The Effects of L2 Pragmatic Autonomous and Controlled Motivations on Engagement With Pragmatic Aspect

Abstract

No study has investigated the relationship between student engagement per se and student motivation within second language (L2) pragmatics, notwithstanding the significance of engagement for L2 learning. The present study aimed to explore the effects of two global motivational orientations (autonomous and controlled motivations) on behavioral engagement within the perspective of L2 pragmatics by drawing on self-determination theory. A total of 76 college students agreed to participate and were requested to fill out a tailor-made, 34-item, 6-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The results of data analysis using standard multiple linear regression revealed that both Autonomous and Controlled Motivations significantly predicted and explained a large amount of variance in Engagement, F(2, 71) = 161.28, p < .01, R2 = .82, adjusted R2 = .81, and that the effect of Controlled Motivation, B = .33, t(71) = 8.05, p < .01, was twice as large as that of Autonomous Motivation, B = .16, t(71) = 4.91, p < .01. These findings indicate that students’ controlled motivation is more powerful in enhancing their engagement in learning L2 pragmatics. Pedagogically, it implies that teachers should bolster students’ motivation to learn L2 pragmatics, which can eventually lead to their increased engagement.

The Interplay Between L2 Motivation and Proficiency in Predicting EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Engagement

“…This, as hypothesized, facilitates the pragmatic development of EFL learners. These conclusions align with those of Sanjaya et al (2022), where a standard multiple linear regression demonstrated that both autonomous and controlled motivations significantly contributed to the variance in pragmatic engagement. The current study expands upon this previous work by providing empirical evidence of the interaction between proficiency and L2 motivation in pragmatic engagement.…”

“…The coefficients were .85 for intrinsic motivation, .91 for identified motivation, .84 for introjected motivation, and .83 for external motivation. The internal consistency of the engagement scale was .90 (Sanjaya et al, 2022). These reliability estimates exceeded the minimum acceptable reliability coefficient of .70, demonstrating the internal consistency of the overall scales.…”

“…The STEP consists of 100 questions that cover JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE TEACHING AND RESEARCH reading comprehension, sentence structure, listening comprehension, and composition analysis. An online questionnaire, adopted from Sanjaya et al (2022), was also utilized to gather data related to L2 motivation and pragmatic engagement. This questionnaire consists of 34 items, 28 of which reflect the participants' multidimensional motivations (autonomous vs. controlled) based on the SDT framework, and six items to track their level of engagement.…”

“…Another key factor in predicting interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) development is engagement. However, research on this factor is relatively scarce, both in the broader context of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) (Henry & Thorsen, 2020;Mercer, 2019) and specifically in the area of interlanguage pragmatics (Sanjaya et al, 2022). How various individual factors might interact to predict L2 pragmatic learning is also under-studied (Taguchi & Roever, 2017).…”

Analysis of University Student Motivation in Cross-Border Contexts

“…In terms of empathetic attitude, empathetic people show greater intrinsic motivation than non-empathetic or indifferent people, similar to what has been obtained in other studies in which they pointed out motivation as a relevant factor in the development of empathy, related to the "individual stage of development linked to the human quality of each student". All this is related to the initial motivation that prompted students to enrol in a university education [38,60,63].…”