Individual motivational profiles: the interaction between external and internal factors

The concept of motivation in the context of second/foreign language acquisition is in flux. More particularly, the socio-psychological conceptualisation encapsulated in the work of Robert Gardner has been and is currently being extended and revised (not least by Gardner and his associates). This conceptual shift is accompanied by a re-consideration of the role and relevance of motivational research and a concomitant discussion of the appropriate research methodology and data-collection. (These shifts are documented inter alia in Crookes & Schmidt 1991, Tremblay & Gardner 1995, Edmondson 1999b, 139-162, Dörnyei & Schmidt 2001, Riemer 2001, Dörnyei 2001a, Riemer 2004). The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this ongoing debate, specifically via an exploration of how different motivating factors impact collectively on individual learner motivation, especially along the dimensions internal/external, positive/negative, and shortterm/long-term effects. In the first section of the paper, some aspects of the ongoing debate on the role of motivation in different areas of second language research are reviewed, and the focus taken in this paper is developed. Section 2 of the paper discusses the data source and research strategy employed in the present study, and is followed in section 3 by an elaboration of a motivational hierarchy, first postulated in Edmondson & House (2003) and based on the same type of data. In Section 4, the complex ‘motivation’ is broken down into three kinds of motivation that may be affected by three kinds of external influences. In this framework, the fifth and major part of the paper characterises individual motivational sets or ‘syndromes’, exemplifying how individuals react in different ways to conflicting motivational circumstances, particularly whether and how they achieve some degree of internal motivation despite external demotivators. A brief summary follows in section 6