New Themes and Approaches in Second Language Motivation Research

The study of L2 motivation has reached an exciting turning point in the 1990s, with a variety of new models and approaches proposed in the literature, resulting in what Gardner and Tremblay (1994) have called a motivational renaissance. In this chapter I provide an overview of some of the current themes and research directions that I find particularly novel or forward-looking. The summary is divided into three sections:theoretical advances, new approaches in research methodology, and emerging new motivational themes. I argue that the initial research inspiration and standard-setting empirical work on L2 motivation originating from Canada has borne fruit by educating a new generation of international scholars who, together with the pioneers of the field, have applied their expertise in diverse contexts and in creative ways, thereby creating a colorful mixture of approaches comparable to the multi-faceted arena of mainstream motivational psychology. Although there is ample indirect evidence that the teacher’s own level of motivation is Infectious, that is, it has a significant impact on the students learning commitment, hardly any research has been done in the past to explore this relationship. Recently, however, a number of theoretical and empirical studies have addressed the issue, providing a firm foundation for future research. Drawing largely on the (limited) work in mainstream psychology and the pioneering research in the L2 field by Pennington (1995) and Doyle and Kim (1999), I devoted a whole chapter in my general overview of L2 motivation (Dörnyei, 2001)conceptualizing and analyzing teacher motivation. During the past 18months, some further data-based studies have contributed to our understanding of what makes teachers motivated and how this motivation is reflected in their students achievement in work by Jacques (2001),Kassabgy, Boraie, and Schmidt (2001), and Masgoret, Bernaus, andGardner (2000).