Redefining motivation and language anxiety: An empirical validation of psycho-educational models in an EFL context

This study had three specific purposes (a) to illuminate the function of affective factors in the acquisition of English as a foreign language in a Japanese context, (b) to introduce other significant variables which might be important in this context, and (c) to explore cause and effect relationships in the expanded model.; The results of the first structural equation modeling indicated that confidence was a significant factor which affected language proficiency while no significant impact of the two types of orientation (instrumental and integrative orientations) on language proficiency was revealed.; In the second phase of the study, the construct of motivation was re-conceputualized as effortful behavior, and communication anxiety and ethnocentrism were included as additional factors in a hybrid model. The results of the second structural equation model indicated that ethnocentrism and language anxiety showed significantly negative paths to language proficiency and motivation (newly defined as effortful behavior) and linguistic self-confidence showed a significantly positive path to language proficiency. Interestingly, neither of the two types of orientations (instrumental and integrative) showed significant paths to motivation or to language proficiency.; Hofstede (1980) has argued that in interpreting people's statements about their values, it is important to distinguish between the desirable and the desired: how people think the world ought to be versus what people really want for themselves. The learners' motivational characteristics found in this study must be interpreted in a similar way. Thus, the first type of motivation has been defined as "desirable motivation." In the norm, the learners are highly integratively and instrumentally oriented in terms of language learning, but their values are the product of social pressures and their true feelings are somewhat different. In contrast to desirable motivation, another type of motivation, which leads learners' awareness into actual effortful behavior, was found more significant in the Japanese psycho-educational model and this was defined as "desired motivation."...