Abstract
This study investigated the development of language learning motivation in an American student of Japanese, Jason, during a mobility-based Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project with a Japanese institution. Drawing on an activity theory perspective, this qualitative case study analyzed the student artifacts of the project as well as of interview and fieldnote data to illustrate the transformational process. Findings demonstrate how Jason’s pre-COIL motives (pragmatic, cultural, linguistic, and intellectual) were negotiated while participating in the COIL project. Through interacting with Japanese students, Jason’s preexisting linguistic demotivation was reversed by his positive reevaluation of his own oral skills, which enhanced his desire for higher proficiency. The project also stimulated Jason’s intellectual motive to learn Japanese using technology, leading to his autonomous choice to research language learning and technology, and to create a podcast. It is argued that Jason’s motivation for Japanese learning was enhanced through the social process, during which motives were transformed along with personal significance to him.
Highlights
In the last few decades, many institutions of higher education as well as governments have put considerable emphasis on study abroad programs as part of the internationalization of their curriculum (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Villar-Onrubia & Rajpal, 2015)
Revisiting the research questions, Jason’s engagement in Japanese learning was informed by cultural, linguistic, pragmatic, and intellectual motives through their dynamic interplay over the years. His participation in the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project reenacted the process of motivation through social, dialogic actions in his activity triangle and enhanced his overall motivation to learn Japanese
Motivated by the cultural connection to his great-grandmother and the pragmatic need to earn a minor in a language, he developed his linguistic motive over the years as he progressed in the Japanese courses
Summary
In the last few decades, many institutions of higher education as well as governments have put considerable emphasis on study abroad programs as part of the internationalization of their curriculum (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Villar-Onrubia & Rajpal, 2015). There is no one definitive COIL methodology and a COIL project could take various forms in terms of collaboration at the administrative level as well as of student interaction (O’Dowd, 2018). An increasing number of expository articles and empirical studies have reported various COIL models (Foster, 2015; O’Dowd, 2016, 2018; Rubin, 2016; Villar-Onrubia & Rajpal, 2015). There has been an increasing number of studies on student voices from various COIL projects, reporting perceived gains in language development and motivation (Kastler et al, 2019; Ramirez-Marin & de Veritch Woodside, 2019) as well as personal transformations such as increased intercultural sensitivity and competency (Crawford & Swartz, forthcoming) and worldview (Dietrich, Ekici, & Minett, 2019). In any form of learning – including face-to-face, online, and blended environments – individuals have different reasons for wanting to learn a language and for cultivating their own unique experiences, something which is constantly affected by the context’s internal and external forces
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