Tracking language learners’ motivations within a translanguaging perspective

Language learners’ motivations cannot be fully understood without studying a learner as a whole person with agency in social and cultural contexts (Ushioda 2009). Building on the concept of subjectivity, which is shaped through communicative interactions (Kramsch 2009), and the concept of translanguaging that extends to an individual’s subjectivity (Li 2023), we propose viewing language learners’ motivation as a constituent of their subjectivity, which ecologically emerges, develops, or changes through communicative interactions, enabled by translanguaging practices. To illustrate our view, we quantitatively tracked the changes in motivation levels among 26 students of Japanese at a university in the United States during the 2022-2023 academic year and triangulated the results with the findings of semi-structured reflective interviews, students’ journal entries, discussion board contributions, and observations made by their instructor and program advisor. Our study revealed the uniqueness of each language learner’s dynamic and complex trajectory of their motivations, which sensitively respond to their human interactions and their sociocultural environments filled with competing ideologies. The results of this study illuminate the importance of staying alert to learners’ evolving motivations and taking effective pedagogical strategies that embrace them.