L2 motivation in focus: the case of Finnish comprehensive school students

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to explore whether latent classes, i.e. subgroups of students, representing specific motivational profiles can be found among learners of different foreign languages (L2s) in Finnish comprehensive schools. The focus is on whether motivational profiles are different for learning a compulsory foreign language (English) or an optional foreign language (German, French, Russian or Spanish). The statistically representative sample was over 1200 completed questionnaires from ninth-graders (ages 15–16) at the upper level of comprehensive school. The data were analysed with latent profile analysis. The results show that five latent classes, i.e. subgroups of students, representing different motivational profiles can be found: the most motivated, the averagely motivated, the averagely motivated with low anxiety, the least motivated and students with high anxiety. The results are discussed from the perspective of language education policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Motivation
• foreign languages
• language learning
• language education policies
• latent profile analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Finland is a constitutionally bilingual country (Constitution of Finland 731/1999), and the two national languages are Finnish and Swedish.

2 In 2014 there were altogether 2498 comprehensive schools in Finland, of which only 38 were private schools (Statistics Finland 2014).