Motivation is one of the key learner characteristics that determine the rate and success of language learning. This volume addresses motivation in language learning - motives associated with certain features of the language, the language learner, and the learning situation. Discusses and dissects the intriguingly complex characteristic of motivation in the process of language learning. Explores recent developments and the most important research directions in the field, including a selection of data-based studies by some of the best-known motivation researchers.

Due to its theoretical and educational significance within the language learning process, the study of L2 motivation has been an important area of second language acquisition research for several decades. Over the last few years L2 motivation research has taken an exciting new turn by focusing increasingly on the language learner’s situated identity and various self-perceptions. As a result, the concept of L2 motivation is currently in the process of being radically reconceptualised and re-theorised in the context of contemporary notions of self and identity. With contributions by leading European, North American and Asian scholars, this volume brings together the first comprehensive anthology of key conceptual and empirical papers that mark this important paradigmatic shift.

The book takes a pratical approach to teaching motivational strategies in the language classroom, and gives the teacher 35 motivational strategies that they can use with language learners.

The scope of individual learner differences is broad, yet there is no current, comprehensive, and unified volume that provides an overview of the considerable amount of research conducted on various language learner differences, until now.

This volume presents the results of the largest ever language attitude/motivation survey, involving over 13,000 teenage language learners in Hungary on three successive occasions: in 1993, 1999 and 2004. The results are not confined to the European environment but have wider implications concerning attitude change, motivational dynamics and language globalisation.

This book examines issues that have emerged as higher education systems and individual institutions across East Asia confront and adapt to the changing economic, social, and educational environments in which they now operate. The book’s focus is on how higher education systems learn from each other and on the ways in which they collaborate to address new challenges. The sub-theme that runs through this volume concerns the changing nature of cross-border sharing. In particular, the provision of technical assistance by more industrialized countries to lower and middle income countries has given way to collaborations that place the latter’s participating institutions on a more equal footing.

Offering a timely snapshot of current theory and research in the field of psychology in foreign language learning, this book is accessible to both specialists and non-specialists. Each chapter focuses on a different psychological construct and provides an overview of current thinking in the area drawing on insights from educational psychology.

Taking three different perspectives, this book looks at primary school children's language learning motivation and language attitudes. In adopting a longitudinal perspective, the book fills a research gap and provides a macro-level analysis of motivational development over time. It reveals a surprising amount of stability in primary school children's motivational and attitudinal development. The comparative perspective looks at the learners' affective dispositions with regard to English (theorized as a 'global language') and French (theorized as a 'national language'). The comparisons between global language and national language are relevant across the world, especially in situations where instruction in languages other than English struggles to get attention. The results reveal sizeable differences between the two languages, with children being substantially more motivated to learn English than to learn French. Finally, the explanatory section identifies key antecedents of the learners' motivational and attitudinal dispositions - and thereby opens up paths for intervention relevant for those working in the field of language instruction.

This book brings together contributions from the leaders of the language learning motivation field. The varied chapters demonstrate how Gardner’s work remains integral to a diverse range of contemporary theoretical issues underlying the psychology of language, even today, 60 years after the publication of Gardner and Lambert’s seminal 1959 paper. The chapters cover a wide selection of topics related to applied linguistics, second language acquisition, social psychology, sociology, methodology and historical issues. The book advances thinking on cutting-edge topics in these diverse areas, providing a wealth of information for both students and established scholars that show the continuing and future importance of Gardner and Lambert’s ideas.