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Foreign Language Learning Motivation in the Japanese Context: Social and Political Influences on Self
Author(s) -
SUGITA McEOWN MAYA,
SAWAKI YASUYO,
HARADA TETSUO
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the modern language journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.486
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1540-4781
pISSN - 0026-7902
DOI - 10.1111/modl.12411
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , identity (music) , psychology , structural equation modeling , politics , foreign language , social psychology , social identity theory , linguistics , computer science , mathematics education , political science , social group , aesthetics , paleontology , philosophy , machine learning , law , biology
The study focuses on the role of different theories when considered together in a foreign language other than English (LOTE) context. Specifically, the study examines (a) to what extent influential second language (L2) motivational theories, when integrated, explain motivation to learn LOTEs, and (b) how the powerful status of English in Japan affects learners’ self‐ and identity‐related motivation to learn LOTEs. Survey responses of 250 Japanese learners, who simultaneously learned a foreign LOTE and English as a required language, were analyzed using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The results offer insight into how various coexisting social factors are connected to learners’ multiple self‐ and identity‐related orientations, which in turn predict several varied academic consequences (e.g., effort, attitude, and L2 ability). We also confirmed positive and negative interplay of English‐ and LOTE‐related orientations such that the self‐ and identity‐related orientations of the languages will play a competing role (e.g., Csizér & Lukács, 2010). This finding highlights the importance of taking sociopolitical perspectives into consideration in a context where learners learn two languages and one has a specific political presence.