L2 motivation profiling and the role of context: A study in exploratory statistical procedures

Two studies were carried out in order to create distinct motivational profiles of students, examine theway in which context had an effect on motivational styles, and attempt to collaborate these findingswith the L2 Motivational Self-System. The research questions for this study were concerned withascertaining whether or not it is possible to identify distinct learner types in terms of theirmotivational profiles; and to what extent different aspects of motivation contribute towardsdistinguishing different motivational profiles. The participants for the first study were 42 Dutchuniversity students of English; and the participants for the second study were 26 adult learners ofEnglish at a language school in Sydney, Australia. In order to construct the motivational profiles,several exploratory statistical procedures were carried out, including principal components analysisand cluster analysis. The results found that the strength of the factors extracted in the principalcomponents stage differed depending on the context of each study. In addition, the motivationalprofiles that were formed during the cluster analyses revealed distinct subgroups of learners whichdisplayed varying levels of homogeneous characteristics.

کلیدواژه ها:

motivation ، context ، motivational self-system ، L2 learning