Engagement, Directed Motivational Currents and Second Language Learning: Adult Immigrant Perspectives

Engagement, Directed Motivational Currents and Second Language Learning: Adult Immigrant Perspectives

The dissertation answers calls for the integration of motivation and engagement theory and research among highly educated adult-migrant language learners. Specifically, the purpose of this dissertation is to propose a model to describe the interactions between the motivation construct Directed Motivational Currents (DMCs) and the engagement construct Engagement with Language (EWL). The site of this dissertation is Sweden and hence the language learners of this dissertation were learning Swedish to enter the Swedish employment market. This thesis is a qualitative study with a social-dynamic approach to DMCs and EWL, and second language learning is viewed as a highly interactive process. The dissertation consists of three studies. Each study is based in a different formal language learning setting with the following groups of participants: (1) voluntary migrants with university degrees; (2) voluntary and forced migrant medical doctors, and (3) forced migrant schoolteachers. Semi-structured interviews, observation, and questionnaires were used to collect data to describe DMCs and EWL in concert. The findings of the thesis are that the lenses of DMCs and EWL can be combined to reveal more detail about highly educated adult-migrant language learners learning than earlier models. The findings also suggested ways in which the DMCs and EWL constructs interact, and that these are influenced by learners’ visions of their current and future selves, and by effective profession-oriented language teaching. Based on the analysis of the data from the three studies a novel model, Engagement in Directed Motivational Currents (EDMCs), is posited. This novel model captures the multidirectional interaction between DMCs and EWL, and how DMCs are nurtured by cognitive, affective and social engagement, and EWL is energized by motivational structure and goal, and emotionality. The posited model has relevance for second language pedagogy beyond highly educated migrant adult language learning contexts, and for future research in the area of long-term motivation and EWL in relation to second language learning.