ language learning histories (e.g. Mercer, 2013). Such
qualitative tools that encourage individuals to refect on and record their experi-
ences can also have important awareness-raising benefts, by engaging students
(or teachers) in forms of “narrative knowledging” (Barkhuizen, 2015) through
which they make sense of their experiences and their development. Because of
the growing signifcance of one specifc qualitative research design, qualitative
longitudinal research, we describe this in more detail in the section below.

9.2.1 Qualitative Longitudinal Research

If we conduct a series of interviews with a participant, we are likely to come across
aspects of change over time, and indeed, research that combines qualitative and
220 Researching Motivation
longitudinal elements had existed long before the term “qualitative longitudinal
research” started to gain prominence in the social sciences (Thomson & McLeod,
2003). The reason why this aspect of longitudinal methodology has been fore-
grounded was an upsurge of scholarly interest in documenting ongoing change and
transformation, for example, because of a growing awareness of complex system
dynamics. On account of its distinctive capability in this area, qualitative longitu-
dinal research has assumed increasing visibility as a research approach over the past
two decades, particularly in felds like anthropology, sociology and psychology (see
McCoy, 2017). We have highlighted more than once in this book the signifcance
of a temporal dimension in L2 motivation research (e.g. Section 3.3), and this war-
rants a closer look at this method, which lends itself to temporal studies.
Qualitative longitudinal research differs from other qualitative enquiries in
that the focus here is specifcally on change over distinct time phases (e.g. peri-
ods, stages or cycles), examining how people interpret, respond to and manage
change and the ensuing shifting experiences (see e.g. Derrington, 2019; McCoy,
2017). There has been a growing interest amongst motivational scholars in
exploring the impact of the temporal context of human agency, for example
examining how transitions and momentous events (e.g. “signifcant incidents”;
Pigott, 2019) affect people’s motivational disposition, and qualitative longitudi-
nal research can offer a rich and time-sensitive account of such lived experiences.
The main tool is a series of prospective interviews to track the perceptions of
individuals or small collectives as those unfold in real time, but this prospective
element will inevitably also mix with retrospective participant refections on past
experiences. This being the case, this interview approach allows for exploring the
dynamic relationship between precursors and outcomes; as Neale and Flowerdew
(2003, p. 1) summarise, qualitative longitudinal research explores “dynamic pro-
cesses through an in-depth, qualitative lens” which gives insights into “how peo-
ple narrate, understand and shape their unfolding lives and the evolving world
of which they are a part”. This dynamic potential can be further increased if
we complement the qualitative interviews with other research methods such as
observations, diaries and research journals.

QUOTE 9.1 NEALE ON THE ESSENCE OF QUALITATIVE

LONGITUDINAL RESEARCH
QL [qualitative longitudinal] research engages with human hearts and
minds: it provides access to the “interior logic” of lives, discerning how
change is created, negotiated, lived and experienced. At the heart of this
approach lies a concern with the dynamics of human agency – the capac-
ity to act, to interact, to make choices, to infuence the shape of one’s life
and the lives of others. Of equal importance is the dynamics of human
subjectivity: the shifting meanings that events, circumstances and social
processes hold for those who experience them.
Neale & Flowerdew (2003, p. 9)
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 221

STUDY 9.11
Lamb, M. (2018). When motivation research motivates: Issues in long-term empirical
investigations. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 12(4), 357–370.

Purpose
To revisit participants of previous research in order to track their longitu-
dinal motivational development over a decade.

Participants
Nine Indonesian L2 learners (out of 12 focal learners in the original study
in 2002), ages 25–26 at the fnal interviews in 2015.

Instrument
A simple line graph (“motigraph”) that the participants completed to rep-
resent the pattern of their motivation to learn English since the initial
study in junior high school, which formed part of the interview guide that
concerned English-related attitudes, feelings and practices. The interviews
lasted for 30–40 minutes and were conducted in English or Indonesian,
according to participant preference.

Procedures
After the initial research study in 2002, the author revisited some of the
participants fve more times, collecting ongoing qualitative data and con-
cluding with a fnal round of interviews (face-to-face and email) in 2015.

Data Analysis
All the past data have been re-analysed with a view to identifying key fea-
tures of the participants’ L2 motivational trajectories; the focus in the cur-
rent study was on one salient cross-participant fnding: how the researcher
and the research process shaped the participants’ L2 motivation.

Results
The participants were infuenced by taking part in the research, drawing
inspiration from the contact with the researcher who was seen as a kind
of role model. The presence of possible negative effects on at least one
participant raises ethical issues for the selection of participants and their
interaction with the researcher.
222 Researching Motivation

STUDY 9.12
Sampson, R. J. (2016). EFL teacher motivation in-situ: Co-adaptive processes,
openness and relational motivation over interacting timescales. Studies in Second
Language Learning and Teaching, 6(2), 293–318.

Purpose
To examine how motivational dynamics evolved in-context over various
time-scales in an EFL class at a Japanese technology college, with a focus on
the situated motivation of the author as a teacher in the specifc context.

Participants
40 Japanese EFL learners, ages 15–16, attending a frst-grade class in a fve-
year college of technology, which is a combination of three years of senior
high school with the frst two years of undergraduate study.

Instrument
Introspective learner journals in which students regularly recorded their
learning experiences in Japanese; a detailed research diary of about 27,000
words.

Procedures
Students spent fve minutes at the end of each class writing a short entry
(about one paragraph) in their journals.

Data Analysis
Using NVivo to process the data, the coding centred around motivation,
affect, identity (often in the form of beliefs) as well as contextual and tem-
poral elements. The Boolean query feature of NVivo was applied to exam-
ine the interrelations between different categories, and related items were
grouped into sets. These sets were then compared with similarly grouped
items a number of times, with the progressive iterations refning under-
standings at both “higher” and “lower” hierarchical levels.

Results
The discussion provides a fne-grained analysis of certain classroom epi-
sodes from different perspectives (i.e. those of the teacher and the students)
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 223

and different temporal contexts (i.e. short-term impact and long-term

impact), thereby making the point powerfully that events have different
implications on different time-scales. The analysis revealed the situated
and dynamic nature of teacher motivation, suggesting that teacher moti-
vational trajectories develop their own character in interaction with mem-
bers and experiences in classrooms.

9.3 Mixing Methodologies

A mixed methods study involves the collection and/or analysis of both quan-
titative and qualitative data in a single study with some attempts to integrate
the two approaches at one or more stages of the research process. By doing
so, scholars hope to maximise both the internal and the external validity of
the research through offsetting the inherent weaknesses of a method by the
strength of another. Because this methodology allows scholars to examine
motivational issues that are embedded in complex educational and social con-
texts, the “questionnaire + interviews” structure has become almost a standard
research design in the L2 motivation feld (Ushioda, 2019); indeed, Boo et al.
(2015) report a nearly 600 per cent growth rate of mixed methods studies from
2005 to 2014.
There are many forms and ways of mixing methods and this brief summary
cannot offer a detailed description (for L2-specifc summaries, see Brown, 2014;
Riazi, 2017). Instead, we would like to outline fve specifc design types that we
believe are particularly relevant to motivation studies:

1. Questionnaire survey with follow-up interview. Although the questionnaire

survey is a versatile technique that allows us to collect a large amount of
data in a relatively short time, it also suffers from an inherent weakness:
as said before, the respondents’ engagement tends to be rather shallow and
therefore we cannot explore complex meaning directly with this technique.
However, in a subsequent interview (either in an individual or group for-
mat) we can ask the respondents to explain or illustrate the obtained pat-
terns, and we may even conduct a “retrospective interview” with some of
the survey participants, using their responses as the retrospective prompts
for further open-ended refection.
2. Questionnaire survey with preceding interview. A frequently recommended
procedure for designing a new questionnaire involves conducting a small-
scale exploratory qualitative study frst (usually focus group interviews but
one-to-one interviews can also serve the purpose) to provide background
information on the context, to identify or narrow down the focus of the pos-
sible variables and to act as a valuable source of ideas for preparing the item
pool for the purpose of questionnaire scale construction.
224 Researching Motivation
3. Interview study with follow-up questionnaire. Because of the non-representa-
tiveness of the investigated sample, qualitative data cannot inform us about
how widely what is discovered exists in the rest of the world – examining the
distribution of a phenomenon in a population is a quantitative objective.
Combining a qualitative interview study with a follow-up survey can offer
the best of both worlds, as the questionnaire can specifcally target the issues
uncovered in the frst phase of the research and investigate the generalis-
ability of the new hypotheses in the wider population.
4. Interview study with preceding questionnaire. An area where qualitative
research shows vulnerability is the usually small sample sizes of the respond-
ents examined. One way of dealing with this issue is to apply purposive
sampling, and this procedure can be made more principled if we include
an initial questionnaire in the study whose role is to help to select the par-
ticipants for the subsequent qualitative phase systematically (e.g. to choose
extreme or typical cases or to highlight individuals with certain traits).
5. Observational studies. Because motivation is unobservable, observational data
can only be used to obtain information about the consequences of motivation
(rather than motivation itself), for example about motivated behaviour in
the language classroom. Therefore, this data type needs to be combined with
either questionnaire or interview data, thereby resulting in a mixed meth-
ods study. Guilloteaux and Dörnyei (2008) have designed an observation
scheme – MOLT (Motivation Orientation in Language Teaching) – that
focuses on aspects of the teacher’s motivational practice and the students’
motivated behaviour in language classes, and these measures can be related
to the self-report measures of the learners/teachers.

Although mixed methods studies can offer undeniable benefts, we should also bear
in mind that the popular belief that the sum is greater than its parts is not always
true. Indeed, as pointed out more than once (e.g. by Boo et al., 2015; Hiver &
Al-Hoorie, 2020), much of the current practice of method integration involves
rather superfcial mixing of relatively independent qualitative and quantitative
components within a study, without maximising the full potential of the approach.

STUDY 9.13
Kormos, J., Csizér, K. & Iwaniec, J. (2014). A mixed-method study of language-
learning motivation and intercultural contact of international students. Journal
of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 35(2), 151–166.

Purpose
To investigate how students’ contact experiences (both direct and indirect),
language-learning attitudes and goals as well as self-effcacy beliefs interacted
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 225

and varied at three distinct points in time (at the beginning, middle and end
of the academic year) in an international study context in the UK.

Participants
International learners of English participating in an EAP foundation
programme on a university campus in the UK, with their L2 profciency
ranging from lower intermediate to high upper intermediate. Seventy com-
pleted a questionnaire and an additional ten were interviewed along with
their English language tutors. The number of interview participants was
not predetermined, and data were collected until saturation was reached
(i.e. no new information emerged).

Instrument
The quantitative instrument was a 59-item questionnaire that elicited the
students’ views on their contact experiences; it also measured motivated
behaviour, L2 attitudes, self-effcacy beliefs and three L2-learning goals:
instrumental, knowledge and international orientation. The interview
questions were designed to gain insights into the changes in the question-
naire variables and the possible reasons for them. In order to aid students’
retrospective recall of the changes in these variables, they were given
charts for the variables that showed the time period divided into months,
and were asked to draw a line to represent the change; they were then asked
to explain the completed charts.

Procedures
The participating students flled in a questionnaire three times during the
academic year: immediately after joining the programme, in the middle of
the year and at the end of the programme. The interviews took place at
the end of the participants’ study period, and the participants were paid for
taking part in them.

Data Analysis
To establish the effect of time on motivational and contact variables,
repeated measures ANOVA was conducted, with paired-sample t-tests
used for the post hoc analysis of signifcant differences between differ-
ent time periods. The interview transcripts were analysed independently
by two of the authors for emerging themes based on the constant com-
parative method of qualitative data analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994).
226 Researching Motivation

All the utterances were coded separately, using the data analysis software
MAXQDA 2007, and the discrepancies were discussed until full agreement
was reached.

Results
The results indicate that whereas written and media contact increased in
frequency during the academic year, the participants engaged in less fre-
quent spoken contact at the end of the academic year, and their motivated
behaviour, L2 attitudes and self-effcacy beliefs also decreased. The quali-
tative and quantitative data show that contact experiences (e.g. signif-
cant events), socio-environmental factors (e.g. the size of the students’ L1
speaking community in the host country) and learner internal variables
have a dynamic interaction with each other in shaping the L2 learning
experiences of international students.

STUDY 9.14
Lamb, M. & Arisandy, F. E. (2020). The impact of online use of English on
motivation to learn. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 33(1–2), 85–108.

Purpose
To investigate how metropolitan youth in Indonesia were using English
online, and how this related to their global motivation to learn English as
well as to their attitudes to classroom English lessons.

Participants
Questionnaire survey: 308 EFL students at an Indonesian university (200
attending compulsory frst or second year EAP courses, 108 attending
voluntary evening classes). Interview: four participants selected through
“extreme case sampling” (see Procedures).

Instrument
56-item questionnaire: (a) an evaluation of the personal relevance of 27
activities involving English and the use of technology, divided into three
categories (L2 self-instruction-oriented, entertainment-oriented and socially
oriented online English use); (b) an open-ended item to list any online
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 227

activities not covered; (c) 27 motivation items divided into fve multi-item
scales (motivated learning behaviour; ideal L2 self; ought-to L2 self; attitudes
to classroom learning; self-assessment of L2 profciency); (d) a fnal open-
ended item: “Do you have any suggestions for how your English classes could
be improved?”. The scales were translated into Bahasa Indonesia and then
back-translated to English, with problematic wordings referred to a specialist.

Procedures
Participants were invited for the interview phase while they completed the
questionnaire, and they volunteered by ticking the relevant box. A cluster
analysis of the survey responses produced four distinct groups based on their
degree of English online use and their attitudes towards classroom learning,
and one member of each group was selected for follow-up interviews.

Results
Online English use was positively associated with the ideal L2 self and attitudes
towards classroom learning, but not with the ought-to L2 self. Subsequent
cluster analysis revealed that the largest group consisted of learners with both
positive attitudes to classroom learning and a high level of online English
use, while only 28 participants fell into the category of having a high level of
online English use but negative attitudes to classroom learning, thereby fnd-
ing no evidence for an “authenticity gap” (reported in other studies).

9.4 New Directions in L2 Motivation Research

In Chapter 4 we highlighted two new approaches to theorising L2 motivation,
focusing on motivational dynamics (Section 4.1) and unconscious motivation
(Section 4.3). In order to do these directions justice, we need to apply novel
research methodology that departs from the traditional research toolkit in several
ways. The rest of this chapter addresses these new research initiatives.

9.4.1 Adopting a Complex Dynamic Systems Approach

In the frst paper specifcally devoted to discussing research methodology from a com-
plex dynamic systems perspective in SLA, Larsen-Freeman and Cameron (2008, p.
200) concluded: “The dynamic, nonlinear, and open nature of complex systems,
together with their tendency toward self-organisation and interaction across lev-
els and timescales, requires changes in traditional views of the functions and roles
of theory, hypothesis, data, and analysis”. We have seen earlier that qualitative
228 Researching Motivation
research (especially qualitative longitudinal designs; Section 9.2.1) offers features
that are well-suited for conducting investigations in a dynamic vein, and mixed
methods research (Section 9.3) can also be considered a potential response to the
challenge of researching complex dynamic systems, as it allows for a multi-level
analysis of complex phenomena by converging numeric trends from large-scale
quantitative data and specifc details from in-depth qualitative data. Indeed, the
method has been found as a suitable basis for innovative research approaches such
as the “idiodynamic method” (MacIntyre, 2012; see Study 9.15) and “Q method-
ology” (Irie, 2014; see Study 9.16), and an edited volume specifcally devoted to
motivational dynamics (Dörnyei, MacIntyre & Henry, 2015) contains no fewer
than fve studies displaying integrated methodologies (Gregersen & MacIntyre,
2015; Irie & Ryan, 2015; Nitta & Baba, 2015; Piniel & Csizér, 2015; You & Chan,
2015). However, we should also note MacIntyre, Dörnyei and Henry’s (2015) cau-
tion that “a mixed methods study is not inherently dynamic in nature” (p. 425).

STUDY 9.15
MacIntyre, P. D. and Legatto, J. J. (2011). A dynamic system approach to
willingness to communicate: Developing an idiodynamic method to capture
rapidly changing affect. Applied Linguistics, 32(2), 149–171.

Purpose
To investigate the rapidly changing dynamics of willingness to commu-
nicate (WTC) in L2 communicative tasks by using the “idiodynamic”
methodology.

Participants
Six Anglophone Canadian university students (ages 19–21) with varying
ability of French, involved in French immersion programmes.

Instrument
The participants frst flled in a questionnaire, and then used a computer
program specially written for this study to rate their own WTC. The soft-
ware allowed for a video to play in one window of the screen and responses
to WTC to be generated in another (more details in Procedures).

Procedures
The participants’ performance was video recorded in eight simple communi-
cative tasks. The recording was played back to the participants immediately
after they fnished the tasks, and the special “variable tester software” allowed
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 229

them to rate their WTC as the video progressed by using the computer mouse
to raise or lower the level of WTC shown on the screen (ranging from −5
to +5). When the rating process fnished, a graph showing the ratings was
printed. Afterwards, the video recording of the tasks was played back for a
second time, with the researchers stopping it at each point where there was a
dramatic change in the WTC graph. Participants were asked in a retrospec-
tive fashion to describe why the change occurred. This discussion was also
videotaped, and then transcribed and translated where necessary.

Data Analysis
In the main part of the analysis, the six participants’ self-report measures
and WTC ratings were analysed individually, as six separate case studies.
The questionnaire data were considered against the respondents’ actual
performance (including their body language), their WTC ratings, observa-
tions about them during the tasks and their retrospective comments.

Results
Frequent and salient changes in WTC were observed over the few min-
utes that respondents spent engaging with the tasks – fuctuations that
are lost when considering only a summary score for trait-like WTC, situ-
ational WTC or even task-related WTC. Interestingly, affective reactions
reported by the observers were not always refected in WTC ratings. The
ongoing relationship between language anxiety and WTC appeared to be
complex – with the relation being at times seemingly positive, negative or
neutral – and more detailed analysis revealed clear indications of the fact
that WTC can be seen as a dynamic system.

STUDY 9.16
Fraschini, N. & Caruso, M. (2019). “I can see myself …” A Q methodology study
on self vision of Korean language learners. System, 87(102147), 1–12.

Purpose
To understand how learners of Korean as a foreign language in an English-
speaking country visualise themselves as future speakers of Korean.
230 Researching Motivation

Participants
39 Australian students with no Korean language background, enrolled in a
Korean language programme at an Australian university.

Instrument
Q methodology package: 45 preprepared statements concerning possible
future self-images of being speakers of Korean as a foreign language.

Procedures
Students conducted the Q sorting sessions (see data analysis below) indi-
vidually in the presence of a researcher, following an instruction sheet
which explained how to complete the task. The process was followed by a
short interview, during which the students were asked to clarify the mean-
ing attributed to the cards in their confguration.

Data Analysis
Q methodology was employed, which integrates qualitative elements within
a rigorous quantitative framework in the form of an inverted factor analysis
procedure. First participants sort a set of statements – which have been
compiled from interviewing the target group of individuals or from con-
sulting the literature – into a confguration on a special grid that expresses
the degree of personal agreement with the statements. Then these confgu-
rations are statistically analysed (using free software; see https://qmethod
.org) to generate factors, each of which identifes respondents with highly
interrelated response patterns.

Results
The analysis produced four vision types: (a) “I can see myself studying for
enjoyment and leisure”; (b) “I can see myself as a fuent speaker living in
Korea”; (c) “I can see myself with advantages for my career”; (d) “I can
see myself fulflled and with intercultural communication skills”. Of these,
the frst emerged as the one affecting the variance most. Interestingly, no
strong vision of the self in interaction with Korean people emerged; how-
ever, the only “consensus statement” (i.e. which was not statistically asso-
ciated with any of the factors) was “I can see myself with close friendship
with Koreans”, thus representing what lay potentially in the background of
the vision of all the students participating in this study.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 231
Generating novel research tools for the purpose of dynamic systems research
is an evolving area whose description goes beyond the scope of this chapter
(for recent overviews, see MacIntyre et al., 2017, and Hiver & Al-Hoorie,
2020), so here we would like to highlight only two fundamental aspects of any
research in this vein: the concerns with predictability and change. To start with
the former, the ultimate challenge of researching complex dynamic systems is
the limited predictability of system behaviour. If the behaviour of a system is
unpredictable or random, there is no point researching it, because there are no
systematic elements to uncover. If, however, the system’s behaviour is predict-
able, then it may be possible to fnd systematic trends that can be analysed
meaningfully (Dörnyei, 2014). Although dynamic systems, by defnition, dis-
play ongoing fuctuation, there are times of seeming stability in most systems,
when the system behaviour becomes predictable. These non-dynamic, settled
states are due to the existence of attractor states (see Hiver, 2015), which refer
to preferred patterns to which the system is attracted (hence the name) and
which the system tries to approximate through its self-organisation capacity.
Thus, identifying potential attractor states and then describing their nature
and scope is a meaningful dynamic research strategy. One way of achieving this
purpose is through conducting “retrodictive qualitative modelling” (Dörnyei,
2014) – Concept 9.3 offers a description of this method and Study 9.17 pro-
vides an illustration.

CONCEPT 9.3 RETRODICTIVE QUALITATIVE MODELLING

The starting point of retrodictive qualitative modelling (Dörnyei, 2014) is
the recognition that in most complex situations we fnd a relatively small
number of well-recognisable outcome patterns or “attractor states”. The
essence of the method is to identify these archetypes and then describe
the specifc mechanisms that drove the system behaviour to them. The
method therefore involves a backward search for the underlying “signa-
ture dynamics”, which is the name given to the powerful patterns or trends
within the system that make the different components end up in one of
the outcome archetypes. Identifying the system archetypes can be done
through interviews, cluster analysis or Q methodology, and the main tool
for understanding the signature dynamics associated with each archetype is
qualitative interviewing. Tracing back in this way the reasons why the sys-
tem has ended up with a small number of particular outcome options will,
in turn, allow the researcher to produce a retrospective qualitative model of
the system’s evolution (hence the name of the approach), which may serve
as a lesson for other, similar situations.
232 Researching Motivation

STUDY 9.17
Chan, L., Dörnyei, Z. & Henry, A. (2015). Learner archetypes and signature
dynamics in the language classroom: A retrodictive qualitative modelling
approach to studying L2 motivation. In Z. Dörnyei, P. D. MacIntyre & A.
Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 238–259). Bristol:
Multilingual Matters.

Purpose
To explore the use of “retrodictive qualitative modelling” (RQM; see
Concept 9.3) as a novel approach to identifying learner archetypes, moti-
vational patterns and the signature dynamics of a motivational system.

Participants
Six English teachers in a Hong Kong secondary school; seven students from
the same school (Years 7 to 9), who were born and raised in Hong Kong
and were native speakers of Cantonese.

Instrument and Data Collection Procedures

The six teachers participated in a focus group interview to identify salient
learner archetypes among students in the school. Seven archetypes were
identifed, and the teachers then nominated typical students representing
each archetype. Students were interviewed (in Cantonese) twice – an ini-
tial longer semi-structured interview followed by a shorter respondent vali-
dation interview to check if the emerging analysis accorded with their own
perspectives. Students were asked about their language learning history,
their motivational journey and infuences, and their view of themselves as
English speakers in the future. They were also asked to plot a “motigraph”
to describe their journey as language learners. Interviews were recorded,
transcribed and translated into English.

Data Analysis
Data analysis followed two stages: (a) notes and ideas were generated
through repeated readings of the transcripts, followed by a content analysis
to identify factors affecting students’ motivation, as well as commonalities
and differences across the whole dataset refecting overarching patterns and
learner types; (b) a fne-grained interpretive analysis of one focal learner
case was undertaken, with the aim of identifying the specifc signature
dynamics associated with this archetype.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 233

Results
The signature dynamics associated with the focal learner archetype could
be characterised as the movement between three cyclic attractors: self-
esteem maintenance (refecting the need to live up to family and social
expectations); stimulation (gained from competitive processes); fear of fail-
ure (or of not achieving an expected level of performance). The study dem-
onstrated that the RQM template offered a systematic research process,
generating rich qualitative data to shed light on the signature motivational
dynamics of learner archetypes. However, it also raised some methodologi-
cal challenges in identifying the principal attractor states and the corre-
sponding learners.

Another fruitful strategy for examining motivational dynamics is through focus-

ing on how systems change in time. This requires in research terms an empha-
sis on longitudinal research; we are in agreement with Menard’s (2002) assertion
that longitudinal research should be seen as the default when we examine any
dynamic processes in the social sciences, and in fact it would be diffcult to imag-
ine a dynamic systems study that does not have a longitudinal aspect. Earlier
in this chapter we have addressed the main features of longitudinal designs
(Sections 9.1.4 and 9.2.1), and we argued that qualitative longitudinal studies
lend themselves particularly well to pursuing research in a dynamic vein. Here
we would like to underline one key point in this respect, namely that longitudi-
nal investigations of change can occur on different time-scales. For example, the
idiodynamic method represents a micro-perspective and adopts a moment-by-
moment time-scale (see Study 9.15), and in her research on different layers of
the self-concept, Mercer (2015; Study 9.18) adopted this micro-time-scale along
with three longer time-scales, thereby illustrating not only that different tem-
poral dimensions can reveal different underlying processes but also that these
processes interact with each other dynamically.

STUDY 9.18
Mercer, S. (2015). Dynamics of the self: A multilevel nested systems approach.
In Z. Dörnyei, P. D. MacIntyre & A. Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in
language learning (pp. 139–163). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Purpose
To examine the dynamics of different facets of L2 learners’ selves across
different time-scales (months, weeks, minutes, seconds) over a 15-week
semester, based on a nested systems view of the self.
234 Researching Motivation

Participants
Two advanced, tertiary-level, Austrian EFL learners (ages 20 and 21)
attending an integrated English language skills course.

Instrument
The four time-scales were explored via four different data collection tools:
(a) a series of semi-structured interviews; the students prepared a language
learning self-description narrative, which formed the basis for the frst
interview, followed by open-ended questions concerning the participants’
L2 learning experiences and self perceptions; (b) regular student journal
entries; (c) real-time questionnaires completed within a session, rating how
confdent the students felt in using their English; there was also some space
for comments; (d) idiodynamic tools processing changes.

Procedures
The interviews were conducted every six weeks, the journal entries done
once a week. Regarding the in-class questionnaires, every fve minutes a
bell rang and the students had a couple of minutes to complete the con-
fdence scale and to add any comments. This was done in three separate
lessons spaced three weeks apart, with the frst session taking place in the
fourth week of teaching once the group was more settled. The lessons were
also audio-recorded so the peaks and troughs in student’s responses could
be corresponded with what was happening during class at that time. The
use of the idiodynamic software followed the practice of MacIntyre and
Legatto (2011; Study 9.14).

Data Analysis
The qualitative data (interview and journal) were transcribed and digi-
talised for analysis using the data management software Atlas.ti. The data
were coded frst in an open, grounded manner, coding line by line to
allow all aspects of the data to be considered and to ensure the inclusion
of potentially unexpected features in the analysis. In the following rounds
of coding, codes were combined or expanded until categories began to
form, and memos were written to track possible hypotheses and develop-
ments. The codes, categories and memos were then explored with com-
plex dynamic systems principles in mind, and fnally the coded data were
examined for possible patterns and interactions across each level and for
both learners.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 235

Results
The study showed how the dynamics of a L2 learner’s self system can be
assessed using different methodological approaches and time-scales, and
how the emerging insights about the various self-constructs can be inte-
grated into a composite picture.

The usefulness of adopting a longitudinal design to explore change in motiva-

tional dynamics has received confrmation in Waninge, Dörnyei and de Bot’s
(2014; Study 19) fne-grained analysis of four language learners over a period
of two weeks, using real-time student feedback data taken at fve-minute inter-
vals in class, combined with classroom observations and a general questionnaire
on motivation and attitude. They processed the multi-level results in progress
diagrams of the participants’ motivational disposition, which demonstrated in a
tangible manner both the interaction of various time-scales and the fact that
motivational dynamics involves predictable and stable phases.

STUDY 9.19
Waninge, F., Dörnyei, Z. & de Bot, K. (2014). Motivational dynamics in language
learning: Change, stability and context. Modern Language Journal, 98(3),
704–723.

Purpose
To explore the dynamics of motivational development through real-time
assessment of classroom motivation in terms of three key aspects: change,
stability and contextual dependency; to demonstrate that some aspects
of motivational variability can only make proper sense within a complex
dynamic systems framework.

Participants
Four students learning both Spanish and German in Year 1 of the highest
level of Dutch secondary education (ages 11 to 12); a limit of four students
was set to facilitate intensive classroom observation in an individual-level
analysis.

Instrument
(a) A “Motometer”, which was a drawing of a thermometer-like shape
with a “0” at the lowest and a “100” at the highest point; students were
236 Researching Motivation

instructed to indicate their level of motivation by drawing a line on

the scale, and there was also a comments section.
(b) A classroom observation form, to keep record of the unfolding lesson
plan, the actual actions and tasks performed, as well as any retrospec-
tive comments both by students and teachers.
(c) A motivation/attitude questionnaire made up of 27 Likert scale items
measuring students’ attitudes towards the L2 courses and teachers.

Procedures
Data collection took place over a period of two weeks (three lessons in
Spanish and German each). Measurements of motivation were taken in
real-time, at fve-minute intervals, marked by a soft bell sound; students
indicated their level of motivation visually, by drawing a horizontal line
on the Motometer drawing. The frst lessons observed were treated as pilot
lessons so that students could learn to apply the Motometer and the whole
class could get used to hearing the bell. Classroom activities were observed
and documented by the researcher present in the classroom for all six ses-
sions. Students flled in the questionnaires after the last session.

Data Analysis
The Motometer data were processed by measuring the length of the line
drawn by the student in millimetres and then converting it to a 1–100
numeric scale. For each lesson, the Motometer data were entered into a
graph in which the horizontal axis represented time and the vertical axis
showed the students’ degree of motivation (i.e. Motometer reading). The
classroom observation data were coded and relevant details were integrated
into the Motometer charts by placing them in boxes underneath the dia-
gram at the appropriate time point; written comments by the participants
on their Motometers were also added in a similar way, thereby supplement-
ing the Monometer plot with an online explanatory context. Finally, the
written observations of the participants’ behaviour in class, their average
grades on both subjects and their questionnaire answers were used to draw
up a student profle for each of the four learners.

Results
The results affrm that student motivation can be meaningfully studied at
different interacting time scales using a dynamic systems framework. The
fndings demonstrate how L2 motivation changes over time while also dis-
playing predictable and stable phases, and how it is inseparable from the
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 237

learner’s individual learning context. Signifcantly, the evolution of the

motivation to learn an L2 was infuenced by different types of motives on
different time-scales.

9.4.2 Researching Unconscious Motivation

When discussing unconscious motivation in Section 4.3, we pointed out that
because the scientifc study of the unconscious sources of human behaviour is a
relatively new line of inquiry, conducting empirical research in this area is still
at a pioneering stage. However, developments gained added momentum in the
social sciences when it became clear that relying solely on conscious measures
in empirical research often produces a partial and biased picture of the over-
all motivation complex. Researching unconscious motivation is diffcult for the
very reason that it is unconscious, which means that traditional self-report tech-
niques used for assessing explicit motives are only of limited use for this purpose.
Accordingly, the main challenge in the feld over the past two decades has been
to create new research methods that enable the investigation of the unconscious
mind. The most fruitful investigations in this area have centred around the
process of priming – that is, consciously generating unconscious motives (for an
overview, see Dörnyei, 2020) – and the most tangible outcome of the efforts in
methodological innovation has been the development of three widely recognised
and used measuring instruments, the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald,
McGhee & Schwartz, 1998), the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne et
al., 2005) and the Evaluative Priming Task (EPT; Fazio et al., 1995). Of these, the
IAT has become the best-known and most widely applied, and because it has also
been employed in L2 studies, let us conclude with a brief description of it, with
Study 9.20 providing a concrete example of its application.
The IAT is based on the well-established psycholinguistic technique of meas-
uring reaction times to various stimuli presented on a computer screen in millisec-
onds. When taking the IAT, participants are asked to press one of two buttons
on the keyboard in evaluating a series of cues appearing on the monitor, and a
clever combination of cues and response categories ensures that the respondents’
underlying implicit dispositions will be refected in the speed of their responses.
The test calculates these subtle differences in speed and after the participants
have responded to all the items, the IAT software produces a score on the basis
of a complex algorithm that serves as an index of the respondents’ unconscious
disposition (for more details, see Al-Hoorie, 2016a; Dörnyei, 2020). Al-Hoorie
(2016a; Study 9.20) pioneered using the IAT in SLA to compare the impact
of explicit and implicit attitudes towards L2 speakers, and in a follow-up study
(Al-Hoorie, 2016b), he confrmed not only that learners with favourable implicit
attitudes towards L2 speakers expressed more openness to the L2 community but
also that they achieved higher grades in their English class.
238 Researching Motivation

STUDY 9.20
Al-Hoorie, A. H. (2016a). Unconscious motivation. Part I: Implicit attitudes toward
L2 speakers. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 6(3), 423–454.

Purpose
To examine whether someone’s implicit attitudes infuences the person’s
overall motivational disposition, and to test whether learners with congru-
ent explicit and implicit attitudes differ in their openness to the L2 group
from learners with incongruent attitudes.

Participants
365 Arabic L1 speakers of varied ages, studying English at various British
universities and language institutes.

Instrument
Implicit attitudes were assessed by the Implicit Association Test (IAT; see
Section 9.4.2); explicit self-report measures were obtained by means of a
48-item questionnaire assessing nine variables (six attitudinal/motivational
measures as well as fear of assimilation, ethnocentrism and religious attitudes).

Procedures
Participants completed the questionnaire and the IAT using a laptop in
one-to-one meetings with the researcher.

Data Analysis
For the implicit test, the analysis closely followed the improved scoring
algorithm, called the D Measure.

Results
The results indicated that accounting for the learners’ implicit attitudes
led to a signifcant increase in the explanatory power of the data: students
with congruent positive explicit and implicit attitudes were more favour-
ably disposed towards the L2 group than those characterised by dissonant
attitudes (i.e. who reported a positive explicit disposition but held negative
implicit attitudes). This being the case, focusing entirely on explicit atti-
tudes and motivation in empirical studies can mask the potential impact of
any conficting implicit attitudes.
 Types and Methods of Motivation Research 239
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Part IV

Resources and Further

Information
10 The Locus of Motivation Research
Linkages to Other Topics and Disciplines

This chapter will…

• summarise the disciplines that are related to L2 motivation research in the

social sciences and provide some key references to them;
• discuss the challenge of relating L2 motivation to applied linguistics and the
study of SLA;
• consider target aspects of L2 and multilingual communication relevant to
motivation research.

The study of L2 motivation is an interdisciplinary feld as it cuts across at least

three scholarly domains:

• language education;
• (applied) linguistics;
• psychology.

L2 motivation researchers can thus fnd materials relevant to their subject in a

number of related disciplines within the social sciences where the understanding
of human behaviour and communication is a focal issue. Some of these areas,
like motivational psychology, are obvious “feeder disciplines”, while other areas
that appear to have less direct linkages may also inform the study of L2 motiva-
tion. Given this interdisciplinary range, it can be argued that the study of L2
motivation presents signifcant challenges for researchers who may lack depth of
expertise across various relevant academic and professional domains. In fact, this
is recognised as a challenge for many aspects of research into language learner
psychology more widely (e.g. Dörnyei, 2019; Mercer & Ryan, 2016), since the
graduate students and scholars who pursue such research typically receive their
academic formation in departments of applied linguistics, English or language
studies, and thus may have little exposure to formal training in psychology. By
the same token, those who approach L2 motivation research from a disciplinary
background in psychology may not always be able to bring relevant academic and
professional insights from language teaching, or relevant experiential knowledge
of local social and classroom realities that impact on student motivation.
248 Resources and Further Information
In this chapter, we will map the broad terrain of the social sciences with
respect to the thematic linkages to L2 motivation research. We begin by looking
at relevant disciplinary areas across the social sciences in general, followed by
a critical analysis of the place of motivation research within applied linguistics
and SLA research. Finally, we consider target aspects of L2 communication and
multilingual communication studies relevant to motivation research.

10.1 L2 Motivation and Related Disciplines in the Social

Sciences
The study of L2 motivation has always had strong ties to disciplines outside the
boundaries of L2 research. The pioneers of the feld in Canada – Robert Gardner,
Richard Clément and Wallace Lambert – all approached the issue from a psycho-
logical perspective, looking at the study of L2 motivation as a sub-area within
social psychology. These scholars were frst and foremost social psychologists who
had an interest in the attitudinal–motivational basis of second language acqui-
sition and communication. Although subsequent generations of L2 motivation
researchers have identifed themselves more closely with applied linguistics and
L2 studies, L2 motivation research has maintained its permeable boundaries. For
example, the shift from social psychological perspectives to more cognitive and
classroom-focused perspectives in the 1990s (Section 3.2) was characterised by
an outward-looking orientation as researchers surveyed a wide array of motiva-
tion constructs in several branches of psychology and evaluated their relevance
to the analysis of L2 motivation. Such links with various domains of psychology
have continued through more recent and contemporary perspectives on L2 moti-
vation, as have links with other disciplines such as educational research.
In short, because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the subject, any-
one wishing to do research on L2 motivation needs to look outside (as well as
inside) the feld of SLA for relevant literature. The question, then, is: “Where
shall we look?” In our past research, we have found valuable material in the vari-
ous wider domains briefy described below.

10.1.1 Motivational Psychology

The most obvious link to L2 motivation research has been a thriving area of
specialisation within general psychology. Chapters 1 and 2 reference many of
the key publications and theories in mainstream motivational psychology, while
comprehensive overviews of historical developments, key trends and current
directions can be found in Deckers (2018), Heckhausen and Heckhausen (2018),
Liem and McInerney (2018), Reeve (2018) and Ryan (2019).

10.1.2 Educational Psychology

Although “motivation” refers to human behaviour in general, two behavioural
domains in particular have been subject to extensive research: the motiva-
tion to achieve in general, and the motivation to achieve within educational
 The Locus of Motivation Research 249
environments – that is, the motivation to learn or, as it is often described, academic
motivation. The fndings in these two areas of motivation show many similarities
and have often been transferred to the other or treated collectively (e.g. Elliot,
Dweck & Yeager, 2017). Yet there are also some important differences between
motivation in educational and other (e.g. workplace) contexts, and consequently
the study of student motivation has been a prominent subject in educational
psychology. In fact, as we saw in Chapter 5, this link can be traced right back
to the genesis of motivation research at the beginning of the 20th century, with
the frst ever book to have “motivation” in its title being Wilson and Wilson’s
(1916) The Motivation of School Work. Comprehensive authoritative overviews
of academic motivation can be found in Renninger and Hidi (2019), Schunk,
Meece and Pintrich (2013), Seli and Dembo (2019), Wentzel and Brophy (2019)
and Wentzel and Miele (2016); see also Wigfeld and Koenka (2020) for a special
issue of Contemporary Educational Psychology on the past, present and future of
theories of academic motivation.
In addition to the research focusing explicitly on motivation within edu-
cational psychology, there is a second area that has considerable relevance to
understanding the motivational basis of instructed learning: the study of learn-
ing environments. This concerns the study of the social, psychological, peda-
gogical, physical, technological and virtual environments in which learning
happens, including out-of-class and mobile learning as well as classroom-based
learning. This is a diverse and extensive area of inquiry in educational research,
with a number of dedicated international academic journals (e.g. Learning
Environments Research and Smart Learning Environments, both published by
Springer; Interactive Learning Environments, published by Taylor & Francis).
As refected in the latter two titles, within this area of inquiry there is a signif-
cant focus on e-learning, distance learning and technology-supported learning
environments, and this emphasis is set to increase signifcantly in the wake
of the current global pandemic (at the time of writing) and the widespread
growth of online teaching and learning. With specifc reference to perspec-
tives on student motivation and engagement in online learning environments,
comprehensive authoritative overviews can be found in Hartnett (2016) and
Kumar (2018).
Finally, as discussed already in Sections 4.6.2 and 5.5, there has been a grow-
ing interest in student engagement in educational psychology, and this notion also
has an obvious overlap with the concept of motivation to learn. This is poten-
tially a very important new research direction, and it has been gaining traction
in SLA (see Hiver, Al-Hoorie & Mercer, 2021; Mercer & Dörnyei, 2020). For
further discussion of the connection between motivation and engagement, see
Martin, Ginns and Papworth (2017) and Renninger, Ren and Kern (2018).

10.1.3 Educational Studies

Although educational psychology and educational studies show a considerable
overlap, there are at least three specifc areas within educational research that are
relevant to motivation research:
250 Resources and Further Information
• classroom management (e.g. Burden, 2020; Jones & Jones, 2016);
• instructional design (e.g. Brown & Green, 2020; for discussion of motivational
aspects, see Linnenbrink-Garcia, Patall & Pekrun, 2016; Spector & Park,
2018);
• research on teachers and teacher effectiveness (for the “classic” summary, see
Wittrock, 1986; see also Day et al., 2007; Muijs et al., 2014; Stronge, 2018).

10.1.4 Social Psychology

Social psychologists have been interested in human action because of the rec-
ognition that various aspects of the individual’s sociocultural context have
a considerable impact on the person’s cognitions, emotions, behaviours and
achievement. The most explicit treatment of this effect has been the “attitude-
causes-action” framework of the classic theory of reasoned action (Ajzen &
Fishbein, 1980), which has been centred around the tenet that someone’s atti-
tude towards a target infuences the overall pattern of the person’s responses to
the target. Recent work in social psychology has emphasised the importance
of situating attitudes holistically within their personal, social and historical
contexts in order to understand how attitudes (and the associated behavioural
response patterns) form and change (e.g. Albarracin & Shavitt, 2018). Texts
that offer insightful discussions of various related issues are Ajzen (2005) and
Maio, Haddock and Verplanken (2018).
There are two further areas within social psychology that concern the socio-
cultural infuences on human behaviour and thus, indirectly, social motivation:

• social identity theory, focusing on the effects of various social group member-
ships (e.g. ethnic, ethnolinguistic, professional, gender) on the individual’s
self-image and aspirations;
• social cognition theory, focusing on how individuals process and store informa-
tion about other people and how these mental processes affect their interac-
tion with them.

For reviews of the interrelationship of the two perspectives, see Abrams and
Hogg (1999) and Vaughan and Hogg (2018); for a discussion of motivational
issues within a social identity perspective, see Brown and Capozza (2016).

10.1.5 Group Dynamics

It was already mentioned in Section 2.2.2 that membership in various small
groups such as learner groups or project teams has a powerful impact on the group
members’ motivation and behaviour, for example through:

• the socionormative infuence of peer pressure;

• the directive infuence of group goals and group norms;
• the general effects of group cohesiveness on group performance.
 The Locus of Motivation Research 251
Such issues have been the subject of research in an interdisciplinary feld within
social sciences, group dynamics. For a comprehensive account of the feld, see
Forsyth (2018); for a summary of group dynamics in education in general, see
Schmuck and Schmuck (2000), and in relation to L2 classrooms in particular,
see Dörnyei and Murphey (2003). In addition, within the feld of intercultural
communication, especially in the context of internationalised higher education
and global workplace settings, there is a growing body of research on group pro-
cesses in relation to culturally diverse groups and teams (e.g. Chen, 2006; Hinds,
Neeley & Cramton, 2014; Reid & Garson, 2016).

10.1.6 Organisational Psychology: Work Motivation

Continuing the link with motivation in workplace settings, the subfeld of organ-
isational and industrial psychology is an area where there has been a great deal
of research on motivation that has been directed at understanding issues such as:

• which aspects of work design motivate employees;

• how this motivation can be enhanced;
• how worker dissatisfaction can be reduced.

The following volumes offer comprehensive overviews: Furnham and Treglown

(2018); Gagné (2014); Latham (2012); Mullins and McLean (2019); Pinder
(2015).

10.1.7 Communication Studies

Communication studies is a thriving discipline within the social sciences, cover-
ing a variety of topics related to language use, ranging from media studies to inter-
cultural communication. The feld in general has relevance to L2 motivation
studies, especially its extensive subfeld of instructional communication research,
which focuses on the role of communication in the teaching-learning process,
examining for example how student motivation is affected by “teacher imme-
diacy” (i.e. verbal and nonverbal behaviours that reduce the physical or psycho-
logical distance between teacher and students). For an overview of instructional
communication research in general, see Frymier (2014); for discussion of teacher
immediacy behaviours and their links to student motivation in the classroom, see
Allen, Witt and Wheeless (2006); for more recent perspectives on the motiva-
tional role of teacher immediacy or “social presence” in online learning environ-
ments, see Bialowas and Steimel (2019) and Richardson et al. (2017).

10.1.8 Positive Psychology

An important direction within mainstream psychology since the turn of the
century has been to focus on positive strengths, behaviours and accomplish-
ments that help people thrive and lead happy and fulflling lives. This positive
252 Resources and Further Information
psychology movement owes its origins to the work of Martin Seligman and
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (e.g. Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; see also
Seligman, 2011), and it includes within its theoretical scope the motivational
dimension of human functioning. As we saw in Section 4.5, the relevance of
positive psychology to understanding the affective and motivational dimension
of language learning has recently begun to be explored (e.g. Gregersen, 2019;
MacIntyre, Gregersen & Mercer, 2016). For contemporary overviews of positive
psychology in general, see Boniwell and Tunariu (2019) and Snyder et al. (2020).

10.2 The Challenge of Relating L2 Motivation to Applied

Linguistics and SLA
As we have seen above, the study of L2 motivation draws extensively on theoreti-
cal and research perspectives from disciplines outside applied linguistics, which
is hardly surprising since motivation has relevance across all areas of human
behaviour and social activity, and not only within the L2 learning domain.
Correspondingly, this long-standing tendency to look to other disciplines such
as social and educational psychology to inform our work has also meant that
motivation research has developed a somewhat ambiguous position within the
feld of SLA. Although most summaries of the area have acknowledged its impor-
tance, L2 motivation research has tended to be given fairly marginal treatment
in most overviews of SLA research, usually confned to a sub-section within a
general discussion of individual difference factors. Commenting on this situa-
tion over a decade ago, Ellis (2008) made the observation that L2 motivation
research tended to be positioned outside mainstream SLA, largely because it did
not directly concern itself with the micro-level of cognitive processes implicated
in language development, which has been the core focus of the more linguistic
approaches traditionally shaping mainstream SLA research.
In recent years, this situation has changed in important ways, as SLA research
itself came to embrace a “social turn” (Block, 2003; see section 3.3.2) and then
a “multilingual turn” (May, 2014; Ortega, 2013; see Section 4.4), representing a
conceptual expansion from a view of language learning as primarily an internal
cognitive process to a view of language learning as a socially situated process
that takes account of the complexity and diversity of language and communica-
tion in today’s world. Moreover, current directions in SLA research emphasise
not merely interdisciplinary but transdisciplinary approaches (Douglas Fir Group,
2016) that seek to transcend the epistemic boundaries of individual disciplines
to generate richer multi-perspective insights to address real-world problems and
challenges. Thus, in the contemporary period of SLA research, there is greater
scope than before for the analysis of motivational perspectives to become more
fully integrated into main lines of inquiry in SLA. This is also because the disci-
plinary alignment with psychology (rather than linguistics) that has shaped the
study of L2 motivation no longer sets it aside from many current areas of research
in SLA. As Dörnyei (2019) describes, the infuence of psychology as a disci-
pline has grown signifcantly across SLA circles over the past decade or so, with
 The Locus of Motivation Research 253
psychological approaches to researching language learning becoming increas-
ingly mainstream and addressing a diversity of topics such as emotions, beliefs,
self-concepts and mindsets, as well as motivation. This contemporary surge of
interest in psychological perspectives in SLA has even led to the establishment of
an International Association for the Psychology of Language Learning (IAPLL)
with biennial conferences and a dedicated journal.
However, while this mainstreaming of psychological approaches to SLA
means that L2 motivation research is no longer isolated in this regard, there
remains a question mark about how far this research can usefully contribute to
the core SLA business of theorising the fne-grained processes of L2 acquisition
and development. This goes back to the earlier cited concern raised by Ellis
(2008), and more recently elaborated by Ushioda (2016) in her call for a “small
lens” approach to researching L2 motivation (Section 4.6), which seeks to link
motivation to the cognitive and metacognitive processes involved in acquiring
specifc features of the L2, or in developing specifc subskills and competences.
Looking beyond SLA research to the diverse feld of applied linguistics more
broadly, the study of L2 motivation clearly has greatest relevance to the feld’s
applications to educational practice and language teacher education, as refected
in the dual focus of this book on teaching and researching. However, aside from
illuminating the psychology of language learning motivation and its implications
for the practice of language teaching, L2 motivation research has not yet had
much to contribute to other domains of inquiry across applied linguistics where
matters of motivation (to learn and/or use particular languages in certain social
settings) may have underlying relevance. In particular, as Ushioda (2020) dis-
cusses, L2 motivation research has engaged rather little with the more “critical”
strands of applied linguistics (e.g. applied sociolinguistics; see Piller, 2016) that
address issues of social inequality or discrimination where language and commu-
nication are implicated.

10.3 Defning Target Aspects of L2 Communication

It seems clear from the preceding discussion that much work remains to be done
to relate the analysis of motivation in a fne-grained way to specifc aspects,
processes or contexts of L2 communication, since most work in the feld has
focused instead on general motivational dispositions and their associations with
broadly defned outcomes such as L2 achievement, profciency or intention to
continue L2 learning (the traditional criterion variables in much L2 motivation
research). By taking a more sharply focused approach, our feld of inquiry may
be in a better position to inform pedagogical strategies for enhancing students’
mastery of specifc target subskills or features of the L2 (e.g. aspects of lexis such
as formulaic sequences; see Le-Thi, Dörnyei & Pellicer-Sánchez, in press). A
more focused approach may also enable us to connect more closely with cur-
rent research in relation to specifc aspects of L2 learning and associated peda-
gogy such as, for example, the development of sociopragmatic competence (e.g.
McConachy, 2019). Importantly too, by targeting particular aspects and contexts
254 Resources and Further Information
of L2 communication, we may be able to contribute motivational perspectives
to contemporary critical applied linguistics work on, for example, institutional
forms of communication between offcials and migrants that create barriers to
access (e.g. Avineri et al., 2019).
In terms of identifying and defning the target aspects of L2 communication
that motivation research might usefully focus on, clearly this will depend on local
needs and realities, since not all aspects of L2 communication will have motiva-
tional importance across all contexts of language learning and use. For example,
in relation to EAP (English for academic purposes) students, the target aspects
of L2 communication are likely to include, in the main, extensive reading and
critical reading skills (e.g. Ro, 2016, 2018), as well as academic writing skills
(e.g. Wilby, in press), though skills for negotiating participation and identity in
the academic community have also been shown to be motivationally important
for international students (see Morita, 2004). In contrast, for those migrating to
a new country to seek a better life, for example, the motivational focus is more
likely to be on developing the necessary oral transactional and interactional skills
to meet practical everyday needs, to secure a job and to facilitate integration into
the local community (e.g. Cooke, 2006; Sidaway, 2018).
In the contemporary era, of course, target aspects of communication will
almost certainly include electronic and mobile forms of communication and digi-
tal and multimodal literacy. These are important areas of communication and
language learning that the L2 motivation feld is already beginning to address
(e.g. Henry, 2019; Henry & Lamb, 2019; Vinther & Lauridsen, 2020), but where
there is clearly much more scope for motivation-focused research inquiry. In
addition, in alignment with the multilingual turn in SLA, the target aspects of
communication for motivation research to address will also include what Leung
and Scarino (2016) describe as the multilingual character of communication and
learning to communicate today, and will focus on, for example, how students can
draw on various linguistic resources to communicate in multilingual settings, and
how they develop linguacultural mobility as they move adaptively between differ-
ent linguistic systems and cultural practices.

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Sidaway, K. (2018). The effects and perception of low-stakes exams on the motivation
of adult ESOL students in the UK. Language Issues: The ESOL Journal, 29(1), 17–29,
Snyder, C. R., Lopez, S. J., Edwards, L. M., & Marques, S. C. (Eds.) (2020). The Oxford
handbook of positive psychology (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Spector, J. M., & Park, S. W. (2018). Motivation, learning, and technology: Embodied
educational motivation. New York: Routledge.
Stronge, J. H. (2018). Qualities of effective teachers (3rd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Ushioda, E. (2016). Language learning motivation through a small lens: A research
agenda. Language Teaching, 49(4), 564–577.
Ushioda, E. (2020). Language learning motivation: An ethical agenda for research. Oxford:
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258 Resources and Further Information
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11 Sources and Resources

This chapter will…

• summarise the various information sources, databases and research networks

relevant to the study of L2 motivation;
• provide an overview of key scholars in L2 motivation research;
• point to where useful tools and measures for researching motivation can be
found.

11.1 Relevant Journals and Edited Collections

At the time of writing, we are not aware of any particular journal that special-
ises in motivational issues in language learning. More broadly within general
and educational psychology, there are a few journals/book series dedicated to the
topic of motivation:

• Motivation Science (American Psychological Association), which is a multi-

disciplinary journal that publishes mostly empirical articles on diverse
aspects of motivation.
• Advances in Motivation Science (Elsevier), which is a book series published
annually, showcasing mature scholars’ “intellectual story” about a signif-
cant research programme, including its theoretical and methodological evo-
lution, its contribution and implications for the feld and its trajectory for
future development.
• Learning and Motivation (Elsevier), which publishes empirical articles con-
cerned with learning, cognition and motivation.
• Motivation and Emotion (Springer), which publishes theoretical papers and
empirical articles from any area of psychology and behavioural science relat-
ing to motivation and/or emotion.

11.1.1 Journals Relevant to L2 Motivation Research

Within the feld of applied linguistics and L2 research, there are many journals
that publish articles relating to L2 motivation from time to time. Having said
260 Resources and Further Information
that, there are certain differences in priorities among the various academic jour-
nals, so it may be useful to look in particular at the following:

• The Modern Language Journal (Wiley) has been, for many years, an especially
supportive forum for articles – both data-based (with a preference for qualita-
tive studies) and conceptual – that address the affective foundation of L2 learn-
ing and teaching. It has published many articles on motivation, including a
special issue that we co-edited on motivation for learning languages other than
English (Ushioda & Dörnyei, 2017), aligning with the journal’s mission to pri-
oritise studies focusing on the teaching and learning of non-English languages.
• Language Learning (Wiley) has played an important role in publishing pri-
marily quantitative studies of L2 motivation, including many by Gardner
and his associates in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the forum where Crookes
and Schmidt’s (1991) infuential position paper on the need for more educa-
tion-friendly motivation research appeared. The journal also produced a spe-
cial state-of-the-art supplement edited by Dörnyei (2003), and has published
several quantitative studies on L2 motivation since then.
• Studies in Second Language Acquisition (Cambridge) publishes research arti-
cles on the acquisition and use of second languages, including those with
a focus on motivation since this is a key factor in determining the rate and
success of L2 acquisition.
• Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching (SSLLT) is an open access
journal launched in 2011 and published by the Department of English Studies
at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland. Within its relatively short history,
the journal has already published numerous articles relating to motivation and
a special issue on the topic (Csizér & Kálmán, 2019), as well as a range of other
special issues (e.g. on affect, emotions, individual differences, imagination,
positive psychology, psychology of language learning) relevant to motivation.
• Journals with a focus on language teaching. There are several journals that pub-
lish data-based and conceptual articles focusing on classroom-based research
and language pedagogy, including many on the role of motivation in instruc-
tional contexts. Journals with an applied orientation that have frequently
featured motivation-related articles include Applied Linguistics (Oxford);
ELT Journal (Oxford); Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching (Taylor
& Francis); Language Learning Journal (Taylor & Francis); Language Teaching
Research (Sage); System (Elsevier); TESOL Quarterly (Wiley). In addition,
the journal Language Teaching (Cambridge) has published some key state-of-
the-art overviews, plenary talks and research agenda papers on motivation.
• Journals with a focus on social perspectives. Research highlighting the social
and cultural dimensions of L2 motivation, particularly in multilingual set-
tings, has often been published in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural
Development (Taylor & Francis); Journal of Language and Social Psychology
(Sage); Journal of Language, Identity & Education (Taylor & Francis).
• Journals with a focus on bilingualism and multilingualism. As discussed in
Section 4.4, L2 motivation has been increasingly conceptualised within a
 Sources and Resources 261
multilingual framework, as refected in relevant articles appearing in jour-
nals such as International Journal of Bilingualism, International Journal of
Multilingualism and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.
• Journals with a regional focus. Because of the importance of motivation
research in Canada, the Canadian Modern Language Review (University of
Toronto Press) has always been a natural forum for research conducted in
that context, while in the United States Foreign Language Annals (Wiley)
has published several related papers. The signifcant growth of L2 motivation
research in East Asian contexts is refected in the number of articles appear-
ing in journals such as Asian EFL Journal (Asian EFL Journal Press), Asian
Journal of English Language Teaching (Chinese University Press), and JALT
Journal (Japan Association for Language Teaching), often with a focus on
practical classroom implications.

11.1.2 Collections of Studies of L2 Motivation

Aside from individual journal articles and special issues, other important publica-
tion resources are the numerous edited volumes of L2 motivation research that
have appeared within the last decade or so. Key edited collections that bring
together conceptual and empirical papers by a wide range of international schol-
ars are (in chronological order):

• Motivation, Language Identity and L2 Self (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009);

• Identity, Motivation and Autonomy in Language Learning (Murray, Gao &
Lamb, 2011);
• Language Learning Motivation in Japan (Apple, Da Silva & Fellner, 2013);
• International Perspectives on Motivation: Language Learning and Professional
Challenges (Ushioda, 2013);
• Motivation and Foreign Language Learning: From Theory to Practice
(Lasagabaster, Doiz & Sierra, 2014);
• The Impact of Self-Concept on Language Learning (Csizér & Magid, 2014);
• Motivational Dynamics in Language Learning (Dörnyei, MacIntyre & Henry,
2015);
• L2 Selves and Motivations in Asian Contexts (Apple, Da Silva & Fellner,
2016);
• The Palgrave Handbook of Motivation for Language Learning (Lamb et al.,
2019);
• Contemporary Language Motivation Theory: 60 Years Since Gardner and
Lambert (1959) (Al-Hoorie & MacIntyre, 2020).

11.2 Databases, Citation Indexes, Internet Resources and

Discussion Groups
A central issue in any scientifc domain is to fnd ways of keeping abreast of the
professional literature. One way of knowing what has been written on the topic is
262 Resources and Further Information
by looking at the references of published articles or books. However, these refer-
ences are obviously selective and because of the time lapse between the comple-
tion of the work and its publication, the references will not be completely up to
date. How can we learn about the most recent materials coming out in the feld?
In the following we will list some suggested methods.

11.2.1 Information about Book Publications

There are several sources that contain relevant information on published books:

• The catalogues of most major libraries are accessible on the Internet (e.g.
the British Library: www.bl.uk, or the Library of Congress: catalog.loc.gov),
offering various search possibilities. In addition, Books in Print (booksin-
print.com) provides an authoritative source of bibliographic information
with various search tools, and can be accessed in libraries that have subscrip-
tions to the database.
• The online Amazon bookstore (www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk) is
a very useful information source. It has advanced search facilities for locat-
ing titles on specifc topics or by particular authors, and it also offers helpful
suggestions for other potentially relevant titles based on one’s current or
previous searches.
• Google Books (books.google.com) contains an ever-growing database of dig-
itally scanned books and book extracts freely available on the Internet, with
advanced search facilities to refne the parameters of what one is looking for.
• Of course, individual publishing houses have their own online catalogues
that list published, new and forthcoming titles. Following their social media
accounts can be a handy way of keeping up to date with news on their latest
publications.

11.2.2 Information About Articles

1. Finding information about articles is becoming increasingly easy with the
variety of online resources and search engines. Because of its easy acces-
sibility and comprehensive nature, Google Scholar (scholar.google.co.uk)
has become an indispensable academic search engine, and given that many
scholars now have their Google Scholar homepages that offer comprehen-
sive lists of their publications and citations, this website is also a useful
location to check out the latest work of specifc authors. Traditionally, com-
mercially maintained databases have offered the most comprehensive cata-
logues of research papers, and we would recommend the following online
databases in particular, which may be available through your institutional
library or local public library:
• PsycINFO. This is the offcial abstract database of the American
Psychological Association, providing systematic coverage of behav-
ioural and social science research from the 1800s and currently
 Sources and Resources 263
containing over 4.8 million records. It allows various search modes and
full abstracts are available for all the articles included. We have found
it to be the most comprehensive database for motivation studies outside
the L2 feld. Further information: apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo.
• MLA International Bibliography. Produced by the Modern Language
Association of America, this searchable online database of over 2.8
million records covers academic articles and some chapters of edited
volumes in all aspects of modern languages and literature. Further infor-
mation: mla.org/publications/MLA-international-bibliography.
• British Education Index and ERIC. These databases cover a great number
of educational and educational psychology articles, chapters and ERIC
documents. The British Education Index is hosted by EBSCO (ebsco
.com). ERIC is produced by the Educational Resources Information
Centre of the U.S. Department of Education. Further information: eric
.ed.gov/.
• Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts. This is the major database
that indexes the international literature in linguistics and on the nature
and use of language. It provides abstracts of journal articles and citations
to book reviews, as well as abstracts of books, book chapters and disser-
tations. Further information: proquest.libguides.com/llba.
2. There are also two “offcial” citation indexes that can be used to fnd relevant
information about articles (including any references that are cited in an
article and the list of articles that have cited your own work):
• Social Sciences Citation Index
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of L2 motivation research, both
indexes cover this area, although we have found the former to be consider-
ably more exhaustive. Both databases are included in the Web of Science
Core Collection and are usually accessible through an institutional library
subscription. In addition, your library may be able to provide access to other
academic databases for searching literature across a wide range of disci-
plines. These include, for example, Scopus (scopus.com), Ingenta Connect
(ingentaconnect.com) and ScienceDirect (sciencedirect.com). More gener-
ally, as mentioned above, Google Scholar (scholar.google.co.uk) offers a com-
prehensive search engine for locating research articles on specifc topics or
by particular authors.
3. Many international publishers (e.g. Cambridge University Press, Oxford
University Press, Sage) also offer article search facilities for their own jour-
nals on their websites.
4. An increasing number of authors – especially in the USA – make the full
text of their articles and book chapters available on their personal web-
sites (e.g. see Zoltán’s website at www.zoltandornyei.co.uk, which contains
most of his papers in a downloadable form). In addition, commercial social
networking sites for academics such as ResearchGate (researchgate.net)
and Academia.edu make it possible for scholars to share their academic
264 Resources and Further Information
papers with readers. Furthermore, following the recent push for open access
research outputs by the EU and many national research councils, several
universities have institutional repositories that make staff research outputs
available by open access (typically, the post-print or accepted author manu-
script versions of published articles) to reach a worldwide audience.

11.2.3 Discussion Groups and Networks

Within the applied linguistics feld, there is a dedicated international forum for
scholars interested in L2 motivation: Forum on Language Learning Motivation
(FOLLM; follmresearch.wordpress.com). Established in 2017 by Sal Consoli and
Takumi Aoyama, FOLLM brings together early career and leading researchers in
the L2 motivation feld for various seminars and networking events within and
outside the UK. It also hosted its frst live online event in 2020, and more virtual
events are likely to follow as the academic world embraces greater use of online
networking in the wake of the 2020 global pandemic.
Beyond the applied linguistics feld, we are aware of at least two special
interest groups dedicated to motivation in learning. One is the “Motivation
in Education” special interest group (motsig.org) of the American Educational
Research Association (AERA), and the other is the “Motivation and Emotion”
special interest group (motivation-emotion.eu) of the European Association For
Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI).

11.3 Who’s Who in L2 Motivation Research?

Since L2 motivation research continues to attract an ever-growing community
of scholars, it is diffcult to provide a comprehensive list of who’s who within
this feld. Hence, we will focus selectively on the people who have shaped or are
shaping the development of the feld, or whose infuential work intersects with
L2 motivation research in signifcant ways. As a way of organising this list, we
have decided not to take a chronological or hierarchical approach, in order to
avoid “older” versus “younger” or “senior” versus “less senior” categorisations that
might potentially upset the individuals thus categorised. We also think that an
alphabetical approach producing a single long list of names might not be very
helpful. Instead, we have opted to group scholars according to the region of the
world where they are based (at the time of submitting the manuscript). We hope
that this may help to give readers a sense of where signifcant work on L2 motiva-
tion has been happening and where the key players are.

11.3.1 North America

Within North America, of course, Canada is where L2 motivation research prop-
erly originated over 60 years ago, led by the pioneering work of Robert Gardner,
now professor emeritus at Western University, London, Ontario. Other leading
L2 motivation scholars in Canada who have worked closely with Gardner and
 Sources and Resources 265
have been infuential in the feld in their own right are Peter MacIntyre (Cape
Breton University), whose contributions to L2 motivation research are wide-
ranging and currently link in particular to emotions and positive psychology; Kim
Noels (University of Alberta), who is best known in L2 motivation research for
her signifcant work in integrating self-determination theory; and Richard Clément
(University of Ottawa), whose work (often in collaboration with MacIntyre and
Noels) on linguistic confdence, situated identity and willingness to communi-
cate in a second language has been directly relevant to L2 motivation research.
Also in Canada is Bonny Norton (University of British Columbia), whose per-
spectives on identity and investment in language learning have provided a valu-
able critical counterpoint to L2 motivation research.
In the United States, researchers currently very active in our feld include Amy
Thompson (West Virginia University), whose motivation-related work focuses
especially on multiple language learning; Mostafa Papi (Florida State University),
who has researched, amongst other things, future self-guides, motivational strate-
gies and the connection between L2 motivation and various cognitive aspects
of the L2 learning process; Phil Hiver (also at Florida State University), who
has contributed to developing complex dynamic systems approaches to theoris-
ing and investigating the motivation of language teachers and learners, and (in
collaboration with Papi) explored a narrative approach to learner engagement
and metacognition; Yasser Teimouri (Georgetown University, now at Boğaziçi
University, Istambul), who has conducted research on language learning motiva-
tion and its links with affect and other learner characteristics such as grit.

11.3.2 United Kingdom

Starting with ourselves in the UK, Zoltán Dörnyei (University of Nottingham)
has published extensively on various aspects of the psychology of language learn-
ing and the L2 learner, and is known for his theory of the L2 Motivational Self
System and vision as well as for his work on directed motivational currents in
collaboration with Christine Muir (also at the University of Nottingham). Ema
Ushioda (University of Warwick) has long championed qualitative methods of
researching L2 motivation, and is best known for advocating “person-in-context”
perspectives and a socially conscious agenda for L2 motivation research, as well
as a sharply focused “small lens” approach.
There is a cluster of L2 motivation scholars at the University of Leeds: Maggie
Kubanyiova, whose motivation-related research focuses especially on language
teachers’ development, and the moral and political dimensions of language
teachers’ work; Martin Lamb, whose research addresses how motivation interacts
with features of the sociocultural context such as teaching in schools, as well
as how language learners’ motivations evolve through the course of their lives;
Gary Chambers, whose work has focused particularly on motivational issues in the
teaching and learning of foreign languages in schools in the UK.
Other notable relevant scholars in the UK include Ursula Lanvers (University
of York), whose motivation-related research focuses on foreign language learning
266 Resources and Further Information
and associated language education policy in the UK; Judit Kormos (Lancaster
University), who has pursued, amongst other things, research on learner self-
images, task motivation and self-regulatory strategies; Jean-Marc Dewaele
(Birkbeck, University of London), whose extensive research on the emotional
dimension of language learning and use intersects with motivational perspectives.

11.3.3 Continental Europe

Across mainland Europe, researchers who have published widely in the L2 moti-
vation feld include Alastair Henry (University West, Sweden), whose concept of
an “ideal multilingual self” has become particularly infuential, and who has also
pursued important work linking language learning motivation to instructional
strategies and the use of digital technologies; Kata Csizér (Eötvös University,
Hungary), who has collaborated extensively with Dörnyei, most notably on the
major programme of research in Hungary that led to the theorisation of the L2
Motivational Self System. and who has also researched a wide range of issues
related to learner vision and self-concept, some in collaboration with Katalin
Piniel (also at Eötvös University); Sarah Mercer (University of Graz, Austria),
whose interests span all aspects of language learner and language teacher psychol-
ogy, including motivation, student engagement and learner mindsets; Marianne
Nikolov (University of Pécs, Hungary), whose motivation-related research
focuses especially on young language learners; and David Lasagabaster (University
of the Basque Country, Spain), whose work particularly addresses motivational
perspectives on content and language integrated learning (CLIL), and on soci-
etal multilingualism.

11.3.4 East Asia

This is a part of the world where language learning motivation has attracted
signifcant research interest over the past decade or so, and where some nota-
ble L2 motivation scholars are based. Several are located in Japan, including
an active group in the Kansai area: Tomoko Yashima (Kansai University), whose
research on international posture and willingness to communicate has been par-
ticularly infuential in the L2 motivation feld, and who has collaborated with
Rieko Nishida (Osaka University) exploring the affective and motivational char-
acteristics of Japanese L2 learners; Osamu Takeuchi (Kansai University), whose
extensive work on SLA has often overlapped with research on L2 motivation.
Motivation researchers in other parts of Japan include Stephen Ryan (Waseda
University), whose research has been wide-ranging, covering many aspects of
L2 learner psychology including motivation and associated areas such as learner
self-concept and mindsets; Keita Kikuchi (Kanagawa University), who is best
known for his research and publications on demotivation in language learn-
ing; Joseph Falout (Nihon University) and Tim Murphey (Kanda University of
International Studies), who have led important work on enhancing student moti-
vation and remotivation through social and group dynamics in the classroom, in
 Sources and Resources 267
collaboration especially with Yoshifumi Fukada (Meisei University) and Tetsuya
Fukuda (International Christian University); Richard Pinner (Sophia University)
and Richard Sampson (Rikkyo University), who have both contributed valuable
practitioner research perspectives on classroom motivation.
Other notable scholars in this region of the world include Tae-Young Kim
(Chung-Ang University, South Korea), who has contributed important work
on demotivation and language teacher motivation in particular; Yongyan Zheng
(Fudan University, China), who has been pursuing extensive research on moti-
vation in relation to multilingualism in China; Mingyue Michelle Gu (The
Education University of Hong Kong), who engages in critically oriented research
on language learning motivation in relation to internationalisation and minority
education.

11.3.5 Other Regions of the World

Notable scholars in other parts of the world whose work is often cited in the L2 moti-
vation feld include Tammy Gregersen (American University of Sharjah, United
Arab Emirates), whose work on emotions and positive psychology in language
learning clearly references motivational issues; Xuesong (Andy) Gao (University
of New South Wales, Australia), whose research has focused on language learner
motivation and agency in mainland China and Hong Kong; Susan Coetzee-Van
Rooy (North-West University, South Africa), whose work on people’s linguistic
repertoires in complex multilingual settings has provided valuable critical com-
mentary on mainstream L2 motivation research; Ali Al-Hoorie (English Language
Institute, Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, Saudi Arabia), who has pio-
neered research on unconscious motivation in language learning in particular.

11.4 Locating Motivation Measures and Instruments

As we discussed in Chapter 9, because of the great diversity of language learning
environments and the need to take account of local social and cultural realities,
no battery of motivation measures can be used mechanically (i.e. without mak-
ing adjustments) in contexts other than where these measures were originally
developed. However, we can still beneft from drawing on existing item pools and
published instruments, as long as we bear in mind that the items may not have
the same psychometric properties in our sample as in the population they were
originally devised for.
In previous editions of this book, this fnal section has included an array of
sample motivation questionnaires and measurement items drawn from existing
research, together with a list of research publications where copies of data col-
lection instruments can be found. However, for this revised edition, we have
decided not to provide an updated version of this array of sample instruments or
to list relevant publications. We have two main reasons for this. Firstly, given the
enormous range and amount of research now happening in our feld, the array
of sample instruments would be too extensive, and the list of published studies
268 Resources and Further Information
rather long and unwieldy. Secondly, and more importantly, there now exists
an excellent and freely accessible digital repository of instruments and tools for
research into aspects of second language learning, IRIS, which covers L2 motiva-
tion, and hence it seems redundant to try to replicate this resource. In what fol-
lows, we will briefy describe this repository and point to how it can be accessed.

Figure 11.1 The offcial fyer of the IRIS database (www.iris-database.org/iris/Content/

assets/IRIS-Flyer_2017.pdf).
 Sources and Resources 269
11.4.1 IRIS: A Digital Repository of Instruments and Materials for
Research into Second Languages
Founded in 2011 by Emma Marsden and Alison Mackey, IRIS is a sustainable
digital repository of data elicitation instruments, materials and stimuli as well as
data coding and analysis tools used for research into second languages and second
language learning (Marsden, Mackey & Plonsky, 2016). Originally funded by the
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the UK, and subsequently by
the British Academy, IRIS is housed within the infrastructure of the University
of York’s Digital Library and is searchable across a wide range of parameters and
flters (e.g. type of instrument, research topic, language under focus, participant
characteristics, setting, name of researcher, etc.).
In keeping with the worldwide movement in academia towards more transpar-
ent and open science practices in the 21st century (Marsden & Plonsky, 2018;
Marsden, Thompson & Plonsky, 2017), the materials in IRIS are all freely acces-
sible and can be downloaded by anyone. Moreover, many academic journals in
applied linguistics and second language research recommend that authors of
accepted manuscripts consider uploading their data collection tools and proce-
dures to IRIS, including interview and observation schedules, tests, question-
naires, teaching intervention activities and so on. Consequently, IRIS currently
houses a large collection of over 4,900 fles, including nearly 100 motivation
questionnaires, and the collection is constantly expanding. We fnd it to be a very
rich resource for locating instruments, interview protocols and research materi-
als from published studies and doctoral theses on language learning motivation,
along with relevant contextual information for each set of materials. While no
registration is required in order to download materials, users are encouraged to
give feedback on how they have used the downloaded resources. For further
information, guidance and access to the repository, see iris-database.org.

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Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Apple, M. T., Da Silva, D., & Fellner, T. (Eds.) (2016). L2 selves and motivations in Asian
contexts. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Crookes, G., & Schmidt, R. (1991). Motivation: Re-opening the research agenda.
Language Learning, 41(4), 469–512.
Csizér, K., & Kálmán, C. (Eds.) (2019). Language learning experience: The neglected
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and Teaching, 9(1), 1–246.
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270 Resources and Further Information
Dörnyei, Z., MacIntyre, P. D., & Henry, S. (Eds.) (2015). Motivational dynamics in language
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language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
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professional challenges. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ushioda, E., & Dörnyei, Z. (Eds.) (2017). Beyond global English: Motivation to learn
languages in a multicultural world [Special Issue]. Modern Language Journal, 101(3),
449–607.
Author Index

Aarts, H. 28, 35 Baumeister, R. F. 8–9, 12, 87–88, 102

Abdollahzadeh, E. 133, 136 Beck, J. 27, 38
Abel, E. 195, 241 Beltman, S. 85, 102
Abrams, D. 250, 254 Benesch, S. 158, 162, 164, 169
Acheson, K. 164, 169 Benson, P. 50, 67, 215, 239
Adolphs, S. 166, 173 Berkovits, S. 126, 134
Ahn, A. S. 21, 35 Bernat, E. 161, 169
Ajzen, I. 188–189, 194, 250, 254 Berndt, T. J. 29, 35
Akay, C. 142, 149 Bialowas, A. 251, 255
Al-Baharna, S. 47, 74 Block, D. 55, 67, 252, 255
Albarracin, D. 250, 254 Boekaerts, M. 51, 67
Al-Hoorie, A. H. x–xi, 11, 13, 43, 67, 86, Bondarenko, A. V. 106
88–90, 101–104, 108, 191, 195, 210, Bong, M. 33, 35
224, 231, 237, 240, 249, 256, 261, Boniwell, I. 252, 255
267, 269 Boo, Z. xi, 11–12, 64, 67, 76–77, 89, 102,
Allen, M. 251, 254 112, 134, 198, 213, 223–224, 239
Alrabai, F. 133, 136, 207, 239, 241 Bowles, A. R. 135
Ames, C. 26, 30, 35 Braver, T. S. 98, 102
Anderman, E. M. 117, 120, 134 BrckaLorenz, A. 185
Anderman, L. H. 117, 120, 134 Breen, M. P. 23, 35
Apple, M. T. 150, 261, 269 Brehm, J. W. 90, 102
Arisandy, F. E. 226, 241 Brehm, S. S. 90, 102
Aronson, E. 188, 196 Breshears, S. 162, 169
Aslan, E. 160, 169 Brickman, S. J. 20, 26, 37
Avineri, N. 254–255 Briët, M. 164, 173
Brinkmann, S. 214, 239
Baba, K. 228, 242 Brophy, J. E. 20, 35, 114, 137, 249, 258
Baker, S. C. 11, 13, 67, 72, 91, 105, Brouwers, A. 164, 173
218, 241 Brown, A. H. 250, 255
Baldauf, Jr., R. B. 143, 151 Brown, H. D. 44, 48, 67, 114, 134
Baleghizadeh, S. 157, 169 Brown, J. 202, 242
Ballard, T. 27, 37 Brown, J. D. 223, 239
Bandura, A. 19, 21, 35, 84, 102, 121, Brown, R. 250, 255
166, 169 Buchholz, J. 165, 173
Banegas, D. L. 162, 169 Burden, P. R. 250, 255
Barakos, E. 148–149 Burden, R. L. 47–48, 74, 114, 137, 141, 151
Bargh, J. A. 9, 12, 87–88, 102–103 Burns, A. 178, 194
Barkaoui, K. 191, 194, 210–211, 239 Bush, C. 139, 149
Barkhuizen, G. 59, 67, 215, 219, 239 Busse, V. 66, 68, 141, 149
272 Author Index
Butler, R. 153, 155–157, 169 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 164, 170, 252, 257
Bygate, M. 50, 73 Csizér, K. x–xi, 63–64, 68–69, 71, 91, 100,
Byrne, B. M. 23–24, 35, 203, 239 102, 114, 123, 133–134, 200, 210–211,
Byrne, D. 77, 102 224, 228, 239, 241–242, 260–261, 266,
Byrne, J. L. 42–43, 70 269–270
Curnow, T. J. 90, 105
Cacioppo, J. T. 195 Custers, R. 28, 35
Callaghan, G. 77, 102
Cambria, J. 38 Da Silva, D. 261, 269
Cameron, L. 77, 105, 191, 195, 227, 241 Dam, L. 50, 71, 125, 136
Campbell, C. G. 183–184, 195 Datzman, B. 202, 242
Campbell, D. T. 206, 239 Davidson, R. J. 195
Carbonneau, N. 164, 169 Davin, K. 172
Carlsmith, K. 188, 196 Davydenko, S. 80–81, 94, 104
Carter, B. 57, 73 Day, C. 162, 164, 170–171, 250, 255
Caruso, M. 90, 104, 229, 240 de Bot, K. 77, 102, 182, 194, 196, 235, 242
Casey, M. A. 215, 241 De Castella, K. 23–24, 35
Caskurlu, S. 257 De Costa, P. I. 158, 162, 170
Cavanaugh, R. 202, 242 de Dios Martínez Agudo, J. 158, 170
Cemalcilar, Z. 32, 35 De Swaan, A. 89, 102
Chaffee, K. E. 71–72 Deci, E. L. 5, 14, 16, 18, 35–38, 48, 68,
Chambers, G. N. 66, 71, 114, 118, 134, 125, 134, 139–140, 149
141, 147, 149–150, 157, 160, 173, 265 Deckers, L. 248, 255
Chan, L. 67, 75, 91, 103, 228, 232, 239, 243 Dembo, M. H. 249, 257
Chan, V. 50, 73 Deneault, B. 43, 68
Chang, L. Y.-H. 116, 134 Derrington, M. L. 220, 239
Channa, N. A. 171 Dewaele, J.-M. 72, 96, 102, 107, 158, 162,
Chapelle, C. A. 131, 134 166, 171, 173, 198, 240, 266
Cheng, C. M. 242 DeWall, C. N. 12
Cheung, C. S.-S. 32–33, 37 DiBenedetto, M. K. 21, 38
Chik, A. 215, 239 Dick, B. 215, 239
Chiu, C.-J. 29, 38 Dicke, T. 113, 134
Christenson, S. L. 101–102 Dickinson, L. 50, 68
Claro, J. 65, 68 Dincer, A. 49, 68, 71–72
Clément, R. 6, 8, 12–13, 14, 41–44, 46, Ding, P. 165, 170
49, 63–64, 68–69, 72–73, 74, 116, 134, Dinham, S. 155, 170
248, 265 Doiz, A. 157, 170, 261, 270
Cliffordson, C. 67, 74, 118, 135 Dolezal, N. 148, 151
Coetzee-Van Rooy, S. 92–93, 102, 267 Donitsa-Schmidt, S. 141, 150
Coffey, S. 148–149 Doughty, H. 148, 150
Coleman, J. A. 147, 149 Douglas Fir Group 10, 13, 252, 255
Comfort, C. 36 Dowson, M. 97, 106
Cook, T. D. 206, 239 Doyle, T. 157, 170
Cook, V. 92, 102 Du, L. 172
Cooke, M. 254–255 Duchesne, S. 101, 106
Corno, L. 123, 134 Duckworth, A. L. 87, 103
Covington, M. V. 23–24, 35, 94, 103, Dunton, B. C. 240
122–123, 134 Dweck, C. S. 5, 13, 25, 30, 36, 93–94, 103,
Coward, F. 171 145–146, 149, 249, 255
Cramton, C. D. 251, 256
Crayne, M. P. 86, 105 Eccles, J. S. 5, 14, 18, 20, 37, 38, 154, 170
Creemers, B. 256 Eder, A. B. 5, 13
Crookes, G. 44–46, 50, 68, 71, 99, 102, Edwards, J. 44, 69
163, 172, 260, 269 Edwards, L. M. 107, 257
 Author Index 273
Ehrman, M. E. 121, 135 Ginsberg, M. B. 119, 137
Elling, J. 134 Gkonou, C. 156, 158, 162, 171
Elliot, A. J. 5, 13, 25, 27, 36–37, 84, 94, Goetz, T. 170, 172
103, 107, 249, 255 Golonka, E. M. 131, 135
Ellis, N. C. 180, 182, 194 Gordani, Y. 157, 169
Ellis, R. 50, 69, 187, 194, 252–253, 255 Gore, J. 152, 170
Elwood, J. 142–143, 149 Govorun, O. 242
Epstein, S. 8, 13 Graham, L. R. 255
Eskreis-Winkler, L. 103 Graham, S. 22–23, 28–29, 36
Grant, A. M. 83, 104
Falout, J. 142–144, 149, 266 Green, T. D. 250, 255
Fazelia, M. 142, 149 Greene, D. 16, 37
Fazio, R. H. 237, 240 Greenwald, A. G. 9, 13, 237, 240
Feng, L. 86, 103, 106 Gregersen, T. 47, 72, 78, 85, 96, 104–105,
Ferguson, M. J. 87, 103 158, 167, 171, 173, 228, 240, 252,
Fernet, C. 169 255–256, 267
Fischer, H. E. 165, 171 Grolnick, W. S. 33, 37
Fishbein, M. 188–189, 194, 250, 254 Gross, J. J. 103
Fisher, A. J. 183, 194 Gu, C. 255
Flamm, E. S. 33, 37 Gu, M. M. 267
Flaste, R. 125, 134 Gu, Q. 162, 171
Flowerdew, J. 220, 242 Guay, F. 169, 173
Flum, H. 182, 195 Guenther, C. L. 85, 104, 106
Fong, C. J. 87, 103 Guilloteaux, M. J. 133, 135, 187, 194, 208,
Ford, M. 27, 36 224, 240
Forsyth, D. R. 251, 255
Frank, V. M. 135 Haddock, G. 250, 256
Fraschini, N. 90. 104, 229, 240 Hadfeld, J. 113, 125, 135
Fray, L. 152, 170 Hall, C. 135
Fredericks, J. A. 32–33, 38 Hall, E. 126, 135
Frenzel, A. C. 165–167, 170, 172 Hamman, D. 153, 159, 171
Freud, S. 7–8, 13 Han, Y. 100, 104
Freynik, S. 135 Han, Z. 77, 106
Fuisting, B. 162, 170 Harmon-Jones, E. 5, 13
Fukada, Y. 267 Hartnett, M. 249, 255
Fukuda, T. 149, 267 Harvey, L. 59, 70, 217, 240
Furnham, A. 139, 149, 251, 255 Hashim, R. A. 49, 71
Hassaskhah, J. 142, 149
Galla, B. M. 103 Hassin, R. 87, 103
Gao, X. A. 157, 161, 170, 261, 267, 270 Haudeck, H. 172
Gardner, R. C. x–xi, 40–46, 48, 59, 63–65, Hayes, D. 157, 171
67, 69–70, 93, 118, 133, 135, 141, 149, Heckhausen, H. 52, 54, 70, 248, 255
177, 194, 197, 204, 219, 240, 248, Heckhausen, J. 248, 255
260–261, 264 Heddy, B. C. 101, 107
Garson, K. 251, 257 Heller, M. 163, 171
Gass, S. M. 50, 68, 186, 195, 197, 215, 240 Hennink, M. M. 215, 240
Gatbonton, E. 99, 107 Henry, A. x–xi, 58, 66–67, 70, 74, 78,
Gayle, V. 190, 194, 209, 240 80–81, 89, 91–92, 94, 97, 103–104, 113,
Geiger, T. 154, 170 116, 118, 128, 130–132, 134–135, 156,
Genung, P. 143, 150 171, 186, 195, 216, 228, 232, 239–241,
Gibbs, T. 174 254–256, 266, 270
Gilal, F. G. 164, 171 Hessel, G. 67, 70
Giles, H. 42–43, 70 Higgins, E. T. 61–62, 70, 88, 94, 97, 104
Ginns, P. 249, 256 Hilpert, J. C. 180–181, 186, 194
274 Author Index
Hinds, P. 252, 256 Kanfer, R. 123, 134
Hinton, P. 9, 13 Kaplan, A. 182, 195
Hird, B. 35 Kaplan, H. 173
Hiver, P. 58, 70, 78, 80, 86, 95, 97, 101, Karwowski, M. 165, 174
104–106, 108, 157–158, 160–162, 171, Kashdan, T. B. 107
191, 195, 210, 224, 231, 240, 249, Katz, I. 182. 195
256, 265 Kaur, A. 49, 71
Hochschild, A. R. 164, 171 Keblawi, F. 143, 150
Hoffman, C. 148, 151 Keefe, K. 29, 35
Hogg, G. M. 250, 257 Kehr, H. M. 73
Hogg, M. A. 6, 13, 250, 254 Keller, J. M. 46, 71
Holmes, E. A. 63, 70 Keller, M. M. 165–166, 171–172
Hong, Y.-Y. 29, 34, 36, 38 Kelly, D. R. 103
Hood, M. 142, 149 Kern, H. M. 249, 257
Horwitz, E. K. 119, 135 Ketabi, S. 81, 108
Hosseini Fatemi, A. 142, 151 Khany, R. 197, 213, 240
Howard, M. C. 86, 105 Kiesche, U. 154, 172
Huang, Q. 240 Kihlstrom, J. F. 87, 105
Huberman, A. M. 225, 241 Kikuchi, K. 140–143, 150–151, 266
Hugdahl, K. 195 Kim, T. 167, 172
Humphreys, B. 50, 73 Kim, T.-Y. 142, 150–151, 157–158,
Hurd, S. 124, 135 171–172, 267
Hymel, S. 29, 36 Kim, Y. 158, 171
Kim, Y. M. 157, 170
Iberri-Shea, G. 191, 195 Kim, Y. W. 87, 103
Ibrahim, Z. 81–82, 103, 105 Kim, Y.-K. 157–158, 172
Inbar, O. 141, 150 Kimura, Y. 157–158, 172
Indiatsi, J. 171 King, J. 158, 162, 164, 171–172
Irie, K. 228, 240 King, R. B. 34, 36
Iwaniec, J. 224, 241 Kington, A. 255
Kissau, S. 158, 172
Jackson, J. R. 240 Kline, R. B. 203, 240
Jacobson, L. 165–166, 173 Knäuper, B. 62, 71
James, L. 60, 73 Knifsend, C. 32, 36
Jarden, A. 107 Koga, T. 116, 135
Jebb, A. T. 211, 240 Kokotajlo, C. 87, 104
Jeronimus, B. F. 183, 194 Koomen, H. M. Y. 153, 174
Jiang, C. 106 Koran, S. 157, 172
Johnson, D. 153, 174 Kormos, J. 51, 71, 99, 103, 105, 224,
Johnson, E. J. 255 241, 266
Johnson, L. 171 Korp, H. 135
Johnson, P. J. 71 Kosslyn, S. M. 183, 195
Jones, L. 250, 256 Kostoulas, A. 158, 162, 172–173
Jones, M. H. 9, 13 Kozaki, Y. 210, 212, 242
Jones, V. 250, 256 Krantz, L. H. 71
Jose, P. E. 107 Krueger, R. A. 215, 241
Julkunen, K. 44, 47, 51, 70 Kruidenier, B. G. 42, 49, 68
Juvonen, J. 29, 32, 36 Kubanyiova, M. 113, 125–126, 135,
157–160, 163, 168–170, 172, 209,
Kalaja, P. 157, 171 240, 265
Kálmán, C. S. 63, 68, 260, 269 Kuhbandner, C. 170
Kamhi-Stein, L. D. 161, 171 Kuhl, J. 52, 70, 123, 135
Kanat-Maymon, Y. 173 Kyriakides, L. 256
 Author Index 275
Lafford, B. A. 56, 71 MacIntyre, P. D. x–xi, 6, 8, 11–14, 41–44,
Lamb, M. x–xi, 112, 115–116, 131–133, 47, 63–64, 67, 70, 72, 74, 78, 91, 96,
135–136, 157, 160, 173, 221, 226, 241, 102–103, 105, 158, 171, 186, 191, 195,
254, 256, 261, 265, 270 211, 218, 228, 231, 234, 240–241, 252,
Lamb, T. 146–147, 150 256, 261, 265, 269–270
Lambert, C. 51, 71 MacKay, E. 195, 241
Lambert, M. 171 Mackay, J. 133, 136
Lambert, P. 190, 194, 209, 240 Mackey, A. 186, 195, 215, 240, 269–270
Lambert, W. E. 40–41, 59, 70, 248 MacKinnon, S. P. 64, 72
Lämmerer, A. 162, 172 Macmillan, N. 72
Lantolf, J. P. 57, 71, 143, 150 Maddi, S. R. 87, 105
Lanvers, U. 66, 71, 90, 105, 141, 147–148, Maeda, Y. 257
150–151, 265 Maehr, M. L. 31, 37
Lara, P. 67, 73, 136 Maeng, U. 112, 136
Larsen-Freeman, D. 7, 13, 58, 70–71, Magid, M. 184, 195, 261, 269
77–78, 104–105, 182, 191–192, Maier, S. 5, 13, 30, 37
194–195, 227, 241 Maio, G. R. 250, 256
Lasagabaster, D. 157, 170, 261, 266, 270 Mankin, A. 174
Latham, G. P. 25, 28, 36–37, 251, 256 Mann, S. 214, 241
Lauridsen, J. T. 254, 257 Mansouri, S. 106
Lazarides, R. 165, 167, 173 Mäntylä, K. 157, 171
Leary, M. R. 59, 71 Marchand, G. C. 180–181, 186, 194
Leavy, P. 215, 240 Marek, M. W. 132, 136
Lee, S.-M. 112, 136 Markman, K. D. 85, 106
Legate, N. 207, 242 Markus, H. R. 60–61, 72, 88, 106
Legatto, J. J. 228, 234, 241 Marques, S. C. 107, 257
Legenhausen, L. 50, 58, 71, 125, 136 Marsden, E. 269–270
Lens, W. 26, 36 Martin, A. J. 97, 106, 249, 252, 256
León, J. 164, 173 Masgoret, A.-M. 149
Lepper, M. 16 Masten, A. S. 87, 106
Le-Thi, D. 100, 105, 208, 241, 253, 256 Matsukawa, R. 141, 151
Leung, C. 254, 256 Matthews, A. 63, 70
Leutner, D. 131 Matthews, M. D. 103
Li, C. 72 May, S. 89, 106, 252, 256
Li, K. 123, 136 McAdams, D. P. 79, 95, 106
Li, S. 69 McCombs, B. L. 113, 118, 136
Li, W. 162, 170 McConachy, T. 253, 256
Liddicoat, A. J. 90, 105 McCoy, L. K. 220, 241
Liem, G. A. D. 35, 37, 248, 256 McDonough, K. 100, 104
Linnenbrink, E. A. 27, 37 McDougall, P. 36
Linnenbrink-Garcia, L. 250, 256 McGhee, D. E. 9, 13, 237, 240
Little, D. 50, 71, 125, 136 McInerney, D. M. 20, 34–37, 248, 256
Liu, M. 92. 105 McLean, J. 251, 256
Locke, E. A. 25, 37 McLeod, J. 220, 242
Lombardi, D. 101, 107 McNeish, D. 38
Long, M. 50, 71 Medaglia, J. D. 183, 194
Lopez, S. J. 107, 257 Meece, J. L. 25, 30, 38, 249, 257
Lou, N. M. 47, 50, 71–72, 80, 94, 105, Menard, S. 190, 195, 210, 233, 241
145–146, 150 Mercer, S. 31–32, 37, 47, 72–73, 78, 94,
Lovallo, W. R. 195 96, 100, 101, 104–106, 128–129, 131,
Lowie, W. 77, 102, 182, 194 136, 145, 150, 156, 158, 167, 171, 173,
Lüdtke, O. 170 219, 233, 241, 247, 249, 252, 256, 266
Lukács, G. 91, 102 Midgley, C. 31, 37
Lv, J. 257 Mihic, L. 149
276 Author Index
Miles, M. B. 225, 241 Pals, J. L. 79, 106
Miller, E. R. 56, 75 Paolini, S. 136, 241
Miller, R. B. 20, 26, 37 Papi, M. 80, 86, 93–95, 97, 100, 103,
Milton, M. 35 105–106, 108, 133, 136, 184, 195, 265
Miyahara, M. 59, 72 Papworth, B. 249, 256
Mizumoto, A. 204, 242 Park, G. 174
Molenaar, P. C. M. 183–184, 195 Park, S. W. 250, 257
Moloney, R. 90, 108 Patall, E. A. 250, 256
Morita, N. 254, 256 Pathan, Z. 142, 151
Morris, T. 126, 136 Pavlenko, A. 34, 37, 57, 71, 215, 242
Morris, Z. A. 157, 174 Payne, B. K. 237, 242
Moskovsky, C. 133, 136, 208, 241 Pekrun, R. 170, 250, 256
Moskowitz, S. 166, 173 Pelletier, L. G. 49, 72
Motha, S. 174 Pellicer-Sánchez, A. 100, 105, 208, 241,
Muenks, K. 38 253, 256
Muijs, D. 250, 256 Peterson, C. 5, 13, 30, 37, 86, 96, 103, 106
Muir, C. 30, 36, 81–82, 103, 106, 113, Philp, J. 51, 71, 101, 106
116, 120, 129–130, 134–136, 166, Pigott, J. 220, 242
173, 265 Piller, I. 253, 257
Mullins, L. J. 251, 256 Pinder, C. C. 251, 257
Murayama, K. 27, 37 Piniel, K. 210–211, 228, 242, 266
Murphey, T. 116, 135, 149, 251, 255, 266 Pinner, R. S. 77, 106, 118, 136, 158, 166,
Murray, G. 261, 270 173, 185, 195, 267
Pintrich, P. R. 25, 30, 38, 249, 257
Nakamura, S. 51, 71 Pishghadam, R. 142, 151
Nakamura, T. 90, 106 Pivarova, M. 154, 170
Näring, G. 164, 173 Plonsky, L. 86, 107, 197, 202, 242,
Neal, A. 27, 37 269–270
Neal, D. T. 84, 108 Pomerantz, E. M. 32–34, 37
Neale, B. 220, 242 Pope, J. E. 113, 136
Neeley, T. B. 251, 256 Poupore, G. 51, 73
Nelson, R. 164, 169 Prentice, M. 84, 107
Németh, N. 64, 69, 210, 239
Neumann, K. 165, 171 Qin, L. 32–33, 37
Nishida, R. 204, 242, 266
Nitta, R. 228, 242 Raftery, J. N. 33, 37
Noels, K. A. 42–43, 47–49, 68–69, Ratcheva, S. 136, 241
71–72, 80, 94, 105, 116, 134, 145–146, Ratelle, C. F. 17, 38
150, 265 Rawal, H. 162, 170
Noman, M. 49, 71 Rawolle, M. 62, 73
Norton, B. 55, 57, 72–73, 92, 143, 150, Reeve, J. 248, 257
158, 170, 265 Reeves, J. 174
Nurius, P. 60–61, 72, 88, 106 Reid, R. 251, 257
Reinders, H. 131–132, 137
Obando, G. 104 Renninger, K. A. 249, 257
Oettingen, G. 62, 73 Reschly, A. L. 101–102
Oki, Y. 202, 242 Retelsdorf, J. 157, 173
Oliver, R. 35 Riazi, A. M. 223, 242
Ortega, L. 77, 89, 106, 148, 150, 191, 195, Richardson, D. L. 135
241, 252, 256 Richardson, J. C. 251, 257
Osin, E. 84, 107 Richardson, P. W. 153–155, 157, 166, 174
Ottó, I. 6, 13, 52, 69, 114, 135, 180 Riner, R. C. 255
Oxford, R. L. 45, 50, 73 Ro, E. 254, 257
Oyserman, D. 60, 73 Rodgers, M. 172
 Author Index 277
Roseman, M. 71 Segal, H. G. 60, 73
Rosenthal, R. 165–166, 173 Segalowitz, N. 99, 107
Rosenzweig, E. Q. 5, 14, 18, 37 Seginer, R. 26, 36
Ross, J. 8, 13, 63, 72, 195, 241 Seli, H. 249, 257
Ross, S. J. 210, 212, 242 Seligman, M. E. P. 5, 13, 30, 37, 86, 96,
Roth, G. 153, 156, 173 106, 252, 257
Rubach, C. 165, 173 Selleck, C. 148–149
Rubenfeld, S. 44, 73 Seo, H. S. 142, 150
Rubin, H. J. 214, 242 Sevincer, A. T. 62, 73
Rubin, I. S. 214, 242 Shah, S. M. M. 171
Ruiz-Alfonso, Z. 164, 173 Shavitt, S. 250, 254
Russell, S. 38 Shearin, J. 45, 73
Rutherford, M. R. 141, 151 Sheldon, K. 79, 84, 107
Ruvolo, A. 61, 72 Sher Ali, M. 142, 151
Ryan, J. 228 Shin, J. 83, 104
Ryan, R. M. 7, 14, 16, 18, 35–38, 48, 68, Shintani, N. 69
139–140, 149, 207, 242, 248, 257 Shohamy, E. 141, 150
Ryan, S. x–xi, 5, 11–13, 47, 67, 73, 76, 79, Sidaway, K. 254, 257
94, 102–103, 106, 112, 134, 145, 150, Simpkins, S. D. 32–33, 38
164, 170, 198, 228, 239–240, 247, 256, Simpson, J. 11, 14
261, 266, 270 Şimşek, E. 79, 107
Ryan, S. V. 174 Sinatra, G. M. 101, 107
Singer, J. L. 126, 136
Safdari, S. 133, 136 Skehan, P. 44, 47, 69, 73
Sahakyan, T. 157, 160, 173 Slavin, R. E. 31, 38
Sakai, H. 142–143, 151 Smith, K. 153–155, 174
Salili, F. 29, 38 Snyder, C. R. 96, 107, 252, 257
Sammons, P. 255 Song, B. 142, 151
Sampasivam, S. 42, 73 Song, K. 202, 242
Sampson, R. J. 77, 106, 158, 166, 173, Sparling, H. 11, 13, 67, 72, 91, 105, 218, 241
185, 195, 219, 222, 242, 267 Spector, J. M. 250, 257
Samuda, V. 50, 73 Spiegel, D. 195
Sang, Y. 104, 105 Spratt, M. 50, 73
Sasaki, M. 210, 212, 242 Stavans, A. 148, 151
Sato, M. 67, 73, 133, 136 Steimel, S. 251, 255
Sauro, S. 131, 134 Stewart, B. D. 242
Scarino, A. 163, 173, 254, 256 Stobart, G. 255
Schaarschmidt, U. 154, 172 Stockwell, G. 131–132, 136–137
Schallert, D. L. 167, 172 Stradling, P. 126, 135
Schiefele, U. 157, 167, 173 Strasser, A. 73
Schlechty, P. C. 128, 136 Streblow, L. 157, 173
Schmeck, A. 134 Stronge, J. H. 250, 257
Schmidt, R. 44–46, 68, 99, 102, 106, Stupnisky, R. H. 153, 173
260, 269 Sudina, E. 202, 242
Schmuck, P. A. 251, 257 Sugita, M. 112, 133, 137
Schmuck, R. A. 251, 257 Sundqvist, P. 58, 70, 113, 135
Schonert-Reichl, K. 36 Sutton, R. E. 170
Schultheiss, O. C. 73 Svalberg, A. M.-L. 101, 107
Schunk, D. H. 21, 25, 30, 38, 85, 102, Symons, C. 3, 14
249, 257 Szumski, G. 165, 174
Schwab, C. 170
Schwartz, J. L. K. 9, 13, 237, 240 Tachibana, Y. 141, 151
Scott, C. 155, 170 Taguchi, T. 184, 195
Sealey, A. 57, 73 Tahmouresi, S. 104, 105
278 Author Index
Tajfel, H. 43, 73 Vinther, J. 254, 257
Takahashi, C. 92, 107 Vlaeva, D. 183, 196
Takahashi, S. 100, 107 Voge, D. J. 123, 134
Takeuchi, O. 112, 133, 137, 266 Vohs, K. D. 12
Tankó, G. 100, 102, 123, 134 Volet, S. 85, 102
Taşçı, S. 157, 174 Voller, P. 50, 67
Tavakoli, M. 81, 108 von der Embse, N. 154, 174
Taxer, J. L. 103, 170 von Hoene, L. M. 123, 134
Tay, L. 240
Tazik, K. 197, 213, 240 Walker, C. J. 3, 14
Teimouri, Y. 86, 94–95, 107, 265 Waller, L. 100, 108
Teng, L. S. 100, 107, 123, 137 Walter, C. 141, 149
Tennant, J. 149 Wang, C. 172
Thompson, A. S. 66, 73–74, 90–91, 107, Wang, W. 240
148, 150–151, 160, 169, 265 Wang, Z. 92, 108
Thompson, S. 269–270 Waninge, F. 182, 196, 235, 242
Thomson, R. 220, 242 Watt, H. M. G. 153–155, 157, 166, 174
Thorner, N. 113, 123, 127, 137, 143, 151 Weiner, B. 8, 14, 22–23, 29, 38, 80, 108
Thorsen, C. 58, 66–67, 70, 74, 92, 104, Wenden, A. 50, 68, 74
113, 116, 128, 135, 156, 171 Wentzel, K. R. 27, 29, 36, 38, 114, 137,
Thwaite, A. 35 249, 258
Timperley, H. 256 Wheeless, L. R. 251, 254
Tinsley, T. 147, 151 Whisler, J. S. 118, 136
Tomkins, S. S. 63, 74 Wigfeld, A. 5, 14, 17–18, 20, 27, 29,
Trang, T. T. T. 143, 151 37–38, 249, 258
Treglown, L. 139, 149, 251, 255 Wilby, J. 51, 71, 254, 258
Tremblay, P. F. 45, 70, 133, 135 Williams, C. J. 240
Trofmovich, P. 99, 107 Williams, M. 47–48, 74, 114, 137,
Trovela, M. 149 141, 151
Tsai, S. C. 11, 14 Willis, J. 50, 74
Tschannen-Moran, M. 153, 174 Wilson, G. M. 112, 137, 249, 258
Tse, L. 47, 74 Wilson, H. B. 112, 137, 249, 258
Tseng, W.-T. 51, 69 Wilson, T. D. 188–189, 196
Tunariu, A. D. 252, 255 Witt, P. L. 251, 254
Turci, L. 38 Wittrock, M. C. 250, 258
Wlodkowski, R. J. 119, 137
Unsworth, K. 27, 38 Wong, R. M. H. 133, 137
Wood, W. 84, 108
Vallerand, R. J. 17, 38, 49, 72, 140, Woolfolk Hoy, A. 172
151, 169 Worth, J. 154, 174
Van den Brande, J. 154, 174 Wu, W.-C. 132, 136
Van den Branden, K. 50, 73 Wylie, C. 101, 102
van der Helm, R. 62, 74
van der Werf, G. 250 Xu, H. 157, 161, 170
Vancouver, J. B. 27, 37 Xu, H. L. 90, 108
Vargas Lascano, D. I. 68, 71, 72
Varghese, M. M. 158, 174 Yang, L. 158, 172
Vásquez, C. 66, 74, 90, 107 Yashima, T. 204, 242, 266
Vaughan, M. A. 250, 257 Yeager, D. S. 25, 36, 146, 149, 249, 255
Veenman, S. 113, 137 Yeo, G. 27, 38
Verplanken, B. 250, 256 Yeşilyurt, S. 68
Verspoor, M. 77, 102, 194 Yim, O. 6, 12, 14, 42, 48, 74
Vincze, L. 8, 13 You, C. J. 64, 67, 75, 184, 196
 Author Index 279
Young, D. 126, 135 Zhang, Q. 142, 151
Yu, S. 86, 108 Zhang, X. 72
Yuhas, B. 173 Zhang, Y. S. D. 72
Zheng, Y. 92, 108, 267
Zafarghandia, A. 142, 149 Zhong, Q. X. 141, 151
Zarrinabadi, N. 81, 108 Zhou, A. 104
Zee, M. 153, 174 Zhou, L. 171
Zeynali, S. 142, 151 Zhou, S. 105
Zhang, L. 12 Zhou, Y. 104
Zhang, L. J. 100, 107, 123, 137 Zuengler, J. 56, 75
Subject Index

achievement motivation 18–19, 24–25, complex dynamic systems approach/theory

29, 33, 80 (CDST) 76–80, 180–182, 186, 191,
action control 5, 52–53 227–237
action plan 52, 66, 126 conscious vs. unconscious motivation 8–9,
action research 166, 178 28, 77; see also unconscious motivation
affect 7, 9, 63, 237; see also emotion context/contextual factors 6–7, 28–35,
agency 7, 21, 50, 57–58, 125, 162–163 55–59, 184–185
amotivation 16, 139–140 cooperative learning 30–31
anti-ought-to self see possible selves cross-sectional research 190, 203,
anxiety 79–80, 210–212 209–210
approach–avoidance perspective/ cultural factors/infuences 9, 23, 34–35,
tendencies 27, 80, 94–95 42–43, 90–91, 148
attitudes 40–41, 44–45, 63–64, 117–118,
142, 226–227; implicit 88, 237–238 demotivation, defnitions 138–141;
attractor state 91, 231, 233 demotivating factors/infuences 118,
attributions: attribution theory 19, 22–23, 142–144, 146–148; see also amotivation;
47–48, 50; causal attributions 5, 33, mindsets; remotivation
53–54, 80, 122, 144–146; see also dependent variable 187–189
mindsets directed motivational currents (DMCs)
authenticity 118, 120, 125, 130, 131 81–83, 85, 129–131
autonomy: autonomy support 33, 49, 159; distal goals see goals
autonomy theory 50; learner autonomy dynamic systems theory see complex
123–125; see also self-determination dynamic systems approach/theory
theory
emotion 7–8, 23, 44, 62–63, 85, 96;
beliefs about language learning (BALLI) emotional baggage 144; emotional
118–119; see also attributions; mindsets; contagion 166; emotion control/
self-effcacy emotional labour 124, 163–164;
teachers’ emotional well-being
cause–effect relations see linear models/ 162–163, 167; see also affect; positive
relations psychology
classroom goal structure 30–31, 55, 116 engagement (student) 63, 97–98,
cognitive theories of motivation 7, 15–28, 100–101, 128–129, 132, 249; task
44–51 engagement 51, 120
competence 18, 21, 24–25; linguistic ethical issues 115, 146, 221
multi-competence 92; teacher ethnolinguistic vitality 43
competence 142, 160–161; see also executive motivation 52, 64, 119
self-determination theory; self-effcacy; expectancy-value theories 18–20, 25, 118,
self-worth theory 154–156
 Subject Index 281
experimental studies 133, 190, 205–209; interview methods 95–96, 193, 214–215,
see also quasi-experimental design 219–220, 223–224, 231; studies using
extrinsic motivation 16–17, 20, 48–49, 48, 216–219, 221–222, 224–227,
115, 155 232–235
intrinsic motivation 16–18, 48–50,
feared self see possible selves 113–114, 125, 156–157
FIT-choice framework (Factors introjected regulation 16–17
Infuencing Teaching Choice) 154–157 investment 55, 92–93
future self-guides 63, 65, 67, 125–127, 159 IRIS (Instruments for Research into
Second Language Learning) 268–269
global English 11–12, 65, 77, 89
global motivational perspective 97 L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) 59,
goals: goal-orientation theory (mastery 63–67, 125–127; studies of 200–201,
vs. performance goals) 26–27, 29, 156; 204–205
goal-setting theory 25–26; multiple/ language learner engagement see
parallel goal pursuit 27–28, 140; engagement (student)
proximal vs. distal goals 25–26, 84–85; language teacher immunity 162–163
relational goals 156–157; social goals 9, language teacher motivation see teacher
27, 54, 92 motivation
grades see rewards latent growth curve modelling 191, 210,
grit 86–87, 202–203; see also perseverance; 211–212
resilience learner autonomy see autonomy
group dynamics 29–30, 46, 116, 128, linear models/relations 9–10, 56–57,
250–251 179–182
linguistic self-confdence see
habit 82, 84 self-confdence
heritage languages 12, 67, 90–91, 218–219 longitudinal research 190–191,
209–213, 219–222, 228–229,
ideal (L2) self see possible selves 233–237
ideal multilingual self see possible selves long-term motivation 5, 81–87
identifed regulation 17, 49 LOTEs (languages other than English)
identity: identity goals 11, 154, 159–160; 11–12, 89–91
narrative identity 79, 95–96; social
identity 43, 55, 57–58; social identity mastery vs. performance goals see goals
theory 6, 250 mental imagery 62–63; 84, 100;
idiodynamic method 228–229, 233–235 enhancement/training of 126–127; 183;
imagery see mental imagery 208–209; see also vision
immunity see language teacher metacognitive processes/skills
immunity 124–125, 253
Implicit Association Test (IAT) 237–238 mindsets 80, 93–94, 141, 144–146, 148
implicit attitudes see attitudes mixed methods research 193–194,
implicit/subconscious motivation see 223–227
unconscious motivation motivation, defnition 3–4, 6, 83
individual differences (IDs) 5, 57, 79–80, motivational dynamics see complex
179, 182–184 dynamic systems approach/theory
instructional design 46, 250 motivational self-regulation 52–53,
instrumental orientation 40–41, 49 123–124, 140, 144, 159, 163–164
integrated regulation 16–17 motivational strategies 19–20, 112,
integrative orientation 40–42 114–122, 125–127; researching
integrativeness 41–42, 48, 64–65 132–133, 207–209
intention (behavioural) 52–54, 124, multi-level modelling 210, 212–213
140–141, 189 multilingualism 12, 89–93, 148
intergroup model 42–43 multiple goals see goals
282 Subject Index
narrative identity 79, 95–96 retrodictive qualitative modelling 231–233
need for achievement 18–19, 80; see also rewards (and grades) 6, 16, 18, 19,
achievement motivation 113, 122–123, 155; see also extrinsic
New Big Five personality model 79–80, 95 motivation
role models/modelling 65, 116, 126
ought self, ought-to L2 self see possible rooted L2 self see possible selves
selves
school culture 31–32, 35, 127–128
parental/family infuences 16–17, 29, self-concept 16, 24, 29, 54, 60–62, 65,
32–34, 64, 66, 95 143–144, 165; working self-concept 91,
performance vs mastery goals see goals 159–160
perseverance/persistence 83–84, 86–87; self-confdence 121, 141; linguistic 42
see also grit; resilience self-determination theory (SDT) 16–18,
person-in-context approach 7, 56–59, 99, 34–35, 48–50, 124–125, 139, 156
218–219 self-discrepancy theory 62, 88
positive psychology 7, 96, 251–252 self-effcacy 24–25, 30, 121, 139, 211–212,
possible selves 59–66, 88, 126, 158–160; 224–226; self-effcacy theory 21–22;
ideal self 61–63; ideal L2 self 63–65, teacher self-effcacy 153, 155, 160–161
95, 126–127, 204–205, 212, 227; ideal self-esteem 23, 30, 121, 192–193
multilingual self 66, 91–92; feared self self-fulflling prophecy 165–166
60, 66; ought self 61, 94; ought-to L2 self-motivation/self-motivational strategies
self 63–67, 95, 127, 204–205, 212; see motivational self-regulation
anti-ought-to self 66, 90; rooted L2 self self-worth theory 23–25, 121
67, 91, 218–219; teacher possible selves SEM see structural equation modelling
158–161; see also L2 Motivational Self situated identity theory 43
System small lens approach 97–98, 185, 253
process model of L2 motivation 52–55, social cognition theory 250
114, 180 social context see context/contextual
promotion vs. prevention regulatory focus factors
80, 94–95 social context model 42
proximal goals see goals social goals see goals
Pygmalion effect 165–166 social identity see identity
social motivation 28–29, 116; see also goals
Q methodology 228, 229–230 social psychological approaches 40–45
qualitative research 47–48, 56, 189, 191, social psychology 188–189, 250
213–223 stress/burnout (teacher’s) 154, 160,
quantitative research 182–184, 189, 161–162, 164
197–213 structural equation modelling (SEM) 180,
quasi-experimental design 206–209 203–205
questionnaires/questionnaire surveys 179, student engagement see engagement
188, 193, 198–205, 223–227, 267–269 subconscious/implicit motivation see
unconscious motivation
regulatory focus theory see promotion vs. success (expectancy of) 18–20, 22, 52,
prevention regulatory focus 118; see also expectancy-value theory
relatedness 18, 49, 97; see also self- survey studies see questionnaires
determination theory
relational goals see goals task motivation 50–51, 120, 128–129; see
relevance (of learning activities/materials) also engagement
46, 52, 118, 141, 147, 226–227 task value 18, 20, 25; see also expectancy-
remotivation 143–144 value theory
research questions 186–187 teacher enthusiasm/passion 117, 164–167
resilience 86–87, 139, 143, 146; language teacher immunity see language teacher
teacher 162–163; see also grit immunity
 Subject Index 283
teacher motivation (defnitions/concepts) unconscious motivation 8–9, 87–89, 237–238
152–157; language teacher motivation utility value see task value
(defnitions/concepts) 157–163; and
possible selves 158–161; interplay with values (related to language/culture) 6, 11,
student motivation 163–169; 222–223 34, 41–42, 44, 118
technology (and motivation) 131–132, vision 61–63; and long-term motivation
226–227, 249 81–82, 84–85, 95; generation/
time/temporal dimension 4–5, 9–10, 20, enhancement techniques 125–127, 183,
25–26, 47, 52–56, 59, 181, 186–187, 208–209, 229–230; self-concordant
190–191, 220; time-scales 112, 222– vision 84, 118; teacher vision 161,
223, 233–237; time series analysis 191, 167–169
210–211; see also longitudinal research
time-scales see time/temporal dimension willingness to communicate (WTC)
time series analysis see time/temporal 228–229
dimension working self-concept see self-concept
trait vs. state motivation 5, 51, 79–80 work motivation 251