For language learners who aspire to become multilingual, commitment involves a personal journey. Defining persistence as a preoccupation with goal-focused action directed to a desired future state and drawing on research from cognitive psychology and the mental time travel paradigm, this article presents an identity-based framework of persistence…

In foreign language learning, it is important that learners become autonomous and learn how to self-regulate their learning to continue language development. This article presents a self-evaluation procedure designed to promote self-regulation in speaking skills in a foreign language. This self-evaluation procedure was tested in a…

This study explores language learners' motivation from the perspective of vision, a concept that has specifically been identified as one of the next challenges for motivation research. Having conceptualized vision as a powerful motivational component of the language learning process, and focusing on the learner's individual perspective, we…

Flow is an intrinsic motivational state associated with full task engagement, positive affect, and enhanced performance. While research has examined how different language tasks interact with flow experiences, no study has examined learner flow experiences in a wide range of tasks using an experience sampling method to determine how universal…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) is an important individual learner difference that can help account for varying rates of language-learning success across individuals. As learner talk is considered to be a key pedagogical activity, instructors and researchers often strive to identify and manipulate key variables that will increase and arouse a…

Defined as a combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals, grit has been hypothesized to be as important as talent in determining the success of students, adding incremental predictive validity for achievement criteria above and beyond natural or inherent ability. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by comparing the effects of…

Learning a language is a long-term undertaking. In this endeavor, motivation is served by patterns of regulation that steer and control behavior. Regulation can be focused on possibilities and opportunities (an approach pattern), or the implications of failure (an avoidance pattern). Responding to calls for work with a focus on regulation (Papi…

Motivational interactions during multiple language learning have been largely neglected in language motivation research. To fill this gap, we investigate longitudinal relations between Swiss German students' value beliefs in English, French, and German in upper secondary schools and whether there are differences in motivational development between…

Agency has attracted considerable attention, especially of late. Nevertheless, perceptions of language learners as nonagentive persist. In this article the Douglas Fir Group's call for a transdisciplinary perspective is heeded in a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory's (CDST) conceptualization of agency. It is suggested that CDST maintains the…

Studies focused on motivation to learn languages other than English or more than 1 language simultaneously have been gaining attention in recent years. However, there are far fewer than those related to second language (L2) English learning. To fill this gap, this article explores the evolving motivation of 2 Japanese students who spent 1 academic…

Research on language learning motivation has typically focused on the strength of different motives in isolation and often out of context. The present study aims to explore the applicability of one global framework of motivation to integrate different perspectives. We investigated how adaptive interactions between learners' motivations for value,…

There is a growing research interest in a variety of emotions in foreign and second language (L2) classrooms, especially since the introduction of positive psychology. However, research on the ubiquitous emotional experience of boredom is scant. Building on its prevalence and documented deleterious effects, I argue that research on the antecedents…

Growth language mindsets (i.e., beliefs that language ability can be improved) are found to sustain learners' motivation and resilience in challenging situations. Considering that migrants who are speakers of languages other than the dominant ones often face challenging daily communications, we examined important but understudied questions of…

This article aims to introduce shame and guilt from social psychology into second language acquisition (SLA), to validate their psychometric measurement, and to examine their effects on second language (L2) learners' motivation and language achievements. In Study 1, the prevalence of shame and guilt reactions in L2 settings was explored. Moreover,…

The aim of this study was to investigate deaf and severely hard-of-hearing students' foreign language learning characteristics. In order to provide a better understanding of the challenges this group of learners face, a mixed methods study was designed including a questionnaire survey to provide generalizable results for our context and an…