title: Dynamics of Learners’ Emergent Motivational Disposition: The Case of EAP Learners at a Transnational English-Medium University
Creators: name: Pack, Austin
Publisher: name: University of Liverpool Repository
Year: 2021

description: This thesis aims to better understand the processes affecting the motivational dynamics of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) learners’ at a transnational education (TNE) university that uses English as its medium of instruction (EMI). It joins the ongoing discussion of how to leverage Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) to understand second language (L2) motivation and takes a special interest in understanding what demotivates students to study EAP. It employed a mixed methodology and two-stage research design to explore how EAP learners’ motivation changed over the course of a semester in their first year, as well as what the salient demotivating and motivating factors were for these students. First, motivation journals, motivation questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and focus group discussions were leveraged to investigate how and why the motivation levels of 60 first year EAP students changed over a period of 10 weeks. Salient demotivating factors identified from the data were then further explored by means of a demotivation questionnaire that was administered to the larger student population (n=1517) in order to understand how frequently these factors were found to be a source of demotivation. Learners’ motivational disposition was found to be complex and multifaceted, changing frequently between motivated and demotivated states. Motivation constructs (e.g. L2 self guides, instrumentality, etc.) frequently used in previous L2 motivation studies did not sufficiently account for the changes in students’ motivational disposition from day to day. Instead, it was found that motivational disposition, or students’ willingness to expend effort to learn at any given moment, emerges from the complex and non-linear interaction of a multitude of factors internal and external to the language learner and language classroom. These factors exerted influences of different strengths on motivational disposition according to changes in time and context. Sources of demotivation were frequently associated with factors outside of the EAP classroom and sources of motivation were frequently associated with factors inside the EAP classroom. The study is significant for both theory and research methodology relating to L2 motivation. First, while CDST has been used as a metaphor for understanding dynamics of motivation, the current study provides evidence that characteristics of CDSs can be grounded in actual data (e.g. the emergent nature of motivation, sensitivity to initial conditions, etc.). Second, based on these findings this thesis presents a new CDST informed model of language learning motivation. Third, it suggests it is necessary to move away from a binary way of thinking about motivational factors that categorizes them into a dichotomy of motivating/demotivating factors; a more complex and fluid understanding of motivational factors is needed. Lastly, it highlights the need for frequent sampling that ensures minimal time has passed between when students recollect motivating/demotivating experiences and the actual time those experiences occurred.