Developments of university students’ achievement motivation within a foreign language course: A qualitative study of attitudes and behaviours

Abstract

There has been a burgeoning interest in motivational constructs in shaping students’ achievement behaviours – such as choice, performance, and persistence in the recent decades. Previous studies have focused on the children and adolescents in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects, adopting expectancy-value theory. However, insufficient research has been conducted to investigate university students in the domain of foreign language learning, particularly Chinese learning. The current study aims at filling this gap by investigating Chinese language learning in the university context, guided by the expectancy-value theory and achievement goal theory. Different from most motivational studies that use the quantitative methodology, this article adopts a qualitative approach, conducting classroom-based research to investigate adult learners’ achievement motivation across the academic semester. Influenced by the process-oriented principles and the context-dependent nature of motivation, this study tracked the motivational developments of four language learners during a Chinese language course over 4 months. The findings showed that students’ achievement motivation undergoes great changes during the entire semester, due to the evolving perception of comparison among peers at different learning stages. Those developmental changes could give insights to the establishment of class activities and teacher feedback at corresponding learning stage, in order to enhance students’ engagement, performance, and persistence in Chinese language courses.