Effects of teaching pedagogies on the attitudes, motivation, orientation and self-identity of Japanese students of English as a foreign language

Effects of teaching pedagogies on the attitudes, motivation, orientation and self-identity of Japanese students of English as a foreign language

There has been extensive research over the past two decades into what motivates students of English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) in the second language (L2) or foreign language (FL) classroom. With a large percentage of these studies focused on Japanese EFL students, many studies have examined the issue of student motivation from various perspectives focusing on internal and external variables in various institutional environments. However, a gap exists in the literature that warrants a specific focus on the teaching pedagogies’ influence on the students’ attitudes, motivation, orientation and how the influence of the teaching pedagogies relates to self-identity. This thesis presents two studies (i.e., Study 1 and Study 2) and the participants of the studies were Japanese EFL students in eight university classroom environments. Four of the eight environments were at a private university in Japan and the other four of the eight environments were part of a short-term English study abroad program conducted at a private college in the United States. The studies examined the ways in which teaching pedagogies influenced the attitudes, motivation and orientation of the students in the different classrooms and how the influence of the teaching pedagogies related to the students’ ability to envision using English in the future (self-identity). Both studies used a mixed method approach which allowed for a more comprehensive data analysis through quantitative and qualitative data collection methodologies. Data was analyzed within a theoretical framework that consisted of the L2 motivational self-system (Dörnyei, 2009) and intercultural competence (Yashima, 2013). The studies were conducted to see how the teachers’ implementation of student-centred teaching pedagogies that promoted autonomous learning affected the students’ ability to visualise a future self-identity within the three constructs of the L2 motivational self-system: the ideal self; the ought-to self; and the learning experience. Findings suggest that the students who experienced internationally focused issues and imagined target language (TL) communities through English classroom instruction in the Japanese-based classrooms or participated in the short-term English study abroad program in the U.S. displayed more positive attitudes, improved orientation, more positive learning experiences and a more pronounced ability to picture a future self-identity using ESL than those students who had less exposure to these variables.