Developing Multilingualism Through Immersion: The Importance of Motivation more

Fri, Apr 29, 09:00-Tue, May 31, 23:55 Asia/Seoul

How can teachers motivate students to achieve a high level of proficiency in multiple languages? This presentation will describe the experiences of two Korean graduate students who developed multilingualism through language immersion. These students represent a group of seven participants who were systematically interviewed for a study on the role of motivation in achieving multilingualism for a research study by a graduate student. The presentation will begin by describing the background research on motivation and immersion education, highlighting the work of Zoltán Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System. Most of the presentation will focus on the cases of the two Korean graduate students, who will describe how they became trilingual in Korean/Japanese/English and Korean/Spanish/English. They will identify the most important sources of motivation that contributed to their multilingualism, including self-monitoring, content-based instruction, social integration, and developmental factors related to age. The presentation will conclude with a diagram showing the most significant motivating factors, with suggestions for how teachers can use these findings.