Motivation to Learn Multiple Languages in Japan: A Longitudinal Perspective (Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching, No. 19)

This book provides rare insights into motivation among extremely successful learners of English and languages other than English (LOTEs) through the analysis of a longitudinal study and the examination of the factors involved in becoming multilingual in a non-multilingual environment. Based on sixteen interview sessions, conducted over the course of nine years while the learners progressed from high school to the world of work, this book offers the story of how two learners persist in English/LOTE learning. The study illuminates the long-term processes through which the interviewees develop ideal English/LOTE selves in an environment where multilingualism is not emphasized and where both English and LOTEs can still be described as foreign languages. Educators and researchers will learn from this study, which stretches our understanding of motivation beyond the recent theorizing of L2 motivation and contributes to the limited research in long-term motivational trajectories and LOTE learning motivation, which is particularly scarce in non-European contexts. The book will be of interest not only to readers in Japan but also to those in other contexts as it offers an example of successful learners who go beyond the pragmatic and instrumentalist view of language learning to hold a more holistic view, thus revealing the factors which can sustain multiple language learning, even in foreign language contexts.

Chika Takahashi is Associate Professor at Ehime University, Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, and her research interests include L2 motivation, L2 self-instruction and research methods. Particularly, she is interested in motivation to learn multiple languages that may sometimes extend beyond formal education and how that can be captured in empirical studies. She has recently published articles in The Language Learning Journal and Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, and a volume entitled Motivation to Learn Multiple Languages in Japan: A Longitudinal Perspective (Multilingual Matters).