The Impact of School on EFL LearningMotivation: An Indonesian Case StudyMARTIN LAMBUniversity of LeedsLeeds, England

There is much evidence that, in general, learners’ motivation to studydeclines as they move through school and that the causes are bothdevelopmental and environmental. By contrast, the attitudinal basis oflanguage learning motivation has been regarded as relatively stable,though recent empirical studies in various countries have also pointedtoward a fall-off in interest and enthusiasm for foreign languagesamong pupils. This article reports on research into the motivation ofIndonesian adolescents toward learning English over the first 20months of junior high school. Using a mixed-method design, the studyaimed to track changes in their reported motivation and learning ac-tivity and to identify internal and external factors which might be asso-ciated with the changes. It was found that the learners’ initially verypositive attitudes toward the language and expectations of success weremaintained over the period, whereas their attitudes toward the experi-ence of formal learning tended to deteriorate. Explanations for theseoutcomes are sought in the social context and, in particular, in howindividuals view English as pertaining to their futures.

Most teachers recognise that motivation ebbs and flows, in classes aswell as in individuals. Normally studious students may not apply

themselves so well when they have just had physical education. A low-achieving learner may be inspired by a new subject area or a new methodof study. Yet at the same time teachers also refer to classes and individu-als as motivated or unmotivated, as if these were relatively fixed qualitieswhich outlast the temporary effects of good or bad teaching.

This bipolar view of motivation has been recognised in general edu-cational psychology for some time. The main thrust of research effortshas been to identify psychological traits of individuals, such as theirvaluing and expectation of success and their orientation to their goals,and to try to quantify the relationship of these identified traits to aca-demic achievement. But there is also growing empirical evidence fromthe United States and western Europe about changes in motivation andespecially about developmental trends as pupils move through school. As

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Pintrich (2003) makes clear, the overall direction is downward: “Over thecourse of the school years, student motivation on the average declines orbecomes less adaptive, with a large drop as students enter the junior highschool or middle school years” (p. 680). Wigfield, Eccles, and Rodriguez(1998) summarize these identified changes, including a tendency forlearners to become less intrinsically motivated to study, to view intelli-gence and ability as immutable, and to have lower expectations of suc-cess. There is also increasing consensus that these changes result fromthe interaction between developmental processes and institutional con-texts, for example, the way that larger classes and fewer individual task-based lessons in junior high school conflict with young adolescents’ feltneed for more control over their lives, with negative consequences fortheir postelementary academic motivation (Anderman & Maehr, 1994;Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; McCallum, 2001).

Second language acquisition theory has been slower to recognise thetemporal dimension of motivation. Although Gardner (1985) stressedthat his socioeducational model of second language acquisition was adynamic one, with a reciprocal relationship between motivation andachievement, the proposal that attitudes—toward the L2, toward thespeakers and culture of the L2, and toward the learning situation—arethe main determinants of motivation was very influential and, along withother social-psychological theories (e.g., Giles & Byrne, 1982; Schumann,1978), contributed to a belief that motivation to learn L2 was a stablevariable, relatively impervious to instructional practices. Consequently,Dörnyei (2001) wrote, “hardly any research has been done on analysingthe dynamics of L2 motivational change and identifying typical sequen-tial patterns and developmental aspects” (p. 82).

This is now beginning to change. Recent theoretical models of L2motivation have proposed that different motivational constructs may berelevant at different stages of the long language learning process(Dörnyei & Otto, 1998; Williams & Burden, 1997). For example, atti-tudes toward the L2 community may arguably be important in decidingwhich language to study but less important once the study has beeninitiated; by contrast, intrinsic motivation may be more important insustaining effort over the long term. As in general education, new ap-proaches to researching motivation have also emphasised its fluctuating,highly context-sensitive nature. Ushioda (1996), for instance, showedhow an introspective approach to the motivation of Irish undergraduateslearning French uncovered a range of subtle transformations, such as thefact that “goal-orientation may be more appropriately conceived as apotential evolving aspect of language learning motivation, rather than abasic defining attribute as conceptualized in the social-psychological re-search tradition” (p. 243), whereas Norton’s (2000) longitudinal casestudy of immigrant women in Canada also demonstrates well the inher-

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ent variability of motivation (or investment, as she prefers to call it), as hersubjects’ desire to learn English waxes and wanes in response to thedemands and opportunities of their new environment.

The general trends reported in L2 motivational change during theschool years tend to mirror those in the education field as a whole. In astudy involving over one thousand 13–15 year olds in the United King-dom and Germany, Chambers (1999) found significant decreases inenthusiasm to learn languages particularly among the English learners ofGerman, whereas Williams, Burden, and Lanvers (2002), investigatingthe learning of French among over two hundred 11–13 year olds, un-covered “a clear negative trend with age in terms of the students’ inte-grative orientation, their feelings about the competence of their teach-ers, as well as the perceived importance of learning a foreign language”(p. 522). In Canada, Gardner and colleagues have recently begun toexamine the potential for change in the variables emphasised in thesocioeducational model of second language acquisition (Gardner, Mas-goret, Tennant, & Mihic, 2004). In a study of a 1-year intermediate-leveluniversity French course, they also found “a general tendency for thescores on the measures of language attitudes, motivation, and anxiety todecrease” (p. 29), concluding that although “the possibility of change isnot great . . . . it is far larger for variables directly associated with theclassroom environment than for more general variables,” such as inte-grative or instrumental orientations (p. 28).

Recent studies of motivation among learners of English in Asia haveemphasised structural differences with the motivation of European andNorth American language learners. Chen, Warden, and Chang (2005),for example, working with Taiwanese university students proposed a newmotivational construct called the Chinese imperative to learn English.Other studies in East Asia have foregrounded the role of instrumentalorientations and downplayed the possible importance of integrativeness(e.g., Lai, 1999; Warden & Lin, 2000). Despite these apparent differ-ences, however, studies of change in motivation in the high school yearsindicate a fall in enthusiasm for language learning as in western studies(e.g., Koizumi & Matsuo, 1993; Tachibana, Matsukawa, & Zhong, 1996).

In the particular context studied here—junior high school students inprovincial Indonesia—a previous report by the writer characterized thepredominant motivational disposition among school entrants as a potentcombination of integrative and instrumental orientations (Lamb,2004a). This gained its strength and character from identification pro-cesses not with native speakers of the language but with a future selfwhose competence in English provided access to academic and profes-sional opportunities as well as to diverse forms of entertainment, tostate-of-the-art technology and high-status international social networks,for example. Other researchers have also posited a similar construct in

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 759

other contexts—Yashima’s (2002) international posture among Japaneseuniversity students, Norton and Kamal’s (2003) imagined communitiesof Pakistani school children, Csizer and Dörnyei’s (2005) latent factorintegrativeness in Hungarian school learners—and Dörnyei (2005) hasrecently elaborated a model of L2 motivation in which the learners’conceptions of their future selves, both the ideal L2 self and the ought-toL2 self, play an important role in structuring their motivation toward thelanguage, alongside a third element, the L2 learning experience.

For theoretical purposes, there is a need to investigate further thesubtle ways in which motivation evolves, the aspects which are permeableand those which are not, and its complex interrelationship with contex-tual factors. For practical purposes, though, it is imperative that moreresearch is carried out into the apparent general decline in foreignlanguage learners’ motivation during the school years, to find out howuniversal it is, to seek out its causes, and to explore ways of preventing it.

AN INDONESIAN CASE STUDY

From August 2002 to March 2004 I conducted a longitudinal study track-ing the motivation to learn English of a single cohort of students begin-ning formal study of the language at junior high school in a provincialIndonesian city. The main purposes of the research were to characterizelearners’ motivation to learn English on entry to the school; to describehow this changes over the first 20 months of formal study in school; andto identify psychological, social, or institutional factors which may beassociated with such changes. As a case study, the research hoped to linkexisting theory with a quasi-ethnographic methodology to build a de-tailed picture of motivational change during the initial experience offormal learning, in a specific context hitherto little researched. Likewiseit was hoped that the results would both illuminate theory and provideinsights which might be relevant to researchers and practitioners incontexts similar to the one described.

The research site was a school which the researcher had originallyvisited while living and working in the city, and to which he had accessthrough local colleagues with the agreement of the local governmenteducation office. It was considered locally to be one of the three bestjunior high schools and was situated in a relatively prosperous emergent-middle-class area, though by western standards the learning facilitieswere rudimentary (e.g., fixed desks and chairs, no supporting technol-ogy, no air conditioning). English was studied twice a week for a total of3 hours in traditional teacher-fronted classes of approximately 40 pupilseach.

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As noted earlier, entrants to the school in August 2002 were found tohave high levels of motivation to learn English (Lamb, 2004a), and themost strongly motivated displayed high levels of autonomous languagelearning (Lamb, 2004b). This article presents data from the later phasesof the research and compares them to the initial data, in order to ex-amine how far this optimistic scenario was sustained over the first 20months of formal school study. In particular, the article attempts toassess the impact of formal school learning on their motivation and tosuggest factors which may moderate that impact.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

An equal-status mixed-method strategy was adopted (Tashakkori &Teddlie, 1998). The whole cohort was surveyed by questionnaire shortlyafter the beginning of their first semester, and then again after 20months of study in March 2004. A group of 121 focal learners was se-lected on the basis of the first survey, and interviews were conducted atthree points in time—at the beginning, after 8 months of study, and then1 year later at the endpoint of the study. I also observed each of theselearners in English classes at least twice, on the first and second fieldvisits. The survey and initial learner interviews were all conducted inIndonesian; later, some of the learners chose to speak in English or tomix the codes. Once potential focal group learners were identified, aletter was sent to their parents explaining the purpose of the researchand asking permission for their son or daughter to participate over the20-month period. Signed consent forms were received from all 12 fami-lies.

The rationale for employing mixed methods was that “a combinationof qualitative and quantitative designs might bring out the best of bothapproaches while neutralizing the shortcomings and biases inherent ineach paradigm” (Dörnyei, 2001, p. 242). Using questionnaires with theyear cohort allowed testing for specific motivational constructs which Icould predict to be relevant on the basis of existing theory and my ownprior experience of the context. Open questionnaire items and semi-structured interviews with the focal learners enabled me to identify andfollow up issues and concepts which I had not anticipated in the survey,but which were clearly salient in this particular context. Meanwhile,meeting learners regularly (including once outside of school) and ob-serving them in class would allow me not only to develop a more trusting

1 One learner moved to the capital with her family between the second and third field visit,and her data have been excluded from this report.

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 761

relationship with the learners but also ultimately to develop richer andmore complex portraits of individuals (Bempechat & Boulay, 2001).Beyond these strategic advantages, collecting different types of data con-currently meant they could be integrated at different stages in the re-search process (Creswell, 2003). Learners, for example, could be askedto explain puzzling events in my classroom observation data; data fromthe first- and second-phase interviews could be used to inform the designof the final survey instrument.

In view of the young age of my respondents and their lack of anyexperience of survey instruments, I decided the questionnaire should beshort enough to complete in 20–25 minutes of class time, with easilyprocessed single items representing each construct (cf. Masgoret, Ber-naus, & Gardner, 2001). A number of items elicited background infor-mation, including gender, father’s job, English proficiency of other fam-ily members, and prior experience of learning English. The rest of theinstrument was a mix of closed and open items eliciting students’ atti-tudes toward school English lessons, satisfaction with progress, expecta-tions of success, degree of importance, reasons for studying it, level andtype of English learning and use outside of school, and future ambitions.In most cases the same single items were used twice, at the beginning andend of the research period, allowing for direct comparison of meansbetween the two administrations.

The focal learners were selected on the basis of questionnaire re-sponses (both closed and open items) and teachers’ informal comments.The group were not intended to be representative of the whole popu-lation; instead I chose a majority (7) of apparently highly motivatedlearners—that is, they expressed a strong desire to learn the languageand reported high levels of activity outside of class in their survey re-sponses, whereas their class teacher stated that they had a positive atti-tude inside the class—because I hoped over the course of the research togain a much more nuanced picture of their motives and compare theway each responded to the school experience. Two learners (G & J) wereselected because they were apparently examples of less motivated learn-ers. One learner (H) seemed to be highly motivated but received nega-tive comments from teachers about his classroom behaviour, whereas afurther learner (M) was selected because he came from a rural back-ground and was unique in the cohort for never having studied English atall. Appendix A presents a breakdown of participants’ backgrounds andbasic motivational profiles at the beginning of the research period, alongwith a general assessment of their progress in English, based on theirspeech during interviews and later teacher reports.

Interviews were conducted in private and with assurances of confiden-tiality, using a topic guide to structure the discussion at each of the threepoints (see Appendix B). On three occasions, girls opted to be inter-

762 TESOL QUARTERLY

viewed in pairs rather than singly. I also had the opportunity to meeteight of these learners outside the school—four at home and four attheir private language school—and took notes on these meetings.

FINDINGS

In this section I compare the questionnaire data at the beginning andend of the 20-month research period and report on qualitative changesevident in the focal learner interview data over the three field visits.

Closed Questionnaire Items

Table 1 presents responses to the closed questionnaire items at thebeginning and end of the research period on a Likert scale of 1–3, alongwith a comparison of means. Paired sample t-tests were carried out tocheck for significance, and Cohen’s d calculated to measure effect size.Only those respondents who completed both questionnaires are in-cluded (one class of approximately 40 pupils was omitted from the firstadministration, whereas a few pupils left or joined the school in theintervening period).

As the table shows, there were a number of significant differences inthe attitudes of the year cohort between the start of their studies andafter 20 months. Most remain satisfied with their current level of achieve-ment in English, but the highly significant drop (difference in means =−0.27) may be an indication that frustration is growing about the pace ofprogress. Their expectations of ultimate success in English remainedconstant over these 20 months, with almost all pupils reasonably confidentor confident that their goals will be achieved.

Almost all pupils had had some experience of learning English atprimary school before they entered the junior high school, though usu-ally this was no more than an hour per week. About half had also takena private course in English at some point. The table shows that on entry(August 2002) they had very positive attitudes toward their learningexperience (2.83 on a scale of 1–3). After 20 months of study in thejunior high school, however, there was a significant deterioration in theirattitudes (-0.36). At the same time, there was a slight rise (+0.10) in thegeneral importance attached to English. All of the five possible reasonsfor its importance offered in the questionnaire were ranked highly, butsome changes in their orientation are evident: Most significantly, itsstatus as an important assessed school subject is more widely recognised(+0.28), but English is also perceived as having more instrumental value

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 763

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764 TESOL QUARTERLY

(+0.15), whereas its intrinsic interest and value for getting to know for-eigners and other countries are less prioritized now (−0.16 and −0.14,respectively).

A finding from the first phase of data collection and analysis in August2002 (reported in Lamb, 2004b) was that pupils’ learning and use ofEnglish were not confined to formal school. At the end of the researchperiod, pupils were again asked to report how often they used English inout-of-school activities. Results indicated that all forms of this activity hadincreased over this period, with the largest increases appearing in com-puter usage involving English (+0.41 on a scale of 0–3) and watchingEnglish language TV programmes or videos (+0.38), though listening toEnglish language songs remained the single most popular activity, en-gaged in daily by over a third of all pupils. Speaking English was stillquite a rare event, with few doing it more than once a month, andaccording to interview comments, their conversants were almost alwaysother Indonesians (e.g., older siblings or parents) rather than nativespeakers or other foreigners, of whom there are very few in the city. Inaddition to these informal activities, 54% of pupils had taken a privateEnglish course over the last 20 months, usually at a local language school(25 different institutions were mentioned) but sometimes at home witha tutor.

Open Questionnaire Items

The responses to open items in the questionnaire were categorizedand then counted as a proportion of all the pupils’ comments. Table 2shows the responses of pupils when asked to explain their attitude to-ward the experience of learning English at the beginning and end of theresearch period.

After 20 months of school study, their comments were more con-cerned now with the experience of classroom learning than with thevalue or importance of English. For pupils who were ambivalent aboutEnglish (i.e., who think that it is just OK) or who disliked it, the majorityof complaints about English lessons concerned either the lack of intrin-sically motivating activities (e.g., “the lessons just follow the curriculumand don’t fulfil the desires or interests of the pupils”; “Because it is notfun. Nothing that can make me interested about English lesson in [this]junior high school. I learn English only for my career”—original inEnglish2) or teachers failing to make the lessons comprehensible (e.g.,“In school we just get given exercises, whereas at home it’s explained

2 Quotations are translated except where stated.

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 765

clearly”). Among those who said they were happy, the most frequentcomments also related to the teacher’s style or methods and praiseddifferent aspects of lessons (e.g., “Here the teacher explains carefully,not just using English but with Indonesian too”; “the lessons are enjoy-able and not too tense”; “The teachers here don’t just stick to the ma-terial but also give practice, like speaking, listening and the rest”). Asimilar shift in learners’ thinking is evident in responses to the final itemon both questionnaires, which invited pupils to make any further com-ments or put questions to the researcher. At the beginning of the re-search period, the most frequent comments (34%) were statementsabout the importance of English; at the end, the most frequent com-ments (30%) were questions about how to learn it well (e.g., “I want toask, is there an easier way to learn to become fluent in English besideslearning by heart and looking words up in the dictionary?”).

During their second year of study, pupils were placed in eight differ-ent classes, with three different teachers. An analysis of variance (Tukeypost hoc test) was carried out to find out if there were significant differ-ences in the responses of classes taught by different teachers. The onlyitem where a clear difference was found (significant at the 0.05 level) wason attitudes toward the experience of learning English, where oneteacher was found to generate much higher ratings than the other two.

TABLE 2Reasons Given for Attitude Toward Experience of Learning English

August 2002 March 2004

Happy pupils

54% English is valuable or important 43% Satisfaction with lessons21% Satisfaction with lessons 14% English is valuable or important16% I’m making progress in English 12% English is easy2% Effective teaching 12% I’m making progress in English7% Other 12% I like the teacher

(226 comments) 7% Other(138 comments)

OK pupils

25% English is no different from other subjects 43% Complaints about lessons19% English is just OK 18% English is difficult12% English is not important in Indonesia 12% English lessons similar to others10% English is not enjoyable 12% English is just OK9% Other 6% I don’t like the teacher

(36 comments) 9% Other(125 comments)

Unhappy pupils

None 40% Complaints about lessons30% I don’t like the teacher30% English is difficult(10 comments)

766 TESOL QUARTERLY

Interview Data

The interviews were recorded, transcribed in note form, and thenanalysed through multiple listenings, coding, and the construction of amatrix to facilitate direct comparison of learners’ comments to eachother and to themselves at the three different points in time. In this way,I was able to build individual portraits of some depth and colour, tocomplement the broad picture deriving from the survey data. Inthis section I focus on some specific trends observable in the interviewdata over the three field visits. The first identified trend is common to alllearners; in the other trends, a contrast is apparent between the sevenlearners initially identified as being motivated and active and the otherfour learners.

Increasing Complaints About English in Junior High School

At each phase, focal learners made more strident complaints againstaspects of English teaching in their school. In line with survey data,criticisms increasingly targeted the teacher and his/her classroom pro-cedures. For example, Learner A compared her current teacher unfa-vourably with her former teacher: “Mr X always gave us lots of practice inEnglish, with songs, games and with . . . speeches, but with Ms Y onlystudy with book and practice is very little . . . . and we are in the class very. . . . bored” (original English). More often teachers were criticized notfor their methodology, however, but for aspects of personality or teach-ing style. Learner E complained that her teacher is “an irritable person”and added, “If you don’t like your teacher you can’t understand En-glish”; whereas Learner D tried hard to avoid direct criticism but couldnot help complaining about the teacher’s English and her intimidatingattitude:

I: How do you feel about studying English in this junior high school,now you’re in your fourth semester?

D: I feel senang apa? [happy or what?] but now I don’t like er caramengajar guru saya [the teacher’s way of teaching] because maybe Ican’t understand what does he say . . . .

I: . . . . . . . . . . Have you talked to the teacher about this?D: Never, because I am afraid (original English)

All three learners admitted that their motivation to participate in classhad declined during their second year because of their feelings towardtheir teacher, yet their desire to learn the language had not wavered.

As in the complaints about school English lessons in the open ques-tionnaire responses, focal learners’ complaints seemed to express a senseof exclusion, of not being part of a harmonious social group, either

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 767

because they could not understand what was going on in class or becausethe teacher’s behaviour was alienating. Learner G, for instance, com-plained in his final interview that he no longer enjoyed English lessonsbecause “in year 1 I could understand but in this class I can’t.” LearnerF explained that her classmates “don’t like English because they don’tlike the teacher, because Mrs. V never explain about the lesson” (originalEnglish). Conversely, Learner H was more positive in his third interviewthan his second, explaining that he preferred his current teacher be-cause she always came to the class, did not get angry, and enjoyed a jokeor two.

Increasing Use of English

At the beginning of each interview, I offered the focal learners thechoice of speaking in Indonesian or English. In the first research phase,all used mainly Indonesian, though Learners A, C, D, E, F, and K showeda willingness to try using some English words and phrases. The samepattern repeated itself at the second interviews, though learner C wasnow able to speak mainly in English, and learner L also now opted to useEnglish where he could. By the final interviews, all seven of the learnerswho I had originally selected as examples of motivated and active pupilswere using English for most of the interviews, reverting back to Indone-sian when communicatively challenged or when the conversation be-came very animated. One of the pair of girls actually chose to speak toeach other in English during the interview.

By contrast, Learners G, J, and M did not use any English in any oftheir interviews. Perhaps more significant than their lack of perfor-mance, though, was their reaction to the suggestion—each of themsmiled in amusement at the thought of speaking English with me as if itwere inconceivable and clearly much preferred to hold the conversationin Indonesian. In short, there appeared to be a striking divergence in theoral performances of these learners over the 20 months, as some beganto feel comfortable using the language (even if they were unable tocontinue for long periods) and others remained estranged from thelanguage.

Goals Become More Focussed

Mirroring the survey results, all the focal learners, whether apparentlyactive learners or not, appeared to recognise the potential importance ofEnglish for their futures. As one less motivated learner (J) put it in hisfirst interview, when asked what his ambitions were: “To be good atEnglish, because in the future, according to my parents, globalization isgoing to happen . . . . Western people are going to come to Indonesia,

768 TESOL QUARTERLY

and will get involved in every country.” In his final interview (and in hissecond questionnaire response), this learner still did not state any spe-cific ambitions; asked where he will be in 10 years time, he replied, “Idon’t know.” The other less motivated learner was similarly vaguethroughout, whereas the learner from a rural background was unde-cided between becoming a businessman or a professional soccer player.

By contrast, all the motivated learners appeared to develop morespecific goals over these 20 months and knew how English may relate tothem. For example, one learner (F) said in her first interview that shewanted to become a doctor, but her comments about English referred toglobalization and were similarly general to J’s above. In her second in-terview, she responded to the same question about her ambitions thus:“I want to become a doctor. What’s more, my father says if I want tobecome a doctor English is really important because all the learningmaterials and books are in English. So I have to study English really hardand mustn’t stop going to the private courses.” By the time of her thirdinterview, when asked where she will be in 10 years time, she apparentlyhad quite a clear vision of her future: “I hope by then I’ll already be agraduate, hopefully in medicine . . . . I’ll be living in Yogya, that’s whereI’ll study, they say that’s where there’s the best high education.”

Increasing Awareness and Self-Regulation of Motivation

In the last two interview phases there was evidence of learners becom-ing more aware of their own motivation and trying to regulate it. LearnerD had portrayed herself in the first two interviews as a highly motivatedlearner who believed she was making progress in her English. In her lastinterview, however, she made the critical comments above about theteacher and when asked whether English was more or less important toher, she replied “sure, more important, but now I feel so-so . . .” (originalEnglish). She seemed able to make a distinction between the objectiveimportance of English to her future and her feelings, which she knewwere temporary and related to her class teacher. One of the more mo-tivated boys (K) acknowledged that, whereas his motivation had notchanged, he hadn’t been making the necessary efforts to learn outside ofclass: “I think I’m becoming lazy . . . . because my friends always callingme to bermain [play]” (original English), and he went on to say he muststudy harder for a state exam in 2 months time. Another learner (F)explained at the start of her last interview that she did not like hercurrent teacher because she got angry quickly. Asked whether her peersthought the same, she said “Maybe just me, because they don’t likeEnglish . . . . they think English is very difficult.” In other words, it wasbecause she cared about English so much that she felt so negatively aboutthe teacher. For now, she put her energies into her private English

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 769

course, because “I don’t want to leave English, if I leave it for a while,then I’ll start to forget it, after all I don’t get any practice at home.”

Whereas these motivated learners seemed able to suffer the inevitablefrustrations of school language learning, the other four showed signs ofsuccumbing to various difficulties. Learner H, beset by family problemsand apparently unable to concentrate in class, had been forced to repeatthe first year; his phrase books were lost, and he admitted to a fall inenthusiasm for English. Learner G was similarly disaffected, because hecould not understand the teacher in class, though teachers and peerstold me he also had problems at home. Learners J and M by contrastpresented a relaxed and contented demeanour throughout and retainedgood intentions toward the language—Learner J said he needed to im-prove his class scores in English, whereas Learner M knew that “every-where you go nowadays, including school, English is assessed, it’s impor-tant.” But neither was able to put these good intentions into effect; bothadmitted to being distracted by friends in and out of class.

DISCUSSION

Over this 20-month period of junior high school, aspects of the learn-ers’ motivation to learn English seem to have been relatively constant,whereas others changed. Throughout the interviews with the focal learn-ers and the comments in the questionnaires, there was a consistentstrong recognition of the long-term value of English for their own andindeed for their country’s future. There was a small rise, in fact, in theirinstrumental orientation, whereas their integrative orientation fellslightly. However, as the learners spent more time in classrooms, theprocess of learning assumed greater weight in their motivational think-ing. There was a significant increase in the number who felt that theywere not making enough progress and a significant drop in the numbersof learners who were happy with their school English lessons. At the sametime, though, the general expectation of ultimate success in Englishremained constant, perhaps reflecting a sense that school was only oneof many possible venues for learning the language.

Although caution must be shown in interpreting results from single-item instruments, it appears that general variables such as instrumentaland integrative orientations are less susceptible to change than class-room-related variables, a finding in line with results obtained by Gardneret al. (2004). These results were confirmed by interview data, in whichthe more motivated learners could be surprisingly forthright in theircriticism of English lessons while continuing to assert their belief in theimportance of the language and their personal desire to learn it.

770 TESOL QUARTERLY

There is evidence that this fall in enthusiasm for school English isrelated to the class teacher. My own observations of over 30 lessonsshowed the majority of classes to consist of a series of teacher-directedoral or written exercises closely based on the textbook, with little varietyof format and virtually no communicative use of language. However,certain teachers used different techniques, encouraged the use of oralEnglish inside and outside the classroom, and generated a warm andenthusiastic atmosphere. These differences are reflected in both surveyand interview data, for example, in the different satisfaction levels re-ported by classes with different teachers, and in the comments by focallearners praising or criticising specific teachers.

Turning to their actual learning behaviour, all the focal learners whoI originally identified as having a positive motivational profile showedsigns of making genuine progress in English and an increasing willing-ness to use it in conversation with me. Whereas they reported fluctua-tions in their feelings and attitudes, they appeared to maintain a level ofindependent learning activity, including attendance at private languagecourses, which complemented their school lessons and contributed togains in proficiency. Indeed the survey showed the whole cohort to havea higher frequency of English-learning or -using activity at the end of theresearch period compared with the beginning, and the general expec-tation of success remained high.

The data reveal, therefore, two contrasting patterns: on the one hand,a general fall in enthusiasm for the process of formal learning in school,and on the other hand, a sustaining of very positive attitudes toward thelanguage and of actual learning activity in informal contexts. As indi-cated earlier, one factor which may help to explain such a dichotomy isexperience with particular teachers—some learners were lucky enoughonly to have positive experiences in school. The remainder of this dis-cussion draws on recent L2 motivation literature, further interview data,and the writer’s own knowledge of the context to consider other possiblefactors which may help explain why learners who did suffer negativeexperiences in school nevertheless remained motivated to learn English.

FUTURE SELVES AND SOCIAL CONTEXT

The study provides tentative support for the distinction proposed inDörnyei’s (2005) L2 motivational self-system between the motivationgenerated by self-identification processes—that generated by aspiringtoward an imagined L2-using future self, and that generated by the L2learning experience. Further, following Higgins’s (1987) self-discrepancy theory, Dörnyei (2005) suggests that “aspirations will only be

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 771

effective in motivating behaviour if they have been elaborated into aspecific possible self in the working self-concept” (p. 101, original italics).There is some evidence of this elaboration process in the tendency formore successful learners’ personal goals to become more focussed, as iftheir future L2 self is becoming more sharply defined and vivid. This isin line with Ushioda’s (2001) observation that goals evolve in interactionwith learning experience and also connects with the findings of research-ers working within the framework of future time perspective that evenlong-term goals, if personally valued enough, can promote a learner’sengagement in what might otherwise be considered very dull classroomtasks (Miller & Brickman, 2004). As this study has shown, this sharpeningvision of a future English-speaking self coincided with a tendency forlearners to self-regulate their motivation, enabling them to overcomesome of the challenges thrown up by the formal L2 learning experience(such as an unfriendly teacher or a low mark in a class quiz), and sustaintheir efforts to learn in the long run.

Social background factors and, in particular, the cultural, social, andeconomic capital (Bourdieu, 1991) they bring to school, may help ex-plain why individuals come to identify (or not) with a future-English-speaking self and act to realize their vision. As children of the emergingmiddle class in a provincial capital, many of the learners studied herehave been exposed throughout their short lives to powerful discoursespromoting the English language. Authority figures like teachers andparents make it clear to them that they ought to learn English and havehelped scaffold the essential literacy skills through early educationalexperiences; exposure to English language cartoons on TV and westernsongs on cassette sensitize them to the sounds and significance of thelanguage from an early age. Later on, magazines, films, and other popu-lar media present them with images of cosmopolitan English-speakingAsians enjoying the material benefits and social prestige of fluency, help-ing to conjure ideal future scenarios for themselves which appear au-thentic and possible. By contrast, to the majority of Indonesian young-sters in poorer urban or rural areas, such scenarios may seem vague andremote.

One specific way in which this cultural capital is acquired is throughinteractions with significant others in their lives. Every one of the initiallymotivated focal learners refers to people who helped shape and sustaintheir motivation to learn: For example, the father of Learner L who (ashe told me when I visited his house) has sorely felt the lack of Englishhimself in his career as a civil servant and is determined that his sonshould gain the benefits; the English-speaking aunt who first inspiredLearner H when he was 6 years old; the older brother who studies at anelite school in central Java and urges Learner C to study hard to join him;

772 TESOL QUARTERLY

and the academic parents of Learner D and the stories they tell ofFayatteville, her American birthplace.

If they were completely reliant on what the state is able to offer in theway of learning resources, it is doubtful whether even these motivatedlearners would make progress. But many of the students attending thisschool have economic capital too, giving access to key resources. All themotivated learners in the focal groups have parents able and willing topay for private tuition, which in turn, provides new learning materials tosupplement the state textbook, and new relatively English-proficientfriends to practise with. Some parents provide other types of resources:Learner E was regularly bought EFL tapes by her mother; Learner Ademonstrated the language practice she regularly gained from a PlayStation unit when I visited her home; Learner L was able to show me adesk full of English language textbooks, donated by his father and anolder sister now at the University of Indonesia. These extra resources andopportunities for practice are not just useful learning tools in them-selves; they also reinforce the individual’s sense of being a legitimateEnglish user, in their own eyes and those of their peers and teachers.

The plight of Learner M, who had just arrived in the city from a ruralarea, and who was included in the focal group because he had notstudied English anywhere before, presents a vivid example of someonewho lacks such economic and cultural capital. In his first interview heexpressed genuine affection for his new school because it was safe andwell-ordered compared with his previous one, and claimed that he nevergot bored in the lessons because “I’m happy, I need to learn, need tounderstand what the teacher says” to catch up with his peers who hadstudied English before. There is no mention of English use at home inany of his interviews. In his second and third interviews, he admits he hasnot made the hoped-for progress in English. He says he “feels the dif-ference” from most of his classmates and confesses that his classroombehaviour has deteriorated too, something which I observed myself inseveral lessons.

M: Sometimes I get a bit bored, but only occasionally, not all the time.You know in B____ [his place of origin], over there we didn’t haveany English lessons but in J____ [site of school] we need English, ifyou don’t have English, it’s difficult. Wherever we go here we needEnglish.

I: When do you need English?M: What I mean is, if we’ve already progressed, got success, started work-

ing, we’re tested in English, everywhere we need English.

Blaming classmates for his disruptive behaviour, he still insists that En-glish is important to his future, but he has not apparently taken anyaction to learn it outside of attending school lessons. At the time of myfinal visit, he was attending a private exam-tutoring course on the insis-

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 773

tence of his parents, but not one that specialized in English. His visionappears to be motivated more by fear of what might happen if he doesnot learn English, than by aspiring toward a positive goal. In terms ofDörnyei’s (2005) L2 motivational self-system, M is motivated by hisought-to L2 self but not his ideal L2 self, and this has less power topositively influence his learning behaviour.

Further evidence of a lack of any clearly imagined ideal L2 self comeswhen M is asked what advice he would give a new pupil at the school tolearn English. Unlike all the other focal learners, who gave suggestionsof various learning strategies, M said he could not give any advice be-cause they would think him arrogant, as if he was a “know-all.” Theremark echoes that of a teacher at a rural school in the same provincewho told me that the learners readily mocked anyone who tried to speakEnglish in public, and that her pupils’ main problem was that they wereafraid of using the language. Learner M, it seems, lacks the culturalcapital necessary to envision an ideal English-speaking self, though hehas been sufficiently exposed to discourses telling him that he ought tobecome English speaking and fears the consequences if he does not.

It should not come as a surprise, perhaps, to find that socioeconomiccontext plays an important role in shaping individual motivation. AsMathews (2000) wrote in his study of individual identity in a globalculture, “one’s social world . . . . acts as a censor and gatekeeper, select-ing from the range of possible cultural ideas one might appropriate onlythose that seem plausible and acceptable within it” (p. 22). Ushioda(2006) has argued persuasively that motivation has a political dimension,with individual agency always subject to complex social pressures in theenvironment. Researchers working within a poststructuralist perspective(e.g., Norton, 2000; Toohey, 2000) have shown how learners’ investmentin a school or community language, and their opportunities to engagewith it, are promoted or constrained by myriad social and economicfactors. This study suggests that there can be a similar sociopoliticaldimension to language learning in an EFL setting too; that is, youngIndonesians invest in English as a form of symbolic capital in the hope ofacquiring cultural and economic capital in the future, yet they need toalready have a certain level of social, cultural, and economic capital tohave a good chance of success.

CONCLUSION

The study has found that during their first 20 months in junior highschool, pupils’ attitudes toward English, particularly their view of itspersonal and societal relevance, were relatively stable, whereas attitudes

774 TESOL QUARTERLY

toward the learning situation fluctuated, with an overall downward tra-jectory. Despite this growing disenchantment with school English les-sons, some learners with positive attitudes appeared to sustain their ef-forts to learn and developed an ability to regulate their motivation in theface of threats and challenges. It is suggested that the stability of theirmotivation may be partly the product of self-identification processes en-couraged by their relatively advantaged sociocultural background andeconomic circumstances, and that these processes appear to correspondto the ideal L2 self posited by Dörnyei (2005) in his recent L2 motivationself-system model. Those who lack this background still have a strongought-to L2 self but appear to be more easily discouraged by negative L2learning experiences and reluctant to take advantage of opportunitiesto use the language, for example, in conversation with me.

It is important to recognize the limitations of this research in terms ofscale and context. Whereas the mixed method strategy allowed for pat-terns emerging in the survey data to be confirmed by, and exploredfurther through, individual learner portraits emerging through interviewand observation data, it also restricted the size of both the quantitativeand qualitative data sets. Moreover, the school researched was serving arelatively advantaged urban population; in the majority rural areas, lessexposed to forces of globalization, one would expect to find weakeridentification processes with English and negative L2 learning experi-ences in school having a more profound impact on L2 learning motiva-tion, but this needs to be investigated empirically. In particular, morefocussed research is needed to investigate the validity of the distinctionbetween ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self, how it may be constructedsocially, and how it may influence learner behaviour and activity.

For schools in similar socioeconomic settings to the research site,there are practical implications to consider. Pavlenko (2002) suggeststhat “seeing L2 learning as a problem is a uniquely western phenom-enon” whereas in many multilingual situations the continuous acquisi-tion of new languages (to whatever degree of competence is required forcommunicative purposes) is seen as “completely unproblematic” (p.298). Unfortunately, even in relatively privileged multilingual nonwest-ern contexts such as this one, there is one arena where language learningis considered highly problematic—school. No one should underestimatethe challenges facing teachers working in this context, not least theirown struggle to master English, but they are implicated in the mainproblems reported by learners, namely, monotonous classroom proce-dures, incomprehensible lessons, and the fear of reprimand. Such ex-periences lead to a sense of exclusion, when inclusion—in that elitecommunity of cosmopolitan English speakers—is precisely what moti-vated learners are aspiring to.

Although they are using English themselves as much as possible,

THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 775

teachers need to protect the fragile self-confidence of weaker pupils byproviding simple explanations and supportive feedback and advising onindependent ways to learn, for instance, by exploiting the ever-increasingnumber of oral and written texts in English available in the local envi-ronment. It would also help to have textbook characters with whom thelearners can truly identify, rather than the native speakers which pre-dominate. Further ideas may be gleaned from Lin (1999), who observedHong Kong English teachers successfully supporting “students frombackgrounds that do not give them the right kind of cultural capital” (p.410), for example, through strategic use of the L1 and creative responsesto otherwise dull textbook reading passages. By these means, Englishteachers can help learners form vivid images of themselves as authenticusers of the language and so ensure their motivation survives the rockypassage of school.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Lynne Cameron, Gary Chambers, Mike Baynham, and fouranonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article,and Hywel Coleman for many stimulating discussions of the context.

THE AUTHOR

Martin Lamb is a lecturer in TESOL in the School of Education, University of Leeds,England. Before joining the University of Leeds, he spent 17 years teaching Englishand working on various TESOL projects in Indonesia, Bulgaria, and Sweden. Hisresearch interests include learner motivation and language education and assess-ment in social context.

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THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL ON EFL LEARNING MOTIVATION 779

APPENDIX B

Interview Guide

• Choice of language to use in interview

• Explanation of research purpose, assurance of confidentiality and anonym-

ity

• Feelings about the school in general

• Perceptions of competence and/or progress in English

• Impressions of English classes/teacher in the school

• Peers’ motivation to study English

• Attitudes toward English and English-speaking countries, own and family

• Learning and use of English outside of school, including at private course,

at home, with friends, in city

• Plans for the future (Interviews #2 & 3 only)

• My future research plans

780 TESOL QUARTERLY