Question:
wasn't that studied quite
thoroughly by Gardiner and Lambert some years ago. They made a number of
predictions based on their construct of "integrative" vs "instrumental"
attitude. But how will distinguish a learner's attitude toward a
language, toward a culture, toward a particular social group that speaks
the target language, etc? I would think that it would be very difficult
to separate these various relationships because at some point language
effects shade into culture and vice versa. There is also the question of
what the learner's attitude is toward his own culture and/or langauge
and/or speakers of that language and the culture. There was a lot of
research done back in the 60s (Jakobovitz, Fishman, Ervin-Tripp, others)
that you might be able to dredge up. I am sure all of those studies used
various direct and indirect instruments to measure the kind of thing you
are interested in.
Answer:
the "attitudes and motivation" tradition was over-studied, and
Gardner's motivation theory dominated the field for three decades! Just
thumb thru any SLA textbook and we'll find "attitudes" being mentioned as a
(almost major, certainly most studied) source of motivation. I bet the
original insight came from Canada, where Gardner and Lambert's thesis is
perfectly reasonable that positive ethnic attitudes towards the target
(English/French) language community would lead to "integrative" motivation
which in turn leads to higher second language proficiency.
However, the attitudes-motivation-proficiency conception could well be
confined to a language learning situation where two language communities
come into direct contact or even conflict. Or at least the individual
learner should come into contact with the target language community in
order for attitudes to come into play. For instance, how can we expect a
twelve-year old kid beginning to learn English in rural China to be
motivated by any ethnic attitudes towards, say, the Americans?
Even when attitudes do come into play, I would assume that negative
attitudes, and therefore demotivation play a more salient role than
attitudes of indifference, or perhaps even more than positive attitudes. In
any case, the relationship may not be linear, with attitudes at both ends
of the +/- continuum possibly playing more important roles than non-extreme
attitudes.
Classroom chemistry in a foreign language context are very different from
that in a second language context. Initial interest may come from the very
exotic nature of foreign sounds. Stretching your mouth and sticking your
tongues in some funny ways are certainly motivating for kids. Social
aspects are still very important, e.g. outperforming your peers in exams,
satisfying your teachers/parents, etc. might turn out to be very powerful
reasons for a sustained interest.
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