Motivational Trajectories in Language Learning: Evidence from Highly-Motivated English as a Foreign Language Learners

This paper aims to provide a thicker description of the motivational profiles of an archetype associated with successful, highly-motivated English as foreign language (EFL) learners from a more holistic approach in an Iranian context. Once the results from a teacher focus group and a cluster analysis of questionnaire data made a robust identification basis for the typical learners of the archetype (N= 6), the study resorted to a corpus of English language learning histories (ELLH) and presented a description of motivational trajectories gaining insights from an interpretive approach within some conceptual tools of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST). The findings uncovered the unique complex dynamic nature of language learning motivation for each participant with combinations of cognitive, affective, motivational, and contextual variables that functioned as blended driving forces accounting for motivational evolution, where the state space mostly started with the maintenance of self-esteem and ultimately navigated towards the deep attractor state of great fondness for engagement in English and attaining either integrativeness or an international posture. Given that the last attractor state has been entrenched over the course of the senior secondary school years, it is expected that the motivational system will withstand changes in the future The results might prove beneficial for researchers and teachers in manipulating motivational systems.