Passion & persistence : a study of motivation among learners of Japanese in Australia

There are large numbers of learners of Japanese in Australia, but few learners reach an advanced level of the language. The fundamental question underlying the study was: what keeps some learners going to reach an advanced level of Japanese, when so many do not continue? Motivation and attitudes play an important role in persistence according to previous L2 research, consequently, this Australian study of over 600 learners of Japanese used Gardner’s AMTB to measure motivation/attitudes. The data from both school and university learners of Japanese was supported by interviews that explored issues in support of the quantitative research methods. Results based on Gardner’s AMTB indicated that those who intended to continue, the stay-ins, showed much higher levels of motivational desire, motivational effort, and more positive attitudes towards learning Japanese than those who intended to dropout. This suggested that the stay-ins were more passionate about learning Japanese (along with being more persistent), indicated by the proposed compatibility of definitions of motivation (Gardner, 1985) and passion (Vallerand, 2003). Stay-ins also showed higher levels of Integrativeness compared to drop-outs although some sub-components showed higher levels than others.However, the magnitude of differences between stay-ins and drop-outs was lower for the measure of motivational intensity compared to the measures of motivational desire and attitudes towards learning Japanese. This was attributed partly to the measure of motivational intensity, which did not take into account the popularity of J-pop activities amongst participants. It was also attributed to learners not identifying J-pop activities as learning activities or as being effortful, according to surveys and interviews. Rather, effort seemed ‘effortless’, which was explained by the concept of flow, the optimal experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Major conclusions: A growing sense of self-identity as speakers of Japanese was evident among advanced learners; Passion and persistence differentiated the stay-ins from the drop-outs; The passion for an activity itself may be the driving force in Motivation, not effort, since participants did not identify J-pop activities as ‘learning’ or ‘effortful’. Rather, the effort seemed ‘effortless’, which indicated almost an ironical reversal of the effort component of Motivation in Gardner’s SE model