Reflections on choosing which language to study and the effect on motivation
I was listening to a webinar on English learning in Japan, and it was mentioned that many Japanese students might lack the motivation to study English or see themselves as English users in the future. It got me thinking about how language choice, and if it is a choice, affects second language learning motivation.
My experiences choosing languages
If I first take myself as an example, I have experience learning English, Swedish, German, Latin, Cantonese, and Mandarin. When it comes to English, is a compulsory subject in Finland and as a global language, there are many incentives to learn it. I never had to consider whether I was motivated to learn English. Besides kids’ cartoons, TV shows aren’t dubbed in Finland and I heard a lot of English through TV and later the internet.
Swedish is also a compulsory language in Finland as it is one of our official languages along with Finnish. In school I got average or a bit below average grades in Swedish and never had any passion for the language, it was just a compulsory subject among others. Only recently I got interested in Swedish TV shows and started to relearn it, almost from zero again. I feel a lot more excited to learn it now that it is my choice and I have found something interesting to do in the language. In a year or so, I have noticed my listening and reading skills improving a lot, next step would be to improve my speaking as well. My reborn interest in the language has even gotten me to consider working in Sweden in the future.
German I studied for five years in primary school and middle school because my classmates studied it as well. I never had a deep interest in the language and easily dropped it when it was not convenient to study it anymore. Since I have not considered relearning it.
Latin I dabbled in for a few weeks in university when I was a history major. I thought it would be useful or cool, but I gave up quickly when I realized it required a lot of hard work.
Cantonese I studied for a couple of courses after I moved to China. I was fairly interested in the language and considered it to be a cool skill to learn as I live in Cantonese Cantonese-speaking area. I was discouraged by more advanced learners in the classroom who all seemed to have Cantonese relatives. I was perhaps lacking a true commitment to the language, as I stopped learning after those two courses. I found the level to be too difficult and the pace too quick for me. I sometimes think Cantonese would be a useful language for me as my husband is a native speaker, but my motivation has not been strong enough to make it a priority.
When it comes to Mandarin Chinese, I have written a lot about my years of studying it to a rather advanced level. Mandarin has always been my passion project, but my motivation to learn it has not always been stable, but it has never disappeared either.
A couple of interesting findings in the research
For a year, I have been researching university students in Finland learning Chinese (Mandarin). Choosing to study a language other than English (LOTE) is often an active choice, which can affect motivation. My research participants had experiences studying multiple languages, but for various reasons that I will discuss in my article, they chose Chinese.
In a study by Taylor & Marsden (2014) among secondary school students in England, the general importance of languages was not an important predictor for choosing optional languages, instead personal importance for the students themselves was. If a student found the language important for themselves specifically, they were more likely to choose it.
A 2017 study by Thompson of USA undergraduates and their choice of foreign languages discusses the motivating power of anti-ought-to self among native English speakers. As they do not necessarily need to study another language to compete in the English job market, their rebellious self might choose to study less commonly taught languages like Japanese and Arabic.
If you are interested in the webinar on Japanese students learning English, you can find the video on Dr. Al-Hoorie’s channel.
