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Article published In: Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts
Vol. 11:2 (2025) ► pp.171–199

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Tracking language learners’ motivations within a translanguaging perspective

 | Stony Brook University | State University of New York
 | Stony Brook University | State University of New York
Published online: 20 March 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.00161.sat
Abstract
Language learners’ motivations cannot be fully understood without studying a learner as a whole person with agency in social and cultural contexts (Ushioda, Ema. 2009. “A Person-in-Context Relational View of Emergent Motivation, Self and Identity.” In Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self, ed. by Zoltán Dörnyei, and Ema Ushioda, 215–228. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Building on the concept of subjectivity, which is shaped through communicative interactions (Kramsch, Claire. 2009. The Multilingual Subject: What Foreign Language Learners Say about their Experience and Why it Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and the concept of translanguaging that extends to an individual’s subjectivity (. 2023. “Transformative Pedagogy for Inclusion and Social Justice Through Translanguaging, Co-Learning, and Transpositioning.” Language Teaching 11 (1): 1–12.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), we propose viewing language learners’ motivation as a constituent of their subjectivity, which ecologically emerges, develops, or changes through communicative interactions, enabled by translanguaging practices.
To illustrate our view, we quantitatively tracked the changes in motivation levels among 26 students of Japanese at a university in the United States during the 2022–2023 academic year and triangulated the results with the findings of semi-structured reflective interviews, students’ journal entries, discussion board contributions, and observations made by their instructor and program advisor.
Our study revealed the uniqueness of each language learner’s dynamic and complex trajectory of their motivations, which sensitively respond to their human interactions and their sociocultural environments filled with competing ideologies. The results of this study illuminate the importance of staying alert to learners’ evolving motivations and taking effective pedagogical strategies that embrace them.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review and theoretical framework
    • 2.1Approaches to motivational studies
    • 2.2Motivations of learners of languages other than English (LOTE)
    • 2.3Social contexts, subjectivity, and translanguaging
    • 2.4Theoretical framework
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Changes in motivation levels for each type
    • 4.2Changes in motivation levels for each individual student
    • 4.3Substantial shifts
    • 4.4Qualitative analyses
      • 4.4.1Student 5: Human and cultural encounters and learning environments
      • 4.4.2Student 7: Transformational effect of human interactions
      • 4.4.3Student 20: Human relationships, communicative interactions, and social norms
      • 4.4.4Student 25: Human interactions, learning environments, and social ideologies
  • 5.Discussions and pedagogical implications
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (37)
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Cited by (2)

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Wong, Chiu‐Yin (Cathy)
2025. Translanguaging as a Mediator to Motivate, Support, and Engage Students in a Chinese‐Medium Instruction Program. International Journal of Applied Linguistics DOI logo
Zhang, Shuang, Yijie Wang & Chili Li
2025. Unveiling the relationship between perceived attitudes toward translanguaging and translanguaging experience among Chinese as a second language learners: The mediating role of L2 motivation. Acta Psychologica 260 ► pp. 105708 ff. DOI logo

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