Given the importance of academic motivation, numerous inquiries have scrutinized the antecedents of this psycho-emotional variable in various educational environments. Nonetheless, the role of students' attitudes in their academic motivation has remained elusive. Put simply, it is unclear whether students' attitudes can make positive changes in…

Reflecting their dominance within music education, most musical instruments used in schools are of Western origin. In stark contrast, the adoption of folk instruments for the purposes of facilitating students' music-making and learning in the educational context is rarely encountered. This article reports the empirical data of a study in which a…

Recent studies elaborating on the L2 learning experience component of the L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009), especially through a narrative identity perspective, mark a new direction in L2 motivation research. This paper extends this work by exploring the connection between the L2 learning experience and ideal L2 self components.…

This article contains the results of a chi-squared analysis on the data set of a survey instrument completed by a class of Japanese elementary school students (n = 29) before and after a series of Skype® exchanges. The parametric results were reported previously (Ockert, 2015a). The instrument instructions requested students to rank six statements…

This article focuses on the design of digital instructional game (DIG) tasks for young second language (L2) learners. The aim of the study is to identify motivational task elements based on what children respond to positively in games and incorporate into their own L2 vocabulary learning game designs. Eighty-two sixth-grade students (ages 11-12…

This paper reports the results of a small, longitudinal study involving a group of Japanese elementary school students (N = 29) involved in exploratory research using foreign language activities, including two Skype exchanges between these students and students in Australia. The purpose of the research was to test for the impact of a series of…

This study investigated children's motivation for learning English as a foreign language (EFL) and intrinsic motivation for learning in general. The participants were 268 third-sixth graders in a public school in Japan. Data were collected using two questionnaires, one measuring motivation for learning EFL and the other investigating intrinsic…

The purpose of this study was to examine the positive impact of second language learners' cross-cultural awareness in the target language. More specifically, the pedagogical desired outcomes include: (1) exploring how students can increase their motivation in learning a foreign language by engaging in the cross-cultural activity "Sister…

The effectiveness of early English education was investigated in this study to determine if English should be taught formally in Japanese public elementary schools. We administered English tests and questionnaires to 1466 elementary school students in 2004 and 2005. The results showed significant differences between the…