This study explored the language learning motivation of a small group of five university students in the UK through the constructs of Dornyei's L2 Motivational Self System and Henry's notion of 'the ideal multilingual self'. The five participants, all successful language learners at school, chose to specialise in modern languages at university and…

In accordance with the multilingual turn in SLA (May, S. 2014. Introducing the 'multilingual turn'. In "The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education," ed. S. May, 1-6. New York, NY: Routledge), researchers are now directing more attention to the motivational dynamics associated with learning multiple…

The concept of learner engagement, widely researched in educational psychology, has recently gained attention of language acquisition researchers (cf. Mercer, S. and Z. Dörnyei. 2020. "Engaging Students in Contemporary Classrooms." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Mercer, S. 2019. Language learner engagement: setting the scene. In…

Drawing on qualitative research, this study explores (1) how Hong Kong university students' existing L1 and L2 affect their learning motivation for an L3 and (2) how an individual's L2 motivation changes because of learning an L3, from a dynamic systems theory perspective. Eight undergraduate students from Hong Kong participated in this study.…

Language is commonly positioned as an economic resource. Recent debates have argued that policy interpretations of language as economic resource can potentially undermine language positioning and reduce understanding of the cognitive, cultural and social benefits of language learning. In monolingual policy contexts, such a positioning means that…

This paper reports on a qualitative inquiry into Japanese students' self-regulated learning processes to improve their listening proficiency outside the classroom in an English as a foreign language context. Four Japanese university students with different levels of self-efficacy and listening outcomes were closely examined from a social cognitive…

Modern foreign languages (MFL) are now established on the timetable of English primary schools. This study accesses the views of the pupils on the experience of learning this relatively new subject and of making the transition to secondary school languages classes. By means of semi-structured interviews with the same sample of 18 pupils in Year 6…

Literature from education, educational psychology and second language acquisition has consistently found that self-efficacy is a key factor leading to increased language learning success. Students with more self-efficacy are claimed to have higher motivation and to expend more effort in the learning process. On the other hand, those with less…

This study looks at the effectiveness of an intervention to improve student retention on a distance language course. Of the six beginners' language courses offered by the UK's Open University, the beginners' Welsh course has consistently had the lowest retention rates since it was first presented in 2008. In order to address this, a project was…

The present study examines the effects that a 3-week study-abroad (SA) experience and a set of individual differences have on the foreign language (FL) development of a group of 64 Catalan/Spanish speakers, learners of English as an FL. Moreover, the present study attempts to account for the outcome differences between successful and less…

This paper describes and evaluates an action research project carried out by a teacher in an English comprehensive school, where a class of 13- to 14-year-olds was taught personal, social and health education and German through content-language integrated learning (CLIL) over a six-week period. The purpose of the study was to explore how CLIL…