Françoise RABY (LAIRDILToulouse, France)

Forging new pathways for research on language learning motivation

Research on motivation in the field of applied linguistics seeks to better understand how and why learners become involved in learning activities and maintain their efforts in this regard. Dörnyei provided a seminal model drawing essentially from cognitive and social psychology (Dörnyei, 2001). In the wake of his reflection, and after investigating motivation in a range of academic contexts, we are now able to present our own model, which is dynamic, weighted, and polytomic (Raby, 2007). After presenting the results of our investigations, we shall outline the major methodological difficulties pertaining to research on motivation in foreign language learning and explain how we propose to address them.

Zoltàn Dörnyei, 2001, Teaching and researching motivation, London, Pearson Education (295pps)

Raby F. (2007): « A triangular approach to motivation in Computer Assisted Autonomous Language Learning (CAALL) », Recall, vol. 19, n^o2, p. 181-201.

Françoise Raby is full professor at Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse,  director of LAIRDIL[1]: Toulouse Research Laboratory on Language Learning and Teaching in academic contexts. She set up one of the very first language centers in France in 1992 and since then, has been involved in CALL teaching and researching. She has developed an ergonomic approach to applied linguistic research and her special interests now cover  analyzing class activity, CALL and motivation in instructional settings.