Self determined motivation for language learning: The role of need for cognition and language learning strategies

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been a notable revival of scholarly interest in second language (L2) motivation (see Dornyei 1998; Oxford 1996a). Since a number of critical reviews of the conceptual and empirical status of L2 motivation theory appeared in the early to mid-1990s (e.g., Crookes and Schmidt 1991; Dornyei 1994; Oxford and Shearin 1994), several L2 theorists and researchers have made considerable advances in expanding on and complementing existing models of L2 acquisition (SLA; e.g., Clement 1980, 1986; Gardner 1985, 1988; Giles and Byrne 1982; Schumann 1978) by drawing on a variety of non-L2 motivational concepts from both educational and general psychology (see, e.g., Dickinson 1995; Dornyei 1998; Noels 2001a, 2001b; Noels et al. 1999, 2000, 2001; Oxford 1996a; Tremblay and Gardner 1995; Williams 1994). The present study builds further on this body of work by examining the relations between a number of personality and motivational variables, namely, need for cognition (NC; Caccioppo and Petty 1982), self-determination (Deci and Ryan 1985), and language learning strategies (LLS; Oxford 1990), as well as these variables' relations to L2 achievement.