A Study On The Relationships Between The L2 Motivational Self System,International Posture And Intended Effort Of Southeast And South Asian International Students Learning Chinese In Yunnan Province

Motivation,an effective predictor to language learning,has been one of the important topics in second language acquisition(SLA)research.The deepening of globalization with increasing cross-cultural communication has prompted English as a lingua franca(Jenkins,2007;Seidlhofer,2011).Under this background,traditional motivational theories have been unable to explain today's language learning motivation.To this end,D?rnyei(2005,2009a)reconstructed the traditional concepts of motivation with considering its dynamics and proposed the Second Language Motivational Self System(L2MSS).At the same time,Yashima(2002,2009)also proposed the concept of international posture to explain the language learning motivation of learners in globalization.Over the past decade,there has been a huge bulk of empirical studies in the domain of language learning motivation by means of the two frameworks.However,there has been scant research exploring the relationships between L2 MSS,international posture and L2 learning motivation of Southeast and South Asian international students in China's context.Taking L2 MSS and international posture as theoretical rationale,the current study aimed to examine the intricate relationships between Chinese L2 MSS,international posture and intended effort of Southeast and South Asian students from four universities in Yunnan,China.A total of 330 students,majoring in Chinese language,teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages and teaching Chinese as a foreign language,participated in a questionnaire and an interview survey.SPSS 18.0,AMOS 23.0 and NVivo 11.0 were employed to analyze the collected data.The findings of the study have shown that: 1)the two frameworks were significantly effective explaining Southeast and South Asian students' Chinese learning motivation;2)Ideal L2 self and the international posture were the key factors of this model;3)International posture was found to have further mediated effect respectively of ideal L2 self and L2 learning experience on the effort;4)the multi-group invariance of the proposed model was also be confirmed;5)the relationships were dynamic by the students' proficiency levels.The key phase for learners to promote their L2 selves and build up positive international posture was at their intermediate proficiency level.The findings of this study may contribute to an understanding of the dynamic nature of Chinese as a second or foreign language learning,and might be of some benefit to the development of Chinese international education and internationalization of Chinese education.Limitations of the study and possible avenues for future research are discussed at the end of this dissertation.