Chinese and the ‘L2 Self’

I’ve not really spoken about my Chinese language studies for awhile now, mostly because I’d categorise it as a total road crash. Essentially the language schooling at my university is of such incalculably poor quality that it’s managed to trash any enthusiasm I had for studying it in the classroom. Almost. My experience, it seems, is by no means unique.

Rather that get into that particular soap opera, what’s more interesting is that I’m also studying second language learning and teaching and coming to grips with the various theories that underpin how we acquire l L2 (what we call second languages). In fact, with full knowledge that this semester of Chinese – my fourth semester at UniMelb now – would be even more horrific, I enrolled anyway because I knew I’d be studying second language acquisition myself.

The idea being that I could make it a bit less personal and try take away some lessons for the sake of academic interest, personal discovery and maybe, just maybe, the start of of a journey where I might be apart of some attempt to improve matters. Today was a rather interesting day in this regard because in today’s lecture we took at look at the various theoretical frameworks surrounding motivation. This is a pretty powerful factor in the L2 learner’s ultimate success, needless to say, and it’s a pretty interesting area that crosses over into psychology.

I also learned in the lecture of a brand new study on something so close to home it sent shivers up my spine. A study on long-term motivations of a number of students of Chinese at my University. This has been summarised in an article appearing in Australian Review of Applied Linguistics entitled The Changing Face of Motivation: a Study of Second Language Learners’ Motivation Over Time. (pdf)

This article examines motivation using concept introduced by Dörnyei as the ‘L2 Motivational Self System’ which I have only now come into contact with. Campbell and Storch’s article does a finer job of summarising it than I can here (and I highly recommend it, it’s half-way down the second page), but assuming some people with less interest in the subject might read a short summary, I’ll try to paraphrase. Essentially the theory is a view of motivation as three aspects of the ‘L2 self’ as follows:

• L2 Ideal Self: A view the L2 learner has of their ideal second language capabilities.
• Ought-to L2 Self: A view the L2 learner things they should have in order to meet pragmatic expectations such as a career, meeting the expectations of others etc.
• L2 Learning Experience: Perhaps the easiest concept, the situational factors of the learning experience so far.

The key thing here is that this is a view of motivation throughout the process of L2 acquisition and not some snapshot in time. Realistically all language learners go through highs and lows. The things that motivated them to set up learning a language may not be what motivates them to continue, and of course motivation can fade, learners could even give up.

The study concludes that the learners of Chinese were aware of their motivation. I can attest to that personally, sometimes I feel as though I wear my motivation as armour and refuse to be beaten down by my ever plummeting L2 Learning Experience. Even before I read the paper, having just been introduced to the L2 Self idea, it feel like a pretty powerful idea. So where is my L2 Ideal Self? Where is my Ought-to Self? It’s spent a bit of time in thought thinking about this on he way home on the train today and I think it helped.

I realised that my motivation has two positive flows. I have an L2 Ideal Self where I think my ability to speak Chinese is ideally part of who I am. This in itself is quite complicated and has a few facets. A few years in now I think I can frame this as feeling like I’m really in a journey. I don’t feel like a beginner but I’m still embarassed at my lack of ability somewhere. I’m aware I’ve put more effort into this than anything else in my life and there’s no chance I’m throwing it away when it can turn into something I’m intensely proud of, if that makes sense. That’s my L2 Ideal Self.

So what about the Ought-to Self? Well, it’s much less than it was. I don’t feel I ought-to, and I think the best evidence was when I switched my major to linguistics. I would absolutely feel some ought-to with regards to my Chinese grades were it not for the fact that they’re absolutely nothing to do with my Chinese and everything to do with memorising the diabolical pile of communist propaganda that passes for our text book. That’s interesting, isn’t it? I think my L2 Ideal Self was always there, but my initial feeling is that  it’s had to step up and fill the void of a rapidly diminishing Ought-to Self.

That’s when I started to feel a little uneasy about this idea because under this internal scrutiny it became clear that the combination of a terrible set of L2 Learning Experience and plummeting Ought-to Self cannot be sufficiently balanced out by a growing sense of L2 Ideal Self. There can be only one conclusion, my motivation is in fact lower than it was when I started. I knew it too, I just didn’t want to admit it. Shit.

Just knowing that is pretty valuable. It makes me want to reclaim my motivation armour, tarnished as it is. It might still be more than my class mates but that’s not saying much in the UniMelb Chinese road-crash. I want to be more motivated and I think I can see what I need to do. None of it is going to be easy.

This, in fact, is exactly the conclusion of Campbell and Storch. Firstly they found that L2 Learning Experience was most likely to contribute to demotivation. “These factors are important and certainly need attention” Yes. 

“At the same time, it is clear that if we could employ strategies to bolster learners’ sense of L2 selves, it may help learners to overcome negative experiences, and continue with the enterprise of L2 learning.”

Absolutely although I’m not really sure how we can do that. One of the greatest problems with the current model is that there’s no real contact with a mentor. No guiding hand to help boost motivation, provide study advice or really give you any indication of how you’re travelling other than the entirely-too-late system of grades. There’s much to consider here.