
Innovations and Challenges in Language Learning Motivation
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Book Description
Innovations and Challenges in Language Learning Motivation provides a cutting-edge perspective on the latest challenges and innovations in language learning motivation, incorporating numerous examples and cases in mainstream psychology and in the field of second language acquisition. Drawing on over three decades of research experience as well as an extensive review of the latest psychological and SLA literature, Dörnyei provides an accessible overview of these cutting-edge areas and covers novel topics that have not yet been addressed in L2 motivation research, such as:
• fundamental theoretical questions such as mental time travel, ego depletion, psychological momentum and passion, and how the temporal dimension of motivation can be made consistent with a learner attribute;
• key challenges concerning the notion of L2 motivation, ranging from issues about the nature of motivation (e.g. trait, state or a process?) and questions surrounding unconscious versus conscious motivation, the motivational capacity of vision, and long-term motivation and persistence;
• highly practical classroom-specific challenges such as how technological advances could be better integrated in teachers’ repertoires of motivational strategies.
This distinctive book from one of the key voices in the field will be essential reading for students in the field of TESOL and Applied Linguistics, as well as language teachers and teacher educators.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction: The ever-changing landscape of language learning motivation research
1. Fundamental challenges I: The conceptualisation of ‘motivation’
Challenge 1: What is motivation: a trait, a state or a process?
Innovation 1: McAdams’s ‘New Big Five’ theory of personality
Innovation 2: Motivational implications of the New Big Five model
Challenge 2: How can we conceptualise motivation in a process-oriented manner?
Innovation 1: Process models of motivation
Innovation 2: Other theoretical attempts to ‘capture time’
Challenge 3: Is it possible to distinguish motivation from affect and cognition?
Innovation: A phenomenological account
Challenge 4: Conscious versus unconscious motivation
2. Fundamental challenges II: Motivational dynamics
Challenge 5: How to account for the context of motivation
Innovation 1: The systematic characterisations of context
Innovation 2: The rise of ‘social motivation’
Innovation 3: The rise of qualitative research
Innovation 4: Gardner’s fusion of personality and social psychology
Innovation 5: Person-in-context approaches
Challenge 6: The issue of different timescales
Innovation 1: The idiodynamic method
Innovation 2: Appropriate time window and timescale
Innovation 3: ‘Proximal subgoals’
Challenge 7: The interference of multiple parallel goals
Innovation 1: From process models to a dynamic conception
Innovation 2: Goal configurations and temporal structuring
Innovation 3: Principles of goal prioritisation
Challenge 8: How to handle the dynamic complexity of motivation
Innovation 1: Applying the principles of complex dynamic systems theory
Innovation 2: Placing the agent in the centre of a complex motivational system
3. Fundamental challenges III: Motivation applied
Challenge 9: Motivation and SLA
Innovation 1: Taking a ‘small lens’ approach
Innovation 2: Task-based motivation
Challenge 10: How to enhance motivation meaningfully, without carrots and sticks
Innovation 1: Applying motivational strategies
Innovation 2: Focusing on ‘student engagement’
Innovation 3: Capitalising on role modelling
Innovation 4: Preventing demotivation and fostering remotivation
Innovation 5: Applying technology
Challenge 11: How can we measure a dynamic concept such as motivation?
Innovation 1: Conducting qualitative, longitudinal and intervention studies
Innovation 2: Conducting mixed methods research
Innovation 3: Retrodictive qualitative modelling
Innovation 4: Identifying motivational conglomerates
4. Research frontiers I: Unconscious motivation
Conscious agency and its unconscious limits
The case for unconscious motivation
The case for conscious motivation
Unconscious goal setting and goal pursuit
Automatized and chronic goals
Dual-process theories and the interaction of the conscious and the unconscious mind
Researching unconscious motivation
Priming
Traditional assessment of implicit motivation through projective tests
Modern assessment procedures
The relationship between explicit and implicit motivational measures: Research implications
Unconscious motivation in SLA
Summary
5. Research frontiers II: Vision
What is vision?
The neuropsychology of vision
Vision and human mental functioning: Dual coding theory and working memory
The absence of vision: Aphantasia
Envisioning the future: Mental time travelling and possible selves
Applications of vision in the social sciences
Vision in psychology
Vision and sport performance
Vision and business management
How does vision motivate?
Possible future selves and self-discrepancy theory
Mental contrasting and process imagery
Vision and hope
Vision and emotions
Vision and unconscious motivation
Vision and L2 motivation
Summary
6. Research frontiers III: Long-term motivation and persistence
High-octane motivational fuel: ‘Self-concordant vision’
Limiting energy depletion through energy saving
Ego depletion
Conserving motivational energy through habits and behavioural routines
Regenerating energy 1: Lessons from ‘Directed Motivational Currents’
Directed motivational currents (DMCs)
Subgoals and progress checks
Affirmative feedback and social support
Regenerating energy 2: Lessons from ‘psychological momentum’
Adler’s original conception of momentum
Modern conceptualisations of momentum
Lessons offered by momentum research for the understanding of long-term motivation
Augmenting energy with positive emotionality
The notion of passion in psychology
Motivational breakdown cover: Persistence and self-control
Overlapping theoretical constructs
Lessons emerging from the persistence literature
Summary
Conclusion
References
Subject index
Author index
Author(s)
Biography
Zoltán Dörnyei is Professor of Psycholinguistics at the School of English, University of Nottingham, UK. He has published extensively on various aspects of language learner characteristics and second language acquisition, and he is the (co-)author of over 90 academic papers and 25 books.
Reviews
'Zoltán Dörnyei has produced a masterful account of key challenges and innovations in contemporary language learning motivation research, drawing on a wide literature base extending into many areas of mainstream psychology. Through his impressive breadth of scholarship, insightful analysis and sheer enthusiasm for the subject, he succeeds admirably in showing why the topic of language learning motivation continues to fascinate and to challenge us, and how much more we have yet to explore. This book will be of interest to all those engaged in researching or promoting motivation in language learning.'
Professor Ema Ushioda, Director of the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, UK