Learners of English as a second language in Australia: Their perceptions of learning environment and factors having affected their motivation

It is a case study for students from a university in Japan learning English as a second language (L2) to investigate the factors affecting their motivation. They participated in a four-week language course in a language institute attached to a university in Australia. Three students volunteered to report their motivational changes through the course and to be interviewed twice at the beginning and the end of the course. The results show that the class atmosphere that encourages the participation of speech activity should be the factor most strongly motivated all the participants to learn, though their motivational intensity does not show a significant change through the course. The study further shows that the teachers’ attitudes towards the class and competitive nature among the peers as well as supportive classmates seem to influence their motivation positively.
These findings seem to indicate that the participants’ actual experience of the primary difference in the contents of the English class between Japan and Australia, the focus on the provision of grammatical information in Japan while encouraging the development of verbal communication skills by actively participating in the communicative tasks in Australia worked positively to their learning. That is, experiencing different learning environment including supportive staff and peer learners, and communication-oriented lesson need to be positively perceived by the participants, which proves the learners’ perception of environmental factors could be a factor affecting motivation. However, learners’ self-report of the level of motivation does not seem to be affected immediately by their positive perception of the learning environment. It seems to signify that there is a gap between learners’ general perception of motivational factors and its influence on their actual motivation to learn.