Motivation and multiglossia: Exploring the learning of Arabic in UK schools

Motivation has been identified as a core mechanism in promoting achievement in language learning. Scant research, however, has been conducted into this construct in the field of Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL). Arabic is multiglossic—consisting of a spectrum of standard, classical, and colloquial varieties—and has distinct ties to religion, thus presenting a unique case in terms of language learning motivation. This research examines the motivation of UK secondary school students studying for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) in Arabic, using the lens of Dörnyei’s (2009) Second Language Motivational Self System (L2MSS). The central hypothesis of this study—that motivation is a multi-componential, dynamic, and language-variety specific construct, which interacts with proficiency—is investigated by means of a longitudinal, mixed-methods design. The study adopts elements of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST; Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015), approaching motivation as a system within which there are multiple constituents and mechanisms, each themselves complex, and which interact with each other, often in a non-linear fashion. Data was collected from an initial sample of 265 students studying the Arabic GCSE in multiple schools around England at the beginning and end of one academic year (2017-2018). Motivation was measured in relation to three broad Arabic varieties: Modern Standard Arabic; Classical Arabic; and Dialects, operationalised according to the pragmatic language functions of each. To capture the complexity of learners’ motivational self-concepts in relation to these language varieties, a new set of instruments measuring learners’ Current, Ideal, and Ought-to selves was designed and tested for reliability and validity. The responses to these instruments were subsequently analysed to determine the structural validity of the L2MSS in the context of learning Arabic in UK schools. The nature, strengths, and interactions of learners’ multiglossic self-concepts, along with their scores on two proficiency tests, were explored using t-tests and path model analysis. This facilitated the identification of intra-language variability in learners’ self-concepts, interactions between their variety-specific current and future selves, and the relationships between the self-concepts and proficiency outcome measures, from both longitudinal and cross-sectional perspectives. Along with this quantitative data, interviews were conducted with 95 participants, which offer in-depth insights into the workings of the L2MSS and the legitimacy and efficacy of the model, as it currently stands, in capturing the diversity and complexity of motivation in this specific language learning context. The quantitative and qualitative datasets are analysed both individually and in concert, so as to integrate the findings and to present as comprehensive a picture of GCSE Arabic learners’ motivations as possible. The findings offer provisional validation for the underlying tripartite structure of the L2MSS in the context of AFL in secondary schools, as well as providing empirical support for the conceptualisation of this language as multiglossic in nature. However, the results of the analyses undertaken in this study also: (1) challenge the strength of traditional links between self-concepts and outcome measures; (2) highlight issues with and propose expansions to the constructs of the Current and Ideal selves; (3) underscore the problematic nature of the construct of the Ought-to Self; (4) propose the integration of a new self-concept component, the Past Self; and (5) question the role of the central underlying mechanism of the model—self-discrepancy—in promoting progress in language learning. These findings have wide-reaching implications for policy, pedagogy, and research in the realms of Arabic learning and as well as the study of motivation theory within the field of second language acquisition.