Abstract
Despite the growing body of research on the complex and contextually contingent nature of language learning motivation, investigations into the motivation of English language learners in rural areas have remained limited. This study explores the motivational constructions of two high school students learning English in rural Southeast Vietnam from a situated perspective. The students, one female and one male, were in their first year at high school and had relatively low levels of English. Data gathering took approximately one and a half years and was based primarily on interviews drawing on a social practice approach and observations. Findings reveal that students developed diverse motivational trajectories resulting from a synergy of social and idiosyncratic elements pertinent to their own learning conditions, interpersonal relationships, and their agentive appraisals of language affordances and learning opportunities available within and across settings. The longitudinal and situated perspective of this study provides insights into the ways in which students’ appraisals of affordances were shaped and reshaped by on-going interactions with significant others as well as by the sociocultural values permeating their agentive practices.
Highlights
Contemporary research on L2 motivation has placed a stronger emphasis on language learning contexts, acknowledging the role of learners’ sociocultural and historical backgrounds, social relationships, and the complex and distinctive ways in which language is learned
Lamb (2004) notes that the interplay among individual learners, learning contexts and interpersonal relationships is salient in explicating the concept of motivation
The present study draws on the person-in-context relational view (Ushioda, 2009) and Beltman and Volet’s (2007) model of learners’ sustained motivation in order to obtain more in-depth insights into the workings of L2 motivation of students learning English in rural Vietnam
Summary
Contemporary research on L2 motivation has placed a stronger emphasis on language learning contexts, acknowledging the role of learners’ sociocultural and historical backgrounds, social relationships, and the complex and distinctive ways in which language is learned. Ushioda (2012) comments that “current research perspectives on L2 motivation have become even more strongly sociocontextually grounded” (p. 60). Contemporary research on L2 motivation has placed a stronger emphasis on language learning contexts, acknowledging the role of learners’ sociocultural and historical backgrounds, social relationships, and the complex and distinctive ways in which language is learned. From a related perspective, Lamb (2004) notes that the interplay among individual learners, learning contexts and interpersonal relationships is salient in explicating the concept of motivation. Despite the high volume of contextually embedded research, there remains a paucity of studies that consider individual learners’ L2 motivational trajectories within and across settings and relationships, especially emphasising the role of significant others such as parents, siblings, extended family members, private tuition teachers, and elements beyond school settings. Each student’s language studies take place within diverse sociocultural systems, values and relationships that underpin their learning practices and agentive appraisals of affordances, highlighting the role of context and the complexity of L2 motivation (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011). The present study draws on the person-in-context relational view (Ushioda, 2009) and Beltman and Volet’s (2007) model of learners’ sustained motivation in order to obtain more in-depth insights into the workings of L2 motivation of students learning English in rural Vietnam
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