L2 Learning Motivation from a Sociocultural Theory Perspective - Theory, Concepts, and Empirical Evidence

L2 Learning Motivation from a Sociocultural Theory Perspective

  In this 10-month interview study, I focus on five Korean adult ESL visa students" ESL learning motivation from a Vygotskian sociocultural theory perspective (Vygotsky, 1978). The participants were young adults who had been in Toronto, Canada for less than one month at the inception of the study. I regard L2 motivation as an L2 learner"s conscious realization of personal significance of an L2-related activity. The longitudinal emergent case study approach revealed that two distinctive types of motivation exist among the participants: job-related and context-specific motivations. The two motivations have dialectical relationships with the participants" ESL learning, beliefs, and L2 communities. In some cases, job motivation, however, was the manifestation of Korean societal voice that English is the world language. A new concept, sensitization, is proposed as the typical instances of context-specific motivation and as the transformation point from environments to affordances (van Lier, 2000). The study implies that by adopting an SCT perspective, we focus on the mediational nature of L2 learning motivation and advance from the prevailing reductionistic paradigms in L2 motivation research.