What Motivates L3 Learners’ Investment and/or Divestment in Arabic? Understanding Learning Motivation in terms of “Identity”

Jing Liao,Ning An,Yongyan Zheng

doi:10.5209/clac.71993

Abstract

The study extends our understanding of the relationship between identity and Arabic learning in the Chinese context from a sociolinguistic perspective. Drawing on Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment, the study explores the interplay between identity and investment in the context of Chinese learners’ motivation to learn Arabic. The sample population comprises 25 adult Arabic learners with Chinese as their first language, English as their second language, and Arabic as their third language. Qualitative data from learners’ retrospective narrative accounts and complementary semi-structured interviews were analyzed in terms of identity and investment. The findings show that these Chinese Arabic learners’ constitutive orientation towards language learning is highly related to their multifaceted and fluid identities (inherited identities, competitive identities, and imagined identities), which are complex and dynamic and can be negotiated and constructed over time, involving learners’ perceptions of affordances in capital resources and their goals of acquiring symbolic and material resources. Therefore, investment/divestment is influenced by the interconnections between identities and perceptions. The study concludes with some methodological and theoretical implications for future research on learning LOTEs (languages other than English) and investment.

Highlights

The present study focuses on learners of Arabic as a third language in the Chinese context, in an attempt to explore the complex identity construction of foreign language learners across time and space, and to investigate their motivated/demotivated Arabic learning with regard to relationships established over time between persons, activities, and the world (Wenger, 1998), which may to some degree enrich the scope of languages other than English (LOTEs) research from the sociolinguistic perspective
This study aims to broaden the field of research on language learning identity beyond the global English context, probing into a LOTE that is a dominant language across the world and is closely related to a specific religion and culture
This study aimed to address the question of understanding Chinese Arabic LOTE students’ motivated learning processes from the perspective of investment/divestment and identity construction

Summary

Introduction

Most studies on language learning motivation through an identity lens have concentrated on the acquisition of global English (c.f., Gearing & Roger, 2018), involving migrant English learners’ investment in English along with their changing identities in local neighborhoods, which are usually driven by multiple desires for the membership of central English-speaking communities (e.g., Norton, 2000; Darvin & Norton, 2014). There are few studies examining whether the sociolinguistic perspective, i.e., identity, can be applied to the learning of languages other than English (LOTEs) that do not have a global status, such as Arabic (e.g., Temples, 2013), Russian (e.g., Yakushkina & Olson, 2017), Korean (e.g., Gearing & Roger, 2018), or Japanese (e.g., Teo, Hoi, Gao, & Lv, 2019).

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