A Longitudinal Investigation of the Relationship between Motivation and Late Second Language Speech Learning in Classroom Settings

Abstract

The current study set out to examine the role of learner motivation in second language (L2) speech learning in English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms. The motivational orientations of 40 firstyear university Japanese students were surveyed via a tailored questionnaire and linked to their spontaneous speech development, elicited via a timed picture description task at the onset and end of one academic semester, in terms of perceived comprehensibility (i.e., ease of understanding) and accentedness (i.e., linguistic nativelikeness). Significant improvement in comprehensibility (but not accentedness) was found among certain individuals. These students likely showed a strong motivation to study English for their future career development as a vague and long-term goal, as well as a high degree of concern for improving comprehensibility, grammatical accuracy and complexity.

Motivation, Emotion, Learning Experience, and Second Language Comprehensibility Development in Classroom Settings: A Cross‐Sectional and Longitudinal Study

“…Although raters receive only minimal training or practice, they tend to show relatively high interrater reliability (Cronbach α > .90), indicating the presence of a shared notion of comprehensibility (Saito, Trofimovich, & Isaacs, ). Extensive research on comprehensibility assessments has suggested that native raters selectively attend to those linguistic features that hinder successful communication or prompt understanding (for a list of communicatively important linguistic features, see Derwing & Munro, ; Saito et al., ; Trofimovich & Isaacs, 2012).…”

“…One of these studies, Baker‐Smemoe and Haslam (), longitudinally investigated a total of 31 Chinese EFL learners’ L2 motivation (elicited via a subsection of the Pimsleur Language Learning Aptitude Battery) and their L2 oral proficiency development, finding significant associations between the two. In another study, Saito, Dewaele, and Hanzawa () devised a tailored questionnaire for their target population (40 Japanese EFL university students). The students’ different levels of context‐specific motivation—studying English for their future career development as a vague, long‐term goal in a globalized society, which could be captured through the construct of international posture (Yashima, Zenuk‐Nishide, & Shimizu, )—significantly predicted the longitudinal development of the students’ L2 oral proficiency over one academic term.…”

“…On the whole, these precursor studies have suggested some acquisitional value for motivation, especially in classroom L2 speech learning. However, the constructs of L2 motivation investigated in these studies did not build on more recent frameworks of motivation and emotion research (Baker‐Smemoe & Haslam, ; Saito et al., ). Although Nagle () focused on Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System, the statistical power of the data set could be considered relatively weak (26 learners).…”

“…Our study departed from previous studies (Baker‐Smemoe & Haslam, ; Saito et al., ) and aimed to provide generalizable and interdisciplinary insights to the existing EFL, motivation, and emotion research by assessing learner‐external and learner‐internal variables using solid theory‐driven instruments for experience (Saito & Hanzawa, ), motivation (Dörnyei et al., ), and emotion (Dewaele & MacIntyre, ).…”

“…Second, the participants’ achievement and development were analyzed through L2 comprehensibility measures in this study because these measures were assumed to accurately reflect what the participants were practicing in their EFL classes (i.e., how to make themselves easy to understand in oral communication). Alternatively, students’ L2 speech learning could be examined in depth from various perspectives by adopting a set of linguistic measures tapping into multiple types of L2 knowledge that differ in linguistic domains, such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar (Saito et al., ); receptive and productive processing modes (Flege, ); and degrees of awareness (Moyer, ).…”