Sasaki, M., Kozaki, Y., & Ross, S. J. (2017). The impact of normative environments on learner motivation and l2 reading ability growth. The Modern Language Journal, 101(1), pp. 163-178.
This article presents the findings of a mixed methods study on the intersections of motivation and L2 reading proficiency. Findings suggest that throughout the study, while the rate of individual participant growth in reading proficiency was relatively similar across classes, the whole course growth rate differed significantly, “with variation exclusively explained by the students’ perception of their classmates’ normative career aspirations (among other predictors)” (p. 174). This indicates a high correlation between student perceptions of peers and student motivation in the name of L2 proficiency improvement. The researchers also noted that students who took actions beyond the classroom to improve their L2 proficiency made up “the most conspicuous difference between the students belonging to classes with high and low normative career aspiration” (174). This research supports what many teachers suspect to be true already in terms of input and proficiency, as well as observable norms of group success or stagnation. Qualitative interviews support the authors’ quantitative findings, enhance the statistical analyses, and enliven the numbers with subjective voices. The qualitative interview data is potentially the most valuable aspect of this study to educators, as it offers insight into the student perspective of language learning.
The study involved 1,149 first-year students who were enrolled in 44 English-language classes at 8 different Japanese universities. Most participants were 18 years old, and their English reading proficiency was novice-mid to intermediate, based on initial Secondary Level English Proficiency (SLEP) test scores. Participants were given three surveys, modified from the SLEP test’s reading section, in April, July, and December of the students’ first year of university. 7 months into the study, students were given a survey that judged perceptions of class-level norms in order to situate participants’ perceptions of their peers. Researchers employed 3-level regression analysis to evaluate the quantitative data. At the end of the study, 28 participants were interviewed from classes whose Normative Aspirations to Professional Pursuits (N-APP) was either high or low. Interviews were voluntary, open-ended, conducted in Japanese, and contributed qualitative data to enhance the study and provide examples of individual factors that influenced participant proficiency growth in English L2 reading.
This study follows-up on research by Kozaki & Ross (2011), who “conceptualized students’ normative perceptions of peers in L2 classes as environmental factors that may account for variations in individual change in L2 proficiency growth over time” (p. 164). Sasaki, Kozaki, & Ross’s research contributes to scholarship on L2 motivation by analyzing individualized records of student growth, in addition to class growth. The authors note that their study is unique in three ways: first, by using multi-level modeling to investigate individual L2 reading proficiency growth and that of the entire course; second, by analyzing the norms (ethos) shared by class members that affected L2 learning, and third, by using an “explanatory sequential mixed methods design” (Cresswell, 2014), which allows researchers to analyze individual statistical results from a large dataset (p. 164). This study serves as an example of the positive contributions of qualitative data and how traditional, quantitative charts and graphs may be paired with individual voices from the classroom.