An Empirical Study On Students' Motivational Changes In An Oral Presentation Learning Community From The Activity Theory Perspective

Learning motivation is a psychological process that arouses,directs and sustains learning behaviors and it has been a hot research topic in educational psychology.The existing literature on motivation has focused mostly on constructing theories from a macro perspective but neglected case studies(Van Lier,2005).Moreover,research to date on learners' motivation from the AT perspective has been scarce.The present study is therefore conducted to explore students' motivational changes as well as their influencing factors in an oral presentation learning community from an AT perspective using D?rnyei's(2009)L2 Motivational Self System.A qualitative case study is utilized in the present study by following three English Majors with high,medium and low English proficiency for three semesters and it employs student semi-structured interviews,reflective journals,non-participant observations and teacher open-ended interviews to delve into student motivation from the AT perspective.To this end,two research questions have been set:(1)What are students' motivational changes in the oral presentation learning community over the three semesters?(2)What are the factors influencing student motivation within the framework of AT? And how do these factors affect student motivation?Results indicate that the three students' motivation in the oral presentation community is a constantly changing process due to various internal and external factors.Specifically,students' ideal self remains almost no change;their ought-to self changes to a certain degree;and their learning experience changes significantly.The analysis from the AT perspective reveals that students' motivation is primarily influenced by a series of sociocultural factors,including the students' learning beliefs,English proficiency,the portfolio and the presentation group,etc.Moreover,it is influenced by different factors in different semesters,which are closely linked together to affect students' motivational changes.Notably,learners' agency is crucial in dealing with tensions within the motivational activity systems so as to improve motivational levels.The study enriches the existing literature on L2 learners' motivation from the sociocultural perspective,and it might also shed new light on the design andimplementation of oral presentation tasks in tertiary education.