From ‘Predecisional’ to ‘Postdecisional’: An Examination of the Fluctuation of Motivational Factors in Students of Japanese as Seen in Year Abroad Essays
Dr Martin Ward
School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds
Dr Mika Takewa
School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds
ABSTRACT
Factors contributing to student motivation for studying Japanese have in recent times received significant attention amongst HE institutions in the UK teaching Japanese. This study set out to identify to what extent fluctuations could be seen in motivational factors from the ‘predecisional phase,’ the initial decision-making stage, to the ‘postdecisional phase,’ the stage where motivation is implemented and sustained (Shoaib and Dörnyei, 2005) through the year abroad (YA) as a key period. The motivations evident at the predecisional phase for 41 students were analysed in relation to those evident at the postdecisional phase, with a particular focus on chosen topics for the year abroad essay assignment. The study found that there was no longevity of motivation for students displaying affective/integrative (Shoaib & Dörnyei, 2005) motivation at the predecisional stage, but there was some evidence for longevity of motivation for those who displayed instrumental motivation at that stage. Further studies are needed to examine whether for students showing instrumental motivation at the predecisional stage it can be said that motivation generally endures to the final pre-graduation postdecisional stage.
KEYWORDS: year abroad, Japanese, predecisional, postdecisional, motivation
INTRODUCTION
Factors contributing to student motivation for studying Japanese have in recent times received significant attention amongst HE institutions in the UK teaching Japanese. Efforts have been made to understand ‘the ‘hook’’ that ‘ignites students' interest in Japanese studies and draws them into studying Japanese language and culture at University level’ to ‘(re)define and promote the field of Japanese Studies in the UK’ (Japan Foundation, 2018). A significant factor impacting students’ motivation towards studying foreign languages is said to be studying abroad (DuFon and Churchill, 2006; Harada, 2008) and students of Japanese at the University of Leeds also go on a compulsory year abroad (YA). Since students’ YA in Japan is arguably the pivotal time in their degree course, this study examines whether their interests and motivations fluctuate during the course of their 4 years degree. Paying particular attention to the YA essays students write about Japanese culture on a topic of their choice as part of their assessment, this study attempts to identify possible links between the YA essay topics and initial reasons/motivations for choosing Japanese stated in their UCAS forms, and their Final Year Project (FYP) topics.
JAPANESE STUDIES AND JAPAN YEAR ABROAD AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Background information on the Japanese Studies programmes at the University of Leeds is offered here to provide the context for the present study. The number of students enrolled in the Japanese Studies programmes for the past five years has been constant at 50-60, including six to ten students who have a prior knowledge of Japanese and thus start at the Intermediate level each year. YA in Japan is an integral part of these programmes, and takes place in the second year, unlike the majority of UK universities which send students to Japan in the third year of their studies of Japanese. The YA programme at Leeds is exchange-based with 15 different universities across Japan, which means the students’ experiences can vary considerably dependent on which of the universities they attend. This may further impact each student's interests and motivation but specific examination of this aspect is outside the scope of the present study.
RELATED LITERATURE
L2 motivation, in particular various factors which may impact on students' motivation, started to receive attention in the 1990s, before which a focus had been predominantly on the ‘initial motivation to pursue an action’ (Dörnyei and Otto 1998, p.45). Pertinent to the present study is the view that motivation is not a constant state but a more dynamic entity that changes over time (Dörnyei, 2001, p.41) and that motivation consists of three aspects, which are ‘the choice of a particular action’, ‘the persistence with it’ and ‘the effort expended on it’ (ibid. 8). With respect to learning Japanese, research on motivation to date has largely aimed to uncover learners' motivation quantitatively, focusing on university students, using questionnaires (Takahashi & Hirayama, 2014). In addition, research on the link between motivation and study abroad in Japan appears thus far to have focused on the time the learners are in Japan (e.g. Harada, 2008; Hasegawa, 2016; Morimoto, 2016). Against this background, the present study explores students’ motivation throughout their degree focusing on three specific points, namely when they apply for university, at the end of their YA, and at the end of their degree, bearing in mind that YA is a significant factor impacting students' motivation (DuFon & Churchill, 2006).
AIMS OF STUDY AND DATA COLLECTION
This study set out to identify to what extent fluctuations could be seen in motivational factors from the ‘predecisional phase,’ the initial decision-making stage, to the ‘postdecisional phase,’ the stage where motivation is implemented and sustained (Shoaib and Dörnyei, 2005) through the YA as a key period. Students’ motivations at the ‘predecisional phase’ can be seen from their UCAS applications and those at the ‘postdecisional phase’ are observed from their YA essay topics and FYP topics. Data relating to themes on UCAS forms, YA essays, and FYPs was gathered and collated for a total of 48 final year students of Japanese at the University of Leeds from the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years. Seven of the datasets were discarded due to lacking data regarding YA essays. The remaining 41 were analysed for the existence of keywords/themes which connected UCAS forms to YA essays, YA essays to FYPs, or indeed all three elements, placing particular attention on YA essays in an attempt to highlight the importance of the YA which is likely to influence students’ motivations.
MOTIVATIONS AT PREDECISIONAL PHASE
According to Shoaib & Dörnyei (2005) there are seven major dimensions of motivation. They are affective/integrative (attitudes towards the TL, LL & TC, mood), instrumental (current or desired Job, colleagues, further study), self-concept-related (confidence, satisfaction, acceptance of limits, debilitating factors, own decision), goal-oriented (learning for knowing, demonstrating ability, getting good grades, outdoing others, goal specificity), educational-context-related (teacher, classmates, curriculum, methodology, class size, essential), significant-other-related (parents, family, friends, partner), host-environment-related (L2 contact, inability to integrate, length of stay). Frequently stated reasons in the UCAS forms for wanting to study Japanese are anime, manga, literature, films or aikido (83%), which fall into the aforementioned ‘affective/integrative’ category. Other examples include familiarity with Japanese culture (24%), career in Japan (15%) or Japanese parent (7%), which are categorised as 'host-environment-related', 'instrumental' and 'significant-other-related' respectively. These dimensions of motivation at the predecisional phase will be compared with those at the postdecisional phase in the following sections.
MOTIVATIONS AT POSTDECISIONAL PHASE
Japan year abroad essays
Towards the end of the year in Japan, students are required to write a 1,200 word sakubun (composition) in Japanese and a 2-2,500 word essay in English. The former should describe how the student’s views on Japanese culture have changed during their year in Japan, as well as clarify why they chose to write about the particular aspect of Japanese culture they selected for the English essay. Here ‘culture’ is defined broadly as ‘the distinctive customs, achievements, products, etc. of a society or a group; the way of life of a society or a group’ (Oxford English Dictionary), and further clarified with some examples, to show the students that their writing can relate to any aspect of Japanese life, culture, society, or customs which they may have observed. The English essay is entitled ‘Japanese Culture: My View’ and must be based on both academic sources (by this point students have already become familiar with academic writing during the first year of their studies) and personal observations and reflections. This will be the first, and for some the only, time in their academic career that they may have the opportunity to combine casual personal observations with a rigorous academic approach. Possible marks for the essay are fail, pass, and distinction and students only receive specific formative feedback if they request it from the assessor. Should they fail because they have not followed the essay brief, they are required to revise and resubmit it. These essays have significant potential to indicate students’ interests, e.g. pop culture, traditional society, or perhaps instrumental issues connected to their future careers. The above essays are together referred to as the year abroad (YA) essay.
Final year projects (FYP)
All students in the School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies, at Leeds are required to conduct a research project and write a dissertation of either 8,000 or 12,000 words, which should relate to their major field of study. Examining topics students choose to write about for their FYP can prove to be potentially indicative of any fluctuations in their motivation towards studying Japanese, and FYPs are arguably the last pre-graduation source of ‘postdecisional’ evidence of the nature of their motivation.
Classification of YA essays and FYPs
For the purposes of the current study, students’ chosen topics for their YA essays and FYPs were classified into the categories given in Table 1. Anime, manga and fashion were assigned a separate category from ‘culture’ as it is a well-known fact that these aspects of popular culture are a distinct ‘hook’ for creating an initial interest in many students to study Japanese. Separating them helps to clarify how commonly these specific aspects featured in students’ YA essays and FYPs.
Table 1: Classifications of YA essays and FYPs
DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
Table 2: Number of YA essays and FYPs classified under each category
Drawing to the end of their year abroad in Japan, it is evident that most students’ interests were largely focused around ‘cultural’ elements (defined in Table 1) of Japanese society, which many of them had probably encountered for the first time during their year abroad (27 out of 41 students). When it came to FYPs, however, students’ interests appeared to be much more varied, as is evident from Table 2. Remarkably for their FYP, no student chose to research ‘cultural’ areas, which had been prevalent in the YA essay topics, whilst several themes showed increases, most notably literature and language (increased from zero to eight students), and anime, manga and cinema (which increased from one to eight). The reasons for the different trends in prevalent themes are inevitably impossible to ascertain without asking the students themselves, however a number of assumptions may reasonably be made. These assumptions could be tested in targeted future studies after the context has been established by the present study.
Firstly, being no longer on their year abroad, students are also no longer faced with daily encounters with Japanese culture and are perhaps more likely to choose topics which they feel confident to engage with and write about in a more academic manner. Their focus now seems to have moved from enjoyment and/or reflection on Japanese culture, to more pragmatic concerns such as obtaining marks which will help them on their way to an acceptable class of degree. The FYP is also a different type of assignment from the YA essay in that it is a purely academic/scholarly piece devoid of any casual observations from everyday life. Hence, it can be argued they are likely to select a topic about which they can confidently write and not necessarily something they have merely observed or in which they only have a shorter-term interest. Connected with this are the modules which are available to them during their final two years at Leeds, which arguably lend them confidence to approach different themes and disciplines with greater confidence and a more solid theoretical framework than starting out in a field with which they are entirely unfamiliar and have no support from a related module and its tutor.
The above is a useful snapshot of the general situation, but it is particularly pertinent to the purpose of the present study to examine the data and identify any trends within the motivations and interests of any individual students. Looking more closely it was found that six (15%) students displayed thematic links between UCAS forms and YA essays, as seen in Table 3 below. These are evidence of some students presenting a degree of continuity between predecisional motivation and the earliest form of postdecisional motivation-related data available.
Table 3: Examples of thematic links between UCAS forms and YA essays
In addition to this, four (10%) showed thematic links through all three fields of data, details of which are given in Table 4. It is noteworthy that in two of these cases the themes were arguably indicative of long-term instrumental (Shoaib & Dörnyei, 2005) motivation regarding economics or working practices. There is quite a distinction between this kind of motivation/interest and, for example manga and anime (which can be classified as affective/integrative motivations). Examples of longevity in affective/integrative motivations were not identified amongst the current samples. It can, then, be argued that the distinctiveness of instrumental motivational factors has been identified here, although more investigation is needed to support this interpretation more fully.
Table 4: Thematic links between UCAS forms, YA essays and FYPs
Apart from the above examples, one (2%) showed a thematic link between the YA essay and FYP only, suggesting the faint possibility of longevity between different postdecisonal stages. Finally, all other students (73%) showed no apparent link between any of the three stages of sampling, which in itself implies significant fluctuations of motivation between not only the predecisional and postdecisional stage, but also the different postdecisional stages. In other words, the majority of the data points to there being little sign of longevity of motivation in the students of Japanese who were the subject of the present study.
CONCLUSION
In line with the aims of the study, the most significant findings include the lack of any generalisable trend in the longevity of motivation other than the lack of longevity itself. Whilst there is evidence that, for a minority of students, longevity of motivation is a reality, particularly with regards to instrumental motivation, the exact nature of, or reasons for, this longevity can barely be described. Further studies are needed to examine whether for students showing instrumental motivation at the predecisional stage it can be said that motivation generally endures to the final pre-graduation postdecisional stage.
Evidently, students who began their degree courses inspired by affective/integrative motivational factors did not experience longevity of motivation, which supports the arguments of Dörnyei (2001) that motivation changes over time. This study suggests that this is indeed the case, as students’ choice of topics in the above-mentioned assignments is an important indicator of their motivation. Also, YA essays revealed a clustering of interests/motivations (Table 2) but these had become greatly dispersed again by FYP stage.
Directions for further studies
Having begun to identify possible trends in the above study, further focused investigation is needed to identify any evidence of trends over a number of years, as well as examine more closely the nature of motivation itself in students of Japanese studies and how this fluctuates over time, for example through a longitudinal, questionnaire/interview-based study. Having identified the nature of motivation in students of Japanese studies, it will be important to take this further and survey graduates in their chosen careers to examine both how they now view the value and meaning of the year abroad for their personal and career development and any links which can be established with their predecisional motivation. Consideration should also be given to how to foster instrumental motivation during the year abroad. After all, it is fundamentally important to provide an enhanced student experience, as well as prepare students, through their studies of Japanese, for life in the world of work after graduation, both an institutional and a sectoral concern (University of Leeds, n.d.; QAA Subject Benchmark Statement, Languages Cultures and Societies (2015)).
Addresses for correspondence: m.s.ward@leeds.ac.uk / m.takewa@leeds.ac.uk
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