A study on process-oriented L2 motivation in Korean college classrooms.

This study addresses L2 motivation in the formal EFL classroom in the process-oriented framework. There has been little research of the motivational processes in Korean EFL university contexts, even though a substantial body of research has investigated L2 motivation cross-sectionally. This study investigates students’ motivations through exploratory factor analyses and correlations in the three phases of formal classrooms using questionnaires: pre-actional, actional, and post-actional. The findings showed that the more self-determined motivations such as identified regulation and intrinsic motivation in the pre-actional phase was more willing to communicate and paid attention to L2 classes during the actional phase, which in turn positively influenced L2 achievement through self-evaluation. However, the broad types of socio-cultural motivations and extrinsic/instrumental motivations did not seem to lead to students’ motivated behavior during the actional phase and further L2 achievement. The finding suggests the more beneficial effects of the self-determined motivations on Korean university EFL contexts than socio-culturally based ones.