Expanding the Motivation Construct in Language Learning

Recent reviews by Crookes & Schmidt (1991), Dörnyei (1994), and Oxford and Shearin (1994) have suggested that research concerned with motivation in second language acquisition would benefit from a consideration of motivational constructs from other research areas. The present study addresses this issue by investigating the relation of a number of new measures of motivation such as persistence, attention, goal specificity, and causal attributions to each other, to existing measures of attitudes and motivation, and to indices of achievement in French courses. A sample of 75 students in a francophone secondary school completed various motivational and attitudinal measures, and subsequently wrote a French essay. Their final grades in the French course were later obtained from the school records. Support was found for a LISREL structural equation model linking different aspects of motivation with language attitudes, French language dominance, and French achievement. It was concluded that the new motivational measures add to our understanding of motivation in language learning.