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    Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation: A Hungarian Perspective
    Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation: A Hungarian Perspective
    Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation: A Hungarian Perspective
    Ebook311 pages4 hoursSecond Language Acquisition

    Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation: A Hungarian Perspective

    By Zoltán Dörnyei, Kata Csizér and Nóra Németh

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    This volume presents the results of the largest ever language attitude/motivation survey in second language studies. The research team gathered data from over 13,000 Hungarian language learners on three successive occasions: in 1993, 1999 and 2004. The examined period covers a particularly prominent time in Hungary’s history, the transition from a closed, Communist society to a western-style democracy that became a member of the European Union in 2004. Thus, the book provides an ‘attitudinal/motivational flow-chart’ describing how significant sociopolitical changes affect the language disposition of a nation. The investigation focused on the appraisal of five target languages – English, German, French, Italian and Russian – and this multi-language design made it also possible to observe the changing status of the different languages in relation to each other over the examined 12-year period. Thus, the authors were in an ideal position to investigate the ongoing impact of language globalisation in a context where for various political/historical reasons certain transformation processes took place with unusual intensity and speed. The result is a unique blueprint of how and why language globalisation takes place in an actual language learning environment.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMultilingual Matters
    Release dateApr 12, 2006
    ISBN9781847698988
    Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation: A Hungarian Perspective
    Author

    Zoltán Dörnyei

    Zoltán Dörnyei (PhD [Psycholinguistics], Eötvös University, Budapest; PhD [Theology], Durham University) is professor of psycholinguistics in the School of English, University of Nottingham. His more than twenty-five books in psychology include Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom, Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, The Psychology of Second Language Acquisition, and Engaging Language Learners in Contemporary Classrooms. His publications in theology include Christian Faith and English Language Teaching and Learning; Progressive Creation and the Struggles of Humanity in the Bible: A Canonical Narrative Interpretation; and Vision, Mental Imagery and the Christian Life: Insights from Science and Scripture.

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      Motivation, Language Attitudes and Globalisation - Zoltán Dörnyei

      SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

      Series Editor: Professor David Singleton, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

      This series brings together titles dealing with a variety of aspects of language acquisition and processing in situations where a language or languages other than the native language is involved. Second language will thus be interpreted in its broadest possible sense. The volumes included in the series all offer in their different ways, on the one hand, exposition and discussion of empirical findings and, on the other, some degree of theoretical reflection. In this latter connection, no particular theoretical stance is privileged in the series; nor is any relevant perspective – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, etc. – deemed out of place. The intended readership of the series is final-year undergraduates working on second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in second language acquisition research, and researchers and teachers in general whose interests include a second language acquisition component.

      Other Books in the Series

      Effects of Second Language on the First

      Vivian Cook (ed.)

      Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language

      María del Pilar García Mayo and Maria Luisa García Lecumberri (eds)

      Fossilization in Adult Second Language Acquisition

      ZhaoHong Han

      Silence in Second Language Learning: A Psychoanalytic Reading

      Colette A. Granger

      Age, Accent and Experience in Second Language Acquisition

      Alene Moyer

      Studying Speaking to Inform Second Language Learning

      Diana Boxer and Andrew D. Cohen (eds)

      Language Acquisition: The Age Factor (2nd edn)

      David Singleton and Lisa Ryan

      Focus on French as a Foreign Language: Multidisciplinary Approaches

      Jean-Marc Dewaele (ed.)

      Second Language Writing Systems

      Vivian Cook and Benedetta Bassetti (eds)

      Third Language Learners: Pragmatic Production and Awareness

      Maria Pilar Safont Jordà

      Artificial Intelligence in Second Language Learning: Raising Error Awareness

      Marina Dodigovic

      Studies of Fossilization in Second Language Acquisition

      ZhaoHong Han and Terence Odlin (eds)

      Language Learners in Study Abroad Contexts

      Margaret A. DuFon and Eton Churchill (eds)

      Early Trilingualism: a Focus on Questions

      Julia D. Barnes

      Cross-linguistic Influences in the Second Language Lexicon

      Janusz Arabski (ed.)

      For more details of these or any other of our publications, please contact:

      Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall,

      Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England

      http://www.multilingual-matters.com

      SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 18

      Series Editor: David Singleton, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

      Motivation, Language

      Attitudes and Globalisation

      A Hungarian Perspective

      Zoltán Dörnyei, Kata Csizér and

      Nóra Németh

      MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD

      Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

      A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

      British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

      ISBN 1-85359-886-0/ EAN 978-1-85359-886-9 (hbk)

      ISBN 1-85359-885-2/ EAN 978-1-85359-885-2 (pbk)

      Multilingual Matters Ltd

      UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH.

      USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA.

      Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada.

      Copyright © 2006 Zoltán Dörnyei, Kata Csizér and Nóra Németh

      All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Typeset by Techset Composition Ltd.

      Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd.

      Contents

      Introduction

      1   Background Information and Theory

      A Thumbnail Description of Hungary

      Language Globalisation

      Language Attitudes and Language Learning Motivation

      2   Method

      Research Design and Focus Areas

      Participants

      Instruments

      Data Collection Procedures

      Data Analysis

      3   Language Attitudes and Motivation in Hungary: From 1993 to 2004

      Computing Attitudinal and Motivational Dimensions

      Motivational Dimensions: Language Rank Order and Changes over Time

      Analysis of the Two Criterion Measures: Intended Effort and Language Choice

      4   Modifying Factors in Language Attitudes and Motivation: Gender, Geographical Location and School Instruction

      Gender Differences

      Geographical Variation in Language Attitudes and Language Preferences

      Language Attitudes and Language Instruction

      5   The Internal Structure of Language Learning Motivation

      Structural Equation Modelling

      Applying SEM in our Study

      The Measurement Models

      The Initially Tested Full Structural Model

      The Final Full Structural Model

      The Proposed Theoretical Construct

      The ‘L2 Motivational Self System’

      6   Language Learners’ Motivational Profiles

      Cluster Analysis

      The Definition of Motivational Groups/Profiles

      Group Performance on the Criterion Measures

      The Difference Between Groups 2 and 3

      The Size and Gender Composition of the Various Motivational Groups

      Third Language Interference in Language Choice and Intended Effort

      Third Language Interference: Focus on English and German

      7   The Effects of Intercultural Contact on Language Attitudes and Language Learning Motivation

      Students’ Perception of the Number of Visitors

      Factor Analysis of the Contact Variables

      The Impact of Objective and Subjective Contact on the L2-Specific Variables in 1999

      The Combined Effect of Objective and Subjective Contact on German in 1999

      Discussion of the Contact–Attitude Relationship in the 1999 Dataset

      The Contact–Attitude Relationship in the Light of the 2004 Data

      Summary and Conclusion

      Language Globalisation

      Motivation and the Self

      Intercultural Contact

      Final Words

      References

      Appendices

      Index

      Introduction

      Many conditions are needed to learn a second language (L2) successfully but most teachers and researchers would agree that motivation is one of the key factors that determine learning achievement. Therefore, defining and exploring L2 motivation and researching the characteristics of motivated learners have traditionally occupied an important place on the research agenda of both applied linguists and language educators. This volume contains the results of the largest ever L2 motivation survey, involving over 13,000 language learners on three successive occasions: in 1993, 1999 and 2004. The survey took place in one particular country, Hungary, and the sample represents young teenagers from the whole cross-section of the nation. The examined period covers a particularly prominent time in the country’s history, the transition from a closed, Communist society to a western-style democracy that became a member of the European Union in 2004, just weeks after we completed the third phase of our investigation. Thus, our study provides a ‘motivational flow-chart’ describing how the significant sociopolitical changes affected the various language attitudes prevailing amongst Hungarians and their motivation to learn five different target languages: English, German, French, Italian and Russian.

      The results of the three phases of the survey have provided a wealth of data and we have been reporting various aspects of our findings in several publications over the past 10 years, both in Hungarian and English. We covered a variety of issues ranging from the changing perception of specific target languages to the attitudinal impact of intercultural contact, from the effects of schooling on motivation to the different language profiles of successful and unsuccessful learners. However, these results have not been brought together in a single volume to allow readers to consider them in relation to each other and therefore providing such a summary has been the main purpose of writing this book. Having said that, the material in this volume is far from being a nere compilation of already published results. We have included in the analyses new data, the results of the third phase of the survey (2004), and thus this volume extends all our previous studies by adding almost 5000 new learners to the sample. We have made various predictions and formed certain hypotheses in our earlier publications about the possible or likely directions of future changes in Hungary and now, with the 2004 data available, comparing these predictions to the actual changes has been an exciting and intellectually enjoyable task.

      Why Hungary? Why is this Relevant for Non-Hungarians?

      Although the target of these investigations is a small European country, Hungary, we believe that the obtained results are not confined to this specific context but have wider implications. In many ways, Hungary can be seen as a laboratory in which, for various political/historical reasons, certain processes took place with unusual intensity and speed, completing a transformation much faster than in other contexts. Therefore, observing the L2-specific consequences of this transformation can shed light on broader and longer-term tendencies worldwide. More specifically, there are two aspects that make this context worthy of general interest. First, as will be elaborated on below, the large-scale socio-political changes that took place in Hungary (along with other East European countries) after the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 had a substantial and pervasive language impact, the like of which has never been documented empirically in the L2 literature. Second, we found that the collected data provided valuable insights into the actual operation of language globalisation, an area which has attracted much attention in the L2 literature over the past decade but in which conceptual discussions have been far more numerous than studies backed up by empirical data. Let us look at these two issues in a bit more detail.

      (1) Language impact of the socio-political changes: The collapse of the Communist rule in Hungary in 1989 initiated unprecedented changes in the history of the country. After the first free elections for some 40 years in 1990, the closed, Communist society was radically transformed into an open, market-oriented democracy. By the end of the 1990s the process had been completed: the privatisation of the economy had been finalised, resulting in a proportion of private enterprise that is comparable to the situation we find in Western Europe, and Hungary had also joined the NATO. Furthermore, in May, 2004, Hungary – along with several other post-Communist countries – was accepted as a full member of the European Union, thereby joining a very elite ‘club’. Such a huge transformation had considerable language-related consequences, particularly in view of three powerful processes that took place:

      • Russian, the compulsory first foreign language taught at every level of the Hungarian educational system before 1990, was replaced by a variety of western languages for the schools to choose from.

      • Foreign television channels (mainly German-speaking but also some in English), as well as international videos and films became widespread within a few years after the changes.

      • The country opened up its borders and there was a dramatic increase in foreign (mainly West European) influence both in terms of two-way tourism and economic relationships; the latter can be well characterised by the fact that in the 1990s many job advertisements in Hungarian papers were published in English or German because the multinational corporations which moved into the country wanted to screen out applicants who had insufficient foreign language proficiency.

      Each of these three processes would have been expected to make a considerable impact on the population’s language disposition, but the fact that they occurred in concert created a particularly intensive course of transformation.

      (2) Language globalisation: The second issue of interest, the discovery of obvious manifestations of the process of language globalisation, was an unexpected finding in our research programme. When we initiated the project, our main research interest concerned the transformation of post-Communist Hungary and therefore we gave little thought to any potential variance within the emerging new western orientation. However, because of the concistency of the data that we had obtained we could not help noticing that one of the most salient aspects of our findings concerned a powerful process whereby the primary world language, English, gradually sidelined all the other foreign languages traditionally present on the Hungarian language learning scene, including the primary regional lingua franca, German. The most recent data gathered in 2004 confirmed the existence of this globalisation process and thus we believe that the Hungarian findings provide a unique blueprint of how and why language globalisation takes place in an actual language learning environment.

      There is a third aspect of our study that may warrant wider interest, although this has nothing to do with the location but rather with the sample size. The exceptionally large dataset allowed us to conduct a range of sophisticated multivariate statistical procedures, including cluster analysis and structural equation modelling, and because our investigation involved a multi-occasion (i.e. repeated measures) and multi-language (i.e. the five target languages) design, the data lent itself to such state-of-the-art analyses. As a result, many of our findings offer novel insights into the area of L2 motivation research.

      The Brief History of the Project

      Because the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block in 1989/1990 was so unexpected, we could only react to the events in a post hoc manner: although we soon became aware of the unprecedented social psychological curiosity of the emerging situation, it was only by 1992 that we had obtained sufficient funding to launch the first phase of our data collection. The project was initiated by Zoltán Dörnyei and he invited Richard Clément to act as a consultant in designing the main survey questionnaire. Richard also provided invaluable advice with regard to the whole first phase of the survey that finally took place in 1993. During the first round of data collection the Hungarian research team was aided by two Research Assistants, Emese Nyilasi and Krisztina Kertész. Although this first survey took place somewhat later than we would have liked – about three years after the events started to unfold in earnest – we found that at the time of the data collection the country was still very much in the initial transition period: our data showed, for example, that in 1993 over 50% of the learners in our sample still had to study the Russian language at school, not because it was a compulsory L2 any more but simply because there were not enough trained teachers of western languages available to fill the obligatory L2 slot in the school curricula.

      At the very end of the 1990s, we considered the time ripe to conduct the second phase of the survey to assess the longer-term impact of the sociopolitical changes, and in the last few months of the millennium we launched the second round of data collection. This time Zoltán was aided by (i.e. most of the work was done by) Kata Csizér and Nóra Németh. At this stage the teaching of Russian had been completely abandoned – we did not find a single student who still learnt Russian at school – and the teaching of English and German had become typical. Because the second round of data collection targeted exactly the same population as the first one and utilised the same instrument, the resulting combined dataset provided unique longitudinal insights into the critical first decade of political freedom in Hungary.

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