Motivation plays an important role in foreign language learning. To investigate factors that influence motivation level, the researcher surveyed 102 students studying Japanese at the University of Washington and interviewed 10 of them. From their responses, the researcher identified four de/motivational factors: (1) teachers, (2) feedback, (3) difficulty of the class, and (4) feeling of progress. These findings also suggest that the impacts of these factors occur at different levels, take different forms, and have different strengths. The study also discusses the psychology of students underlying the influence of these de/motivational factors. Furthermore, students most frequently mentioned “teachers” and “feeling of progress,” which partially agrees with four previous related studies. Finally, the researcher briefly discusses the teachers’ perspective.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.