Motivating Experiences in an Extended Chinese As a Foreign Language

Motivating Experiences in an Extended Chinese as a Foreign Language

Learning Career: Identifying what sustains learners to

advanced-skill levels

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By Junqing Jia, M.A. Graduate Program in East Asian Languages and Literatures

The Ohio State University 2017

Dissertation Committee: Galal Walker, Advisor Mari Noda Xiaobin Jian

Junqing Jia

2017

Abstract

What learning experiences can be pedagogically designed to motivate students and make them be continuously engaged with learning and using Chinese language is a fundamental concern of this dissertation. The chapters in this dissertation provide a comprehensive understanding of Chinese language learning motivation in the classroom setting and beyond with a focus on learners who have tested at advanced levels of proficiency in Chinese and have gone on to use the language in their careers.

The definition of learning motivation and its significance in the context of

Chinese pedagogy is clarified in the first chapter through a critical literature review.

Chapter two to Chapter four are organized upon a longitudinal pathway of understanding and creating motivating experiences from beginning to advanced levels of learning. Chapter two focuses on motivation construction in the Chinese classrooms, using discourse analysis to investigate the micro-level contexts of motivating factors and motivated learning behaviors at different levels of instruction.

Chapter three addresses a critical period of language training where students are transitioning from learning the foreign language to learning domain knowledge in the foreign language. Few studies have touched upon the language learning motivation of Chinese learners at advanced and superior levels. Chapter four fills this gap by investigating a group of Chinese learners who not only reach a high level of language proficiency but also function in Chinese working environments with demonstrable cultural expertise. A toolkit for designing motivational foreign language learning

ii experiences is presented in the last chapter.

The classroom data in this study is collected at the Ohio State University.

Over forty classes of different levels given at the university are observed for the purposes of data construction, with each class lasting fifty minutes. Selected videos are analyzed through a line-by-line discourse analysis and through retrospective video-enhanced analysis.

To enhance the understanding of advanced-level language learner motivation, a questionnaire consisting of fifteen close-ended Likert scale questions was administered to thirty-three students who attended the Midwest US-China Flagship

Program in the past ten years. One-on-one interviews were conducted with selected learners and their Chinese associates. Various experiences in their language learning journeys were collected, categorized and analyzed through a motivation map. Two case studies on representative individual language learners were reported and analyzed.

Based on the empirical findings, the rich interactions that occur inside and outside the classroom among the language students, teachers, and native speakers of the target culture play various roles in constructing sustainable motivation. Moreover, successful language learners at each stage develop specific mechanisms to perceive their periodic progress. With the expeditious adoption of technology and the emerging needs for cross-cultural working expertise, it is almost a natural but urgent undertaking for the Chinese programs in the United States to motivate 21st Century

Chinese learners with a dynamic vision of utilizing their language skills to connect with the Chinese speaking communities.

iii

Dedication

Dedicated to a motivating scholar, Jingyao Sun.

iv Acknowledgements

This journey of graduate school and dissertation has matured me in a way I would never have imagined seven years ago. I want to thank each mentor, friend and family member who has generously supported me and made this rewarding journey possible.

I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Galal Walker, whose wisdom, guidance and encouragement initiated and extended my interest in language pedagogy. I especially thank him for guiding me to combine my personal interest, future career aspirations with my research directions. Being a person who has a wide range of hobbies and who rarely develops expertise in one, I know clearly that

I would not be able to sustain the motivation and enjoy this long journey without his advising.

I am also sincerely grateful to Professor Mari Noda, from whom I have learned how to better construct and present my research data, how to design pedagogical materials with authenticity, how to be a dedicated and motivational language teacher, and, how to stay strong when being doubted. With her words of wisdom, I have grown into a better scholar and a stronger woman.

My research pathway would be completely different without Professor

Xiaobin Jian’s continuous guidance and support. His sharp understanding of training language learners to reach working expertise in Chinese directly inspired me in writing Chapter three and four. I especially appreciate and truly admire his full presence for each meeting of ours when his family needs were most critical.

v Besides the members of my dissertation committee, I have received tremendous help from all the professors, teachers, fellow graduate students, Chinese language students in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, for which I am truly grateful. I especially thank Minru Li and Debbie Knicely for all the wise advice and enjoyable moments they shared with me. I am also indebted to my mentors at Williams College. Both Professor Cornelius Kubler and Professor Li Yu have greatly enhanced my understanding of language pedagogy.

I want to thank Zhini Zeng, Xin Zhang, and Cong Li for being the most understanding, supportive and interesting friends. Whenever I am lost, they are always there to take care of every little feeling of mine and pull me back in. I also thank Lulei Su for being like a brother to me. Those good old days we spent on training Chewie (a very sweet beagle dog) certainly contribute to my thinking of learning motivation. I dedicate my special thanks to my friend and writing buddy,

Yanfei Yin. With her warm company and encouragement, even the hardest writing days were full of joy and laughter.

Finally, I must thank my wonderful parents and my loving husband. My dissertation or my heart would never be complete without their unconditional trust, patience, and love.

vi Vita

March 26, 1985...... Born - Shanghai, P.R. China

2003-2007...... B.A. Department of Chinese language and literature,

Shanghai Normal University

2007-2010...... M.A. Department of comparative literature and

foreign literatures, Shanghai Normal University

2010 - 2012 ...... M.A., Graduate Teaching Associate

Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

The Ohio State University

2012-2013...... Chinese Language Fellow

Department of Asian Studies, Williams College

2013 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate

Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures

The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: East Asian Languages and Literatures

Area of Specialization: Chinese Language Pedagogy

vii Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Dedication ...... iv Acknowledgements ...... v Vita ...... vii Table of Contents ...... viii List of Tables ...... xi List of Figures ...... xii Chapter One: Developing Motivation in Language Learning: the key of cultivating successful Chinese learners for the 21st Century ...... 1 1.1 Human motivation in the context of language pedagogy ...... 1 1.1.1 Hierarchy of needs ...... 2 1.1.2 Cognitive dissonance theory ...... 4 1.1.3 Sustainable motivators...... 5 1.2 L2 motivation ...... 7 1.2.1 Social-psychological research: dominated by the work of Gardner and his associates ...... 8 1.2.2 Cognitive-situated studies ...... 12 1.2.3 Beyond the cognitive-situative divide ...... 14 1.2.4 Other motivation theories with L2 pedagogical implications ...... 15 1.3 Motivation for learning Chinese language and culture ...... 18 1.3.1 Language and culture ...... 20 1.3.2 Learning resources, time and space ...... 21 1.4 Language learning motivation and cultural expertise ...... 25 1.4.1 Individual cognizant gear ...... 25 1.4.2 Language learning motivation and the “third space” ...... 28 Chapter Two: Study of Motivating Factors and Motivated Learning Behaviors in the Classroom Through Beginning to Advanced Level ...... 33 2.1 Study design ...... 33 2.1.1 Rationale of the study ...... 33 2.1.2 Theoretical framing ...... 35 2.1.2.1 Motivating factors in the classroom ...... 35 2.1.2.2 Motivation through Levels ...... 36 2.1.3 Research questions ...... 37 2.1.4 Methodology ...... 39 2.1.4.1 Research site ...... 39 2.1.4.2 Subject...... 40 2.1.4.3 Course design ...... 41 2.2 Data description and analysis ...... 44 2.2.1 MF and MB in the beginning-level Chinese class ...... 44

viii 2.2.2 MF and MB in intermediate-level Chinese class ...... 51 2.2.3 MF and MB in advanced-level Chinese class ...... 60 2.3 Discussion ...... 67 2.3.1 The dynamic role of a language teacher ...... 67 2.3.2 “Play to win” vs. “Play to improve” ...... 69 2.3.3 Classroom as an incubator for long-term learning motivation ...... 71 Chapter Three: Creating Motivational Experiences during the “Critical Period” ... 73 3.1 Learning Chinese as a Foreign language vs. Learning in Chinese ...... 74 3.1.1 Curriculum shift ...... 74 3.1.2 Self-regulated learning mode ...... 76 3.1.3 Complex social interaction ...... 79 3.1.4 Extended learning cycle ...... 84 3.2 Framework drawn upon the Analects: Xing 行, Xi 習, and pleasure of learning ...... 87 3.2.1 Philology of Xing and Xi ...... 87 3.2.1.1 Xing, a designed path ...... 87 3.2.1.2 Xi, practice of a young bird...... 88 3.2.2 The Concept of Xing and Xi in Analects ...... 89 3.2.2.1 Xing and its collocation within the text ...... 89 3.2.2.2 The concept of Xi in the Analects ...... 92 3.2.3 Xing and Xi during the critical period ...... 94 3.3 Creating motivational pathways in a domain-oriented Chinese language program . 97 3.3.1 Domain knowledge and transferable skills ...... 97 3.3.2 Visioning future self ...... 99 3.3.3 Reflecting on the past self ...... 101 3.3.4 Design rewarding experience based on xing or xi? ...... 104 Chapter Four: Study of Motivation to Perform Beyond Language Proficiency ..... 106 4.1 Rationale of the study ...... 106 4.2 Research questions...... 108 4.3 Research background ...... 111 4.3.1 Program introduction ...... 111 4.3.2 Subjects: learn in Chinese and work in China ...... 114 4.4 Methodology ...... 116 4.4.1 Online questionnaire ...... 116 4.4.1.1 Procedures for conducting online questionnaire ...... 116 4.4.1.2 Purpose of the questionnaire ...... 117 4.4.2 Qualitative analysis of interviews ...... 118 4.4.2.1 Procedure for individual interviews ...... 118 4.4.2.2 Purpose of the one-on-one interview ...... 119 4.4.3 Case studies ...... 120 4.5 Data analysis and Discussion ...... 121 4.5.1 Analysis of quantitative data ...... 121 4.5.1.1 Salient findings ...... 121 4.5.1.2 Motivating factors ...... 125 4.5.2 Analysis of qualitative data ...... 130 4.5.2.1 A general motivation map ...... 130 4.5.2.2 Case One: Alex, the filmmaker ...... 135

ix 4.5.2.3 Case Two: Heritage learner and social worker, Jenny Liu ...... 143 Chapter Five: Toolkit for Designing Motivating Language Learning Experiences .. 151 5.1 Design elements of a motivating learning environment ...... 151 5.1.1 Domestic Chinese programs ...... 151 5.1.1.1 Campus diversity and language learning ...... 151 5.1.1.2 Technology-supported curriculum ...... 153 5.1.2 Study and work in China ...... 155 5.1.2.1 Short-term (summer) programs ...... 155 5.1.2.2 Achieving professional goals in China ...... 156 5.1.3 Individualized instruction and learning ...... 158 5.1.3.1 Towards an understanding of motivation in individualized instruction ...... 158 5.1.3.2 Motivated learning behaviors in Individual Instruction (I.I.) ...... 160 5.1.3.3 Creating motivational vision in I.I...... 163 5.2 Teacher training toolkit ...... 165 5.2.1 Learner motivation as a co-construct ...... 165 5.2.2 Strategies to construct motivating learning experiences with students ...... 166 5.3 Game and foreign language learning ...... 170 5.3.1 Game mechanisms ...... 170 5.3.2 Gamify Chinese learning experiences ...... 174 5.3.2.1 Development foreign culture personae ...... 174 5.3.2.2 Gamify the grading system ...... 175 5.3.2.3 Design localized learning tasks ...... 177 5.4 Conclusion and future research ...... 179 References ...... 182 Appendix A: Contextualized role-play in beginning-level Chinese classroom ...... 189 Appendix B: Motivating factors in intermediate-level Chinese classroom ...... 203 Appendix C: The role positioning plays in a Chuncao Q&A class ...... 209 Appendix D Online questionnaires with advanced-level Chinese language learners ...... 225 Appendix E: Interview questions with selected learners ...... 227 Appendix F: Interview questions with native Chinese speakers ...... 228 Appendix G: Ohio State University Chinese language curriculum ...... 230

x List of Tables

Table 1 General and level-specific research questions to explore classroom learning motivation ...... 38 Table 2 Role construction as a MF in beginning-level Chinese class ...... 45 Table 3 A beginning-level class activity with the Performed Culture approach ...... 48 Table 4 Expanding L2 knowledge as a MF in intermediate-level classroom ...... 52 Table 5 Peer attention as a MF in an intermediate-level Chinese class ...... 56 Table 6 Positioning advanced-level students as curious and capable learners ...... 62 Table 7 Selected examples of localized quests in the Game Point System ...... 179

List of Figures

Figure 1.1: Socio-education model from Gardner (Gardner 2010, 8) ...... 9 Figure 1.2: The psychology of optimal experience (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 74) ...... 16 Figure 1.3: “Negotiating the 3rd space” (Walker and Jian 2016) ...... 29 Figure 2.1: Floor plan of the classroom setting ...... 40 Figure 3.1: The foreign language learning environment (Walker 1989) ...... 77 Figure 3.2: Bridge foreign language learning into a broader knowledge structure .... 78 Figure 3.3: Configuration of weekly presentation (domestic campus) ...... 80 Figure 3.4: Configuration of weekly presentation (summer program in China ) ...... 82 Figure 3.5: Extended social contexts during Flagship students’ school year in China 83 Figure 3.6: The Lewinian Experiential Learning Model (Kolb 1984, 21) ...... 84 Figure 3.7: Daily learning cycle for beginning-level students ...... 85 Figure 3.8: Optimal learning cycle of the weekly research ...... 86 Figure 3.9: Xing in oracle writing system and in Shuowen xiaozhuan ...... 88 Figure 3.10: Xi in oracle writing system and Shuowen xiaozhuan ...... 89 Figure 3.11: The complexity of Xing and Xi during the critical period ...... 96 Figure 4.1: Cyclic of motivation construction ...... 109 Figure 4.2: Advanced-level Chinese learner motivation survey result ...... 121 Figure 4.3: Categorized motivating factors of advanced-level Chinese learners ...... 126 Figure 4.4: A general motivation map of advanced-level Chinese learners ...... 131 Figure 4.5: A motivation map of Chinese learner Alex, a filmmaker in China ...... 136 Figure 4.6: A motivation map of heritage Chinese learner Jenny ...... 144 Figure 5.1: Student performance presented in the Game Point System ...... 176 Figure 5.2: Quest webpage in the Game Point System ...... 178

xii Chapter One: Developing Motivation in Language Learning: the key of cultivating

successful Chinese learners for the 21st Century

1.1 Human motivation in the context of language pedagogy

This dissertation identifies and expands learning experiences that increase

Chinese language learners’ long-term interactions with the language and culture. This requires a willingness to learn the language and perform in the culture. Agreeing with

Abraham Maslow (1943), human’s desires to know, to understand, to analyze, to systematize and to satisfy curiosity are themselves conative or cognitive, and should not be considered as totally removed from human basic motives. Here, some influential theories of human motivation are reviewed and applied to the construction of language learning motivation.

Researchers of various fields who share a common interest in human motivation have been striving for a grand and unified understanding of the concept.

Those who are in favor of a general theory optimistically suggest that Clark Hull’s drive theory (1945) provides a foundation for studies of motivation. For example, Roy

Baumeister (2016) suggests a general theory of motivation and defines motivation as

“wanting change”, making change in the self or change in the environment. In the same work, Baumeister suggests two meanings of motivation: “recurrent patterns of desire and frequent behavioral tendencies” and “a particular desire to perform a particular behavior on a particular occasion” (2). Whether or not this grand theory of motivation can be useful, Baumeister’s differentiation of two types of motivation is

1 significant. In the context of foreign language learning, both the trait and state of learner motivation need to be addressed separately.

1.1.1 Hierarchy of needs

Maslow in 1943 proposed the best-known hierarchy of needs theory, a general-dynamic motivation theory. He argued that human needs can be grouped into a hierarchy in which some motives have priority over others. For instance, the immediate physiological needs are presumed to be the most fundamental human needs that take precedence over all the others: safety needs, love and belongingness needs, esteem needs, aesthetic needs and self-actualization needs. Although Maslow clearly stated that “we must guard ourselves against the too easy tendency to separate these desires (desires to know and to understand) from the basic needs we have discussed above, i.e., to make a sharp dichotomy between ‘cognitive’ and ‘conative’ needs” (385), scholars of a later generation often inserted a level of cognitive needs in the pyramid (Franken 2002, 15). Learning as one of the most basic human mechanisms provides the possibility of fulfilling needs of any level. The very first line of Analects 1 well illustrates the core correlation between learning and human cognitive satisfactions: 學而時習之，不亦說乎? (To learn and at the right time to put into practice what you have learned, is this not pleasure?) (Walker 2010 iv) Three

1 The Analects (contents stemming from the Warring States period, 475-221 BC), is a collection of the ideas of the Confucius and his disciples. It is one of the most significant works of wisdom in Chinese history that has influenced the overall values and beliefs of Chinese people. The term xue (learning) is an important concept in this work.

2 skills are required to obtain motivating mental pleasure: to learn, to try, and to try at the opportune moment.

Learning a foreign language in modern times is rarely a hunger-driven behavior. On national levels, knowing and understanding foreign languages and cultures is associated with a nation’s security. On the other hand, an individual’s motivation to learn a foreign language such as Chinese is more related to the higher- order needs with growth, in other words, our needs to explore the unfamiliar, successfully interact with environments, and develop cognitive skills to the maximum.

Following a humanistic approach, Maslow (1943) regards culture-specific desires and actions as coming after fundamental human needs. Learning a foreign language to a level of expertise is not a common goal shared among human beings. However, through years of cultural relativism and globalization, the human desire to explore cultural novelty and reduce the differences and tensions among various communities is becoming a more central need for self-actualization. Deci and Ryan (2000) also proposes a domain-general need “to engage optimal challenges and experience mastery or effectance in the physical and social worlds” (252). A general inclination to seek cultural novelty and solve conflicts is a useful skill across an expanded variety of domains.

Another important notion raised in Maslow (1943) is that every act of ours has more than one motivation. No need is isolated or discrete. Based on the studies introduced in the fourth chapter of this dissertation, the motivation to learn a foreign language is usually spontaneously influenced by our vision, socialization and sense of progression. While one single aspect of learning could demotivate a language student,

3 a motivated language learner must be stimulated by multiple drives. For example, a poorly designed feedback system could directly affect one’s willingness to practice.

However, successful language learners are unlikely to be motivated only by the grades they receive.

1.1.2 Cognitive dissonance theory

Leon Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory (1962) has its roots in the idea that people experience some degree of discomfort when encountering an inconsistency between the reality they are facing and their own personal understanding and feelings and have a motivational drive to reduce that dissonance.

This theory helps to explain why we are inclined to process new information based on existing beliefs and categories, and sometimes even ignore contradicting information.

Aronson and Mills (1959) conducts a study on how the severity of initiation in a fraternity affects students’ liking for their chosen group. When the students go through a very painful experience to become a member of the group, they tend to reduce their expectation of dissonance by over anticipating the attractiveness of the fraternity. By the same token, language students’ pre-learning expectations for the language they study could influence their learning behaviors and motivation. Most

American students who chose to study an East Asian language do not necessarily understand what is involved in the learning process, but they know they are signing up for a challenging task of learning a “truly foreign language (Jorden & Walton,

1987).” When being required to invest more time in deliberate practice, students with these expectations are inclined to adjust their learning habits to the perceive challenge.

4 This theory of motivation also helps us understand language students’ overall interpretations of study abroad experiences. It is a commonly accepted belief that students improve their language skills rapidly by participating in study abroad programs. Therefore, students expect to experience an obvious improvement. Any contradiction against this expectation can lead to a high level of learning hesitance or even frustration. This results in either demotivating the learner or criticizing a specific program.

Do we have an inherent drive to reduce the cognitive and conative gap between our own worldview and the foreign cultures around us? When learning a foreign language in domestic learning environments, students do not experience the cognitive dissonance as much as when they live or work in the target culture. Those students who aim at using foreign language skills to enhance an extended career should be clearly aware that the dissonance between two cultures cannot be solved by applying one’s C1 (base culture) values into understanding C2 (target culture) phenomena. More importantly, the higher skill level a language learner reaches, the more essential cultural dissonance one could potentially identify and reduce through effective learning strategies and programs.

1.1.3 Sustainable motivators

Frederick Herzberg (1959)’s motivation-hygiene theory and dual-factor theory distinguish motivators (e.g., challenge, competition, responsibility) from hygiene factors (e.g., status and salary). He argues that motivators increase people’s positive satisfaction, while hygiene factors could result in demotivation if taken away.

5 Daniel Pink in his 2009 book Drive also concludes the negative effects of concrete short-term rewards. He claims that focusing on short-term “if-then” rewards could do considerable long-term damage to intrinsic motivation. Herzberg’s dual-factor theory also suggests that we reconsider the role of grades and certificates in foreign language programs. Even though there is no economic cost to giving students points or titles, the psychological cost of relying on assigned rewards could be potentially high.

Students who depend on grades or tests to sense the progress are not able to grow into autonomous language learners. A learner must establish his own evaluation system to monitor learning progress if he considers Chinese language learning as a long-term engagement. As Pink (2009) suggests, the mastery asymptote is a source of frustration but the joy is in the pursuit more than the ever-receding realization of the goal (125).

Indeed, it is easy for language instructors to identify good or nearly perfect performance in the classroom and applaud those students. However, the process of mastering is what we truly deal with in the classroom. It is not the destination. Instead of emphasizing students’ mastery, we should recognize how much they are progressing toward mastery. While the asymptote nature of mastery could be a source of frustration (i.e. the inability to achieve nativeness), the sense of approaching mastery is what keeps people motivated. For instance, most of the language learners introduced in Chapter four described their first study abroad experience as a motivating factor along their journey of learning Chinese. Students could be exposed to countless tasks beyond their reach when studying abroad for the first time.

Fortunately, a well-designed study abroad program provides a learning environment where students can constantly witness their own improvement through accomplishing

6 more and more daily tasks. It is not “not achieving mastery” that brings frustration, but not being able to achieve a sense of the progress of getting closer and closer.

1.2 L2 motivation

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), students’ learning motivation has been a favored research topic. Researchers have come to an agreement that discussing L2 learner motivation without a specific context is not very helpful to understand learner’s behaviors and learning outcomes. Jia (2012) described motivating learning experiences and motivated learner behaviors at specific levels of

Chinese instruction, and defined motivation to learn Chinese as the driving force that increases learners’ long-term willingness to engage, perform and practice. Jia also stated the fundamental differences between learning a foreign language and learning other subjects in school if one aims at constructing a second-culture worldview. To learn a foreign language and develop expertise in communicating in the foreign language requires students to establish a cross-cultural persona and recognize corresponding contexts for the expression of that persona.

Based on this fundamental understanding of foreign language learning, I will critically discuss some of the most influential theories on second language learning motivation.

7 1.2.1 Social-psychological research: dominated by the work of Gardner and his associates

Motivation studies along the social-psychological perspectives tend to distinguish

L2 motivation from other types of human motives, and consider motivation as a significant cause of variability in SLA. Gardner and Lambert (1972) identifies two kinds of motivational orientation in language learning: an integrative orientation “reflecting a sincere and personal interest in the people and culture represented by the other group”; and an instrumental orientation “reflecting the practical value and advantages of learning a new language” (132). This integrative-instrumental dichotomy has later been supplemented by Gardner (2006) where he introduced two types of motivation which significantly influenced later studies: language learning motivation and classroom learning motivation. The language learning motivation is considered a relatively stable but amenable type of motivation. For example, an English speaker studies French to better understand

French literature or cuisine. This type of motivation is a general characteristic of a language learner and could potentially affect learning behaviors in various aspects.

The classroom learning motivation, on the contrary, refers to the motivation associated with the classroom setting where the curriculum, learning activities, and interaction among peers play an important role. Although Gardner points out that the cultural component of language learning motivation and classroom learning motivation operate on the individual at any given time (Gardner 2010, 10), it remains unclear how these two types of motivation affect learner behaviors and how to enrich learning experiences by bridging these two types of motivation through curriculum design. In his recent published work, Gardner (2010) again emphasizes that

8 “Motivation itself is very complex. It is not simply the effort expended on the task, the desire to attain a goal, the evaluation associated with relevant activities, the persistence, the concentration, the attributions, or the reasons for performing the activity. It is a complex of all of these, and in the socio-educational model of second language acquisition, it is proposed that it can be measured adequately by the first three” (25). In his updated socio-educational structure (Figure 1.1), motivation is a combination of integrativeness, attitudes toward learning situations, and instrumentality. In addition, these three factors, as well as language anxiety, are distinct but correlated constructs to achieve language capacities. “Integratively motivated individuals are more active learners, both in the classroom and outside, are more resistant to language attrition (largely through the mediating effects of language use), are more persistent, more likely to seek out innovative programs, and can learn the material more quickly.” (54).

Figure 1.1: Socio-education model from Gardner (Gardner 2010, 8)

9 From Gardner’s point of view, motivation is not the reason or orientation for one wanting to learn, but the demonstration of one’s effort and desire to learn.

Although I agree with this distinction between static reasons, directional orientation, and multi-dimensional motivation to a certain degree, there are two aspects of his theories I would like to refine when discussing pedagogy of less commonly taught and used foreign languages. First, Gardner (2010) argued that if one is not able to convert learning into positive feelings and enjoy the learning activity, he is not integratively motivated but “merely expressing an integrative orientation” (11).

Positive feelings and feedback to the learning activities are adopted as an indicator of one’s motivation to learn in his work. However, as instructors of less commonly taught foreign languages, we have all often witnessed our most positive and well- prepared language students struggle at certain points. A positive language student who enjoys the classes is not necessarily a motivated language learner, and vice versa.

Temporary failure and frustration serve the same important role in the learning process as positive feelings, if not being even more critical. Learning a foreign language to achieve a superior level of proficiency and working expertise is a long journey. Students at different stages encounter all types of challenges that could hinder or even end their learning of the language. Motivated language learners do not necessarily appreciate or enjoy each learning activity, instead, they are willing to endure the discomfort, adjust learning strategies and expectations, and rebound to the available track.

Another issue of Gardner’s understanding of integrative motivation is that it originates from and expands with observing Francophones learning English and

10 English-speakers learning French in Canada. Key factors in his work such as nationally recognized bilingualism, commonly shared cultural belief towards the target community or social interaction with the native speakers do not apply to students who learn Japanese or Chinese in the United States. Most American students of East Asian languages do not have much direct exposure to the target culture before they learn the language. Instead of an integrative attitude towards the target culture, these students usually have some reasons to study the language, such as interest in

Japanese manga or teaching English in an Asian country. As we discussed above, these static reasons are not motivation. Once students begin to learn the language and encounter excitement and difficulties, they gradually develop a dynamic learning mechanism which includes motivation construction. Gardner in his lecture series in

Temple University Japan (2001) described seven features of motivated language learners: (a) expends effort to achieve the goal, is persistent, and attentive to the task at hand; (b) has goals and desires. He or she has aspirations, both immediate and distal; (c) enjoys the activity of striving for the goal; (d) experiences positive reinforcement from his or her successes, and dissatisfaction in response to failures; (e) makes attributions concerning her or his successes and failures; (f) is aroused when striving for the goal; (g) makes use of strategies to aid in achieving the goal. When considering behaviors of motivated Japanese or Chinese language learners, three specific capacities need to be taken into consideration: tolerance for unexpected cultural differences, resilience for years of continuous practice, and willingness to negotiate one’s intention. One should also distinguish these general features of language learners from micro-level motivated language learning behaviors. For

11 instance, as Gardner suggests, a motivated language learner is aroused when striving for goals. However, to understand motivated learning behaviors in specified classroom settings, it would be critical to identify learning behaviors such as self-correction, competing to answer a question, and seeking the teacher’s feedback.

1.2.2 Cognitive-situated studies

During the 1990s, there is a shift in research of language learning from social- psychological tradition to a cognitive-situated perspective. Crookes & Schmidt (1991) challenges Gardner’s theories stating that Gardner and his associates have failed to make the connection between SL motivation and how it is as discussed in other fields.

Cognitive-situated studies by the late 1980s and early 1990s attempt to bridge this gap by bringing L2 motivation research in line with cognitive theories in mainstream motivational psychology. Among these studies, Dö rnyei and his colleagues (Dö rnyei 2005, 2009) develop a “L2 Motivational Self System” based on the possible-selves theory of

Markus & Nurius (1986). In their discussion of language learning motivation, “vision, that is, the mental representation of the sensory experience of a future goal state,” should be used for pedagogical design to create effective motivational pathways to directly energize long-term, sustained learning behaviors (Muir & Dö rnyei 2013).

Csizer & Dö rnyei (2005) also proposed a redefinition of language learning integrativeness relating it with L2 possible-selves: what students might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming. In Gardner’s socio- educational model, integrativeness is an affective concept constructed mostly through

12 interaction with the learning community, while L2-specific selves lead to a cognitive milieu where the learning outcome is associated with how learners perceive their future and use that imaginary self as a driving force. Muir & Dö rnyei (2013) argues that the more detailed, personal and vivid the visions of one’s future selves are, the more motivating these visionary interventions could be. They also discussed the differences between a first-person and a third-person perspective when creating vision and concluded that both perspectives can be successfully employed to achieve different motivational purposes. According to them, a “process-oriented imagery” is as significant as using outcome simulation. In other words, exposing our language students to the procedure of how things are acquired is as meaningful as showing them what they can do with their language skills.

Dö rnyei & Ushioda (2009) states that “the main personal attraction of possible selves theory for me lay in its imagery component. Language learning is a sustained and often tedious process with lots of temporary ups and downs, and I felt that the secret of successful learners was their possession of a superordinate vision that kept them on track” (25). As Gardner (2010) well challenged, Dö rnyei’s studies did not further explore the correlations between this perception of the self and the effectiveness of language learning. However, Dö rnyei’s conceptual discussion of visioning L2 selves contributes greatly to understand how learning motivation could be sustained when students do not have direct access to the target culture. Another question this study takes into consideration is the development of the visioning ability, namely how do we use vision to create effective motivational pathways in the curriculum, and how to monitor the development of learners’ self-perceptions.

13 1.2.3 Beyond the cognitive-situative divide

Some recent studies on classroom motivation claim to work beyond the cognitive- situative epistemological divide and combine individual and social processes. Jarvela et al.

(2010) discuss two characterizations of the role social plays in conceptualization of motivation: social influence and social construction. According to them, “the social influence approach construes motivational constructs as the psychological processes that drive engagement and views them as influences by the social context

(cognitive/sociocognitive angle). In contrast, the social construction approach views these motivational constructs as social processes of engagement that emerge through interactions (situative angle)” (19). Jarvela et al. (2010) examine several studies on classroom interaction where the researchers pay attention to individual cognitive perspectives and social processes (Turner & Patrick 2004, Vauras et al. 2003). They consider learning motivation as the psychological processes that drive student engagement, and the processes that emerge through human interaction. Going along with this attempt to bridge the two perspectives, this study cautions how motivation construction is paradoxically interpreted in these studies. According to Jarvela and her colleagues, “in collaborative learning, individual group members represent interdependent self-regulating agents who at the same time constitute a social entity that creates affordances and constraints for engagement in the activity” (15).

Meanwhile, they argue that challenges and other motivational factors “emerge” through interaction during activities. This represents a common but contradicting understanding about motivating factors. In the context of foreign language learning, classroom motivation is certainly group-regulated through the interaction among

14 teacher and students. On the other hand, is the teacher’s positive feedback to one student a motivating factor or a demotivating one? In fact, we cannot answer this question without closely exploring the micro-level context, such as this student’s previous performance in the class, his relationship with his classmates, and the teacher’s feedback to other students. In other words, only potential motivating factors occur through social interaction. Whether or not a potential motivating factor motivates language learners depends on how each individual perceives it in the specific context.

1.2.4 Other motivation theories with L2 pedagogical implications

Besides the studies directly addressing learning, there are other theories that are useful for us to understand language learning motivation and learning mechanisms. One of the most discussed motivation theories is Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) flow theory, describing “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (4). Flow theory is also often adopted to discuss classroom anxiety and achievement (Figure 1.2). Students who are able to monitor and adjust their anxiety and boredom in the classroom can achieve a higher level of skills and meet more challenges.

Figure 1.2: The psychology of optimal experience (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 74)

Although both being in the “Flow Channel”, there is a significant difference between the two stages of A1 and A4 (Figure 1.2). “The self becomes complex as a result of experiencing flow. Paradoxically, it is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

When we choose a goal and invest ourselves in it to the limits of our concentration, whatever we do will be enjoyable. And once we have tasted this joy, we will redouble our efforts to taste it again. This is the way the self grows” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 42). A well-designed classroom activity should never just concentrate on the content of learning only. Instead, it is through regulating between anxiety and boredom in the classroom that students learn to evolve from a “A1 learner” to a more skillful “A4 learner.” One critical question about learning a foreign language such as Chinese is: how long can learners sustain the high level of efforts until they capture the joy of learning. As Csikszentmihalyi clearly suggested “It is not only the ‘real’ challenges presented by the situation that count,

16 but those that the person is aware of. It is not skills we actually have that determines how we feel, but the ones we think we have” (75).

Another important theory that contributes to the discussion of language learning motivation is the goal-setting theory of Locke & Latham (1990) where they argue that human action is mostly directed by the purposeful goals people set for themselves.

According to Locke & Latham, people have to set clear, challenging, complex goals and then receive constant feedback to achieve the goals. By the same token, a successful language learner should be someone who constantly pays attention to teacher’s or native speakers’ feedback, and monitors their own language learning goals accordingly. A curriculum goal is not individualized, therefore, does not motivate students as much as a goal that they set for themselves and monitor continually.

To conclude the crucial theories of L2 motivation: for short-term classroom motivation to occur, the learning process has to involve socialization and a sense of development. Students must feel they are learning something new and making progress. Teachers should help students realize how the new knowledge is changing their understandings or behaviors, and, in an ideal learning situation, students’ efforts are recognized and rewarded. However, to sustain our motivation of learning a foreign language, the combination of novelty, realization, and recognition has to be constantly repeating. Furthermore, agreeing with Dö rnyei and his colleagues, one has to be able to see possible futures and possible selves to overcome difficulties in the long-term learning process. Concluding and extending the description of motivated language learners in Gardner (2001): they are willing to spend time and other resources on learning the language; in the classroom, they are more willing to participate and take

17 risks for better learning outcomes; they tolerate unexpected foreign cultural differences and adjust to them; long-term motivated language learners are usually good at monitoring their performances and keep good track of their progress; they are also more interested in incorporating language learning into other dimension of their life. Some of these characteristics are cognitive by individual nature, some are social or affective. Therefore, an approach beyond the cognitive-situative divide is suggested in the discussion of motivation construction in this dissertation. And, most importantly, these characteristics in learning behaviors cannot be measured separately in a single scale to predict a learner’s motivation.

1.3 Motivation for learning Chinese language and culture

Before discussing how Chinese learner’s motivation differ from those who study a more commonly taught foreign language like French or Spanish, I want to introduce the profile of a “successful” Chinese language learner, Jamie. These brief stories of Jamie were told by her mother, Pat Schroeder, the first female politician elected to Congress from Colorado, in her book 24 Years of House Work and the

Place Is Still a Mess, 1998.

“Jamie went to Princeton, majoring in Chinese, and then taught for a

year at the University of Dalian, in northern China. True to her outspoken

self, she was running her own little Tiananmen Square revolution—showing

movies that she wasn’t supposed to show, assigning books the students

weren’t supposed to read, pushing the envelope of what the Chinese called

“spiritual pollution."… She went all through China, to Manchuria and

18 Tibet. A friend from Princeton who traveled with her, a young Chinese-

American woman, felt even more pressure than Jamie. While local people

called Jamie a word that translated as “big nose.” They acted as if her

friend descended from some lowly Chinese who were dumb enough to leave

the motherland. Together the women were a traveling novelty act—Dalian

wasn’t like Beijing, which has Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonalds. They often

encountered some unpleasant, even hostile behavior. But Jamie found a

clever method of protection: She got an eight-millimeter video-camera, and

if she encountered any guff, she’d whip it out and say in perfect Chinese,

“Do that again for the police.” A ballsy act. Boy, I was glad when she came

home” (Schroeder, 149-150).

As the mother described, Jamie speaks “perfect Chinese”, holds tight to her American values, and bravely picks battles to fight against people who don’t share those “universal” values with her. The mother’s interpretation of those stories represents her understanding of language and culture learning. But is

Jamie a successful or motivated Chinese learner? If not, what is missing?

Princeton University has a nationally well-known Chinese language program for both its domestic and study-abroad curriculum. A Princeton Chinese major who also has rich experiences working in China is expected to achieve an advanced level of fluency. It would not be surprising for us to find that Jamie, a

Chinese major with the best possible education at Princeton, considers herself to be a “successful” and “motivated” Chinese language student as would her language instructors. However, what was her motivation when she was holding

19 an eight-millimeter video camera as a defense against native speakers of

Chinese in China who annoyed her? And how would those Chinese people react to her “revolutionary” behaviors?

1.3.1 Language and culture

Agreeing with Gardner (2006)’s differentiation of language learning motivation and classroom learning motivation, advanced-level language learners who do not seek opportunities to use and improve their foreign language skills outside classroom setting are not integrative motivated language learners. Meanwhile, a language learner who frequently encounters self-perceived “unpleasant or even hostile” experiences in the foreign culture is unlikely to be motivated to extend their career of learning Chinese and working in China.

Walker and Noda (2000) states that “Culture is what we do and, also, how we know what we have done.” By the same token, learning a foreign culture is to learn what we are expected and allowed to do in the culture. Within the same article, they proposed a diagram of compiling a second-culture worldview through performing a learned culture. It is through accumulating memories of performing cases, sagas and themes of a foreign culture that one establishes expertise in using the foreign language to achieve personal and career goals.

A motivated Chinese language learner is someone who constantly modifies his worldview to understand unexpected foreign cultural differences. Students should be trained to handle those unpleasant interactions with native speakers of the target culture. It is commonly understood by Chinese people that calling a foreigner “big

20 nose” is not necessarily a comment with hostile intention. In fact, one would be amazed by how hard Chinese people strive to have a western-looking “tall nose.”

However, what is obvious to people of one culture is not necessarily clear to a learner who has little or no experience in that culture. Because those rules are so integral to native speakers of Chinese, instructors who grew up in the culture sometimes would not think to explain these concepts to the language learners until miscommunication happens. It is impossible for learners who work in China to avoid unpleasant experiences, but motivated language users are constantly aware of the goal of building their working expertise and know how to transfer the unpleasantness into a lesson learned, namely forming a new hypothesis for functioning in Chinese culture and verifying it in a new situation.

1.3.2 Learning resources, time and space

Aside from guiding students to establish personae and negotiate meanings in a foreign culture, we should also consider where and how do our students learn a “truly foreign language” such as Chinese with the given resources.

Jorden and Walton (1987) defines those languages that are “linguistically unrelated to English,” “non-Indo-European,” and “spoken within societies that are culturally in marked contrast to our own” as the “truly foreign languages.” East Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese are representative. They discussed the linguistic and cultural distance between these languages and English, and emphasized on the challenges students and instructors of truly foreign languages face. Irene Thompson, of aboutworldlanguages.com, introduced that the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has

21 indicated the instruction hours a native English speaker needs to reach a certain level of proficiency in a Category-IV language such as Chinese is about 2200 hours while it takes approximately 600 hours to reach the same level of proficiency in Spanish or French.

Although the phonological or orthographic differences between English and Mandarin

Chinese hasn’t changed much in the past thirty years, what is meant by learning Chinese and performing in Chinese culture has dramatically shifted. For example, how “foreign” is

Chinese to an English speaker who grows up in the city of Monterey Park in the Los

Angeles area? What do those 2200 instruction hours mean when we are bringing all types of technologies into the classroom? Last but not least, how do we better understand “time” and “place” when motivating Chinese language learners?

The most common way to understand “time” is to associate it with the actual hours, such as classroom hours, preparation hours, and practice hours. By doing that, we attempt to associate language learning with levels, and sometimes even predict one’s language capacities based on how much time he has invested. However, those of us who have witnessed the rapid growth of a motivated language learner know well that using classroom hours to measure one’s achievement could be totally unscientific. Time does not equal to instruction hours. Time is suggested to be a relative, expandable, individualized and cognitive concept in the discussion of foreign language learning motivation. As neuroscientist David Eagleman (2009) suggests, “as we begin to understand time as a construction of the brain, as subject to illusion as the sense of color is, we may eventually be able to remove our perceptual biases from the (Newtonian) equation” (169). He proposes the concept “brain time” to discuss time perception in each individual brain, including how the brain resynchronizes all the signals from the outside and shapes

22 awareness. So, what does fifty minutes in the classroom mean with the above understanding of time? First, each student perceives the time differently. Those students who are highly engaged collect all different kinds of information in the class, such as teacher’s voice, classmates’ s body language and visual aids in the learning materials. For students who experience a “flow” in the classroom, a fifty-minute class is perceived as a very short time. On the contrary, some students could be ignoring the signals and counting each second until leaving the class, thus, their actual learning time is much less than the classroom hours. That also suggests that exposing our students to more visual and body movement helps to increase the active “brain time.” Second, one of the major goals of classroom instruction should be increasing students’ willingness to expand their learning hours outside classroom. In other words, a five-minute efficient classroom activity can help students identify their weakness and encourage them to spend fifty minutes outside classroom to practice. Given four years of meaningful training, some students can reach advanced or even superior-level Chinese or Japanese. Time is an expandable concept in both our brain and our agenda. Motivated language learners perceive and use time wisely.

Study abroad experience is a representative scenario to understand the correlation between time, space, and learning motivation. Although most study abroad programs last only six to eight weeks, students usually recall those experiences as the most enriched and memorable ones in a language learning career. When an American student goes to China for the first time, all the exotic sensory signals excites his brain every second: the unfamiliar traffic settings, the smell of the street food, or the faces of random Chinese taxi drivers they talk to. All these simple, daily events are new and exciting information that changes how our brain perceives the experiences. As people who have experienced

23 extremely dramatic events report, everything becomes an intensive “slow motion” during the short event. Six weeks in China could be perceived as an extremely enhanced time to a young American mind being in China for the first time. Learning the target language could take place at any time in any place. More importantly, students have the chance to use the learned language and gain feedback at any time. As mentioned, a successful language class should not only focus on what to teach, but also motivates the students to extend their hours of learning outside the class. By the same token, an efficient study abroad program must have a focus on expanding students’ learning space into the local community. Time and space are interrelated in the context of Chinese language learning. When a student starts using Chinese in different locations, we can only expect him to spend more time becoming familiar with the performances in those contexts.

Considering the yearly increasing number of Chinese international students attending universities in the United States, the domestic campus is no longer the same

Chinese language learning environment as it was a decade ago. Students of Chinese language should be guided to interact with native speakers of Chinese outside the classroom. Those institutions with low enrollment of international students ought to take full advantage of the Internet and develop technology-supported curriculums to extend students’ learning hours and spaces to help them better establish a well-rounded vision of successful future selves.

Linguistically speaking, Chinese is no doubt still a “truly foreign language” to most American college students. On the other hand, in terms of accessibility to the native speakers of the target culture, Chinese is in fact one of the most least distant foreign languages to study on many American campuses. To conclude, students’ learning

24 motivation, wise use of technology and the availability of the target culture are the three most influential factors when discussing the resources of learning Chinese as a foreign language in the 21st Century.

1.4 Language learning motivation and cultural expertise

Jia (2012) describes motivation to learn Chinese as the driving force that increases learners’ long-term willingness to engage, perform, and practice. Two aspects need to be further clarified: first, each individual learner gradually establishes a cognizant gear that detects, receives, filters, and adapts different motivational signals from various learning experiences. This motivation mechanism is largely built upon our prior knowledge, and it helps define the new learning experiences. Second, the driving force to learn Chinese as a foreign language to a high level of proficiency and cultural expertise has to be socially co-constructed between language learners and their Chinese associates.

1.4.1 Individual cognizant gear

Jia (2012) reviews the Experiential learning theory originated in the work of John

Dewey, Kurt Lewin and Jean Piaget, and states that learning should be regarded as “a continuous process grounded in experience that is best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes” (17). “Experience” is a key concept in the discussion of language learning motivation. What we have learned and how we learned through the years determines each individual’s learning mechanism, a cognizant gear that defines new learning experiences.

Therefore, one needs to understand that there is no universal motivating factor that could

25 motivate all the brains at the same time in the same classroom. Experienced foreign language teachers must have noticed that detailed and localized information about the target culture effectively catches students’ attention and raises their participation in the classroom. While recognizing the importance of these motivating techniques, we should also be aware that each person is responding to the signal differently. For instance, when a teacher mentions a specific observation about Beijing in the classroom, those students who have been to that city would quickly recall their previous memory and get excited. They have the access to a considerable amount of the contextualized information which are not available to those students who have not been to the place. It also means that each student’s “brain time” is processed at a different pace. Even those students who have shared similar studying experiences in Beijing would still react very differently to the teacher’s elicitation based on their own learning mechanism. It is meaningful to collect motivating factors and motivated learning behaviors as Gardner did, but it is crucial to consider and apply those motivating signals in a contextualized discourse. Teachers who are familiar with students’ previous learning experiences can design better motivating activities as they could refer to students’ prior knowledge and enrich their existing memories of using the language. We have also noticed that students who have gone through trainings in the same program for years gradually form a powerful collective memory. Any small classroom anecdote that happened in the past or any previously used interesting learning material could be motivating to students who share those memories.

An effective learning activity must shed some light on the collective memory of the students so that everyone has a possibility to participate. Meanwhile, each student should be encouraged to indicate their individual effort and create their individual story.

26 Considering language learning as an extended journey to achieve expertise, we should realize it is not only students’ language knowledge that advances, but their cognizant gear also evolves through the years. For beginning-level foreign language students, teacher feedback, grades, and peers’ performances play significant roles for them to assess their own efforts. On the contrary, an advanced-level Chinese language learner who aims at establishing cultural expertise is expected to concentrate less on his classroom performance and, instead, focus on interacting with native speakers to achieve a common goal. It is for the same reason advanced-level students tend to have a harder time to gain a sense of achievement in the classroom than lower level students. Once students extend their learning mechanism and sense the enjoyment from learning in the Chinese communities, classroom learning becomes less informative. A long-term motivated language learner must be someone who senses the self-satisfaction and constantly monitors the timing to repeat the mental pleasure. What is good timing? Taking the basic expression “laoshi hao (Hello, teacher!)” as an example, students will not be able to enjoy the task of using the phrase while they are still struggling with the consonant of “shi” and the challenging third tone of “hao.” In the beginning-level instruction, it is the teacher’s job to build scaffolding learning activities that help students be familiar with the linguistic codes. It is also up to the teacher to elicit a contextualized performance of using the phrase in the classroom setting. When students sense the joy of correctly using what they have just learned, you could only expect to hear “laoshi hao” from them every time you see them in the hallway. On the other hand, “good timing” will not be pre-defined for students when they reach intermediate and advanced-level and study the language in the target culture.

27 Knowing how to determine the “right time” to practice one skill that separates long- term self-motivated language learners. A successful language learner with culture expertise knows “when” to practice “what.” This also helps to understand why it is extremely important to incorporate domain-oriented courses into advanced-level curriculum. For beginning-level students, the foreign language class is one of the many interesting things they do. When learning Chinese language and culture becomes a student’s extended career and commitment, it is highly related to who they are and everything they do. As argued in the third chapter of this dissertation, a

“critical period” of transiting from “learning the language” to “learning in the language” has to occur for advanced-level students to establish autonomy and maintain motivated.

1.4.2 Language learning motivation and the “third space”

Walker and Jian at the Ohio State University (2016) discuss the idea of

“negotiating the third space” in the context of a Chinese language pedagogy for the 21st

Century. They describe the “third space” as an optimal social milieu where Chinese language learners realize their professional goals through negotiating meanings and intentions with native speakers of the target culture (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3: “Negotiating the 3rd space” (Walker and Jian 2016)

They suggest levels of communication and negotiation between people from the first (C1) and second (C2) cultures. A devoted missionary makes great efforts to learn the target language and adjusts the cultural behaviors. However, to achieve their mission, they must aim at delivering declarative messages to the audience according to beliefs and values that cannot be changed. By the same token, A government representative’s responsibility is to declare the policies and beliefs of his own government. In contrast, an

American employee in a C2 organization will not survive in a Chinese working environment if he only conveys his American concepts and values. He must be willing to adapt to the expectations of the organization in the target culture. We are what the audience of the culture we are communicating in allows us to be, but we have the learning ability to develop a persona that will allow us to function in C2.

29 In addition, the third cultural space (C3) is not a given condition that language instructors or anyone else could create for the people of C1 and C2. Instead, “the third space” is an outcome of people from C1 and C2 negotiating a workable perspective and action within a mutually recognized intention. Negotiating the third space is a competence that devoted language learners and users should develop. Kramsch (2009) theorized the concept of “thirdness” and the significance of “third culture” in the language education.

She stated: “If Firstness is the mode by which we apprehend reality and gain immediate consciousness of incoming bits of information, Secondness is the mode by which we react to this information, and by which we act and interact with others within a social context.

Thirdness, on the other hand, is a relation process-oriented disposition, that is built in time through habit, and that allows us to perceive continuity in events, to identify patterns and make generalizations” (234). Although the third space is also considered as a continuous and developmental concept in Walker and Jian’s discussion, they approached the idea of the third space from a fundamentally different perspective. According to Kramsch (2009),

“the concept of third culture was meant to capture the experience of the boundary between

NS (native speaker) and NNS (non-native speaker)” (239). She in the same work positions a third culture as a popular, critical and ecological language and cultural mode that L2 learners created for themselves. Walker and Jian, on the other hand, believe that a third space is co-constructed by people from C1 and C2, and more importantly, functions to the benefit of both groups. The significance of negotiating a third culture is not to challenge one’s base or target culture, but to suggest an optimal mindset that suits the working environment in the 21st Century. A third space is where people with diverse cultural background could perform different roles in the target culture as themselves. For instance,

30 an American employee in a Chinese company should not strive to be like a Chinese employee. In contrast, he should negotiate a third space for him to be whomever he chooses to be in the specified context while meeting the expectations of the Chinese organization. Depending on what we want to achieve, we play different cultural and professional roles. Chinese language learners of 21st Century no longer work in a monolingual or monocultural setting. Recognizing the dominant culture in the working environment and perform accordingly is a survival skill. Yet, to be able to negotiate a third space with people from different cultures is a higher-level sustainable strategy that reduces the possible fatigue and conflicts.

Dö rnyei and his colleagues (Muir & Dö rnyei 2013, Dö rnyei 2005, 2009) discuss the relationship between visioning the future-self and language learning motivation. Which role students select from this diagram (Figure 1.3) to play and visualize could affect what they do and what they consider as motivating learning experiences. A missionary-level language learner could be a top student in a certain learning environment. Like Jamie—the secular missionary, these students could use their “perfect Chinese” to start their own “little Tiananmen Square revolution.”

Notably, Jamie was probably never trained to hold tight to her American cultural values by her language instructors. Unlike the hard-to-obtain third space, applying our familiar C1 rules to interpret what happens in C2 is each human being’s default setting. It takes proper training for one to learn to create and function in a third space.

Even more, can an advanced-level language learner sustain motivation without delving into the third space? Findings in Chapter four suggest that being able to achieve professional goals with Chinese counterparts is a major motivating factor to

31 those advanced-level Chinese language learners with cultural expertise. A C2 persona helps students to perform in the target culture and understand why people function in a specific way in that culture. A successful C3 player knows when and how to use different C2 personae—employee, foreigner, or exotic member in the organization.

Students of 21st Century are very different from Chinese learners of 1980s who could hardly visualize Chinese learning as an important aspect in their extended career and life. As discussed, motivated language learners with a certain level of commitment should not only focus on fulfilling curriculum requirement. Pink in his work Drive argued that “goals that people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy. But goals imposed by others—sales targets, quarterly returns, standardized test scores, and so on—can sometimes have dangerous side effects” (48). The journey of mastering a “truly foreign language” is not always fun. It is most often stressful. Researchers and educators who aim to motivate foreign language learners should focus on helping them to establish the vision of a successful

C3 future self through autonomous goalsetting and extended and purposeful socialization. What learning experiences can be pedagogically designed to help to establish that vision and make students be continuously engaged with learning and using Chinese in the classroom and beyond is the major research question of the study.

32 Chapter Two: Study of Motivating Factors and Motivated Learning Behaviors in the

Classroom Through Beginning to Advanced Level

2.1 Study design

2.1.1 Rationale of the study

The study of second language learning motivation has long been dominated by the social-psychological research tradition, especially of the work of Gardner and his associates (Gardner & Lambert, 1972; Gardner, 1982). One feature of studies along this line is that the concept of motivation has been approached as a psychological state rather than being viewed in the social context of an individual’s experiences of learning and using the foreign language. However, later studies of language learning motivation have suggested that motivation itself is dynamic and, therefore, should not be viewed in a static or restricted mode (Ushioda, 1996; Dö rnyei & Skehan, 2005). In

Gardner’s recent work on motivation and second language acquisition, he redefines the concept “motivation” and proposes a socio-educational model in the classroom

(Gardner, 2010). Within the same frame, Gardner distinguishes motivation from a reason for learning, but rather views it as the positive energy the learner converts into fulfilling learning tasks. Meanwhile, Gardner and his colleagues who were clearly at the heart of work along this line again used the data of English and French learning in

Canada to establish a theoretical classroom-teaching model.

There are at least two gaps in the field of foreign language learning motivation that compel me toward the current study. First, the motivation to learn a less

33 commonly taught language could be greatly different from learning English or French in a bilingual country. In fact, in the field of less commonly taught languages, motivation is an even more critical factor due to the amount of time students need to spend to gain a conversational ability. However, few studies have been done to examine the learning motivation in a less commonly taught foreign language classroom, even fewer on various levels of Chinese classes. Furthermore, similar with

Gardner’s attempt, researchers in the field of Chinese language pedagogy who are interested in the cognitive perspective of language learning generally propose macro- level learning theories to describe and design classroom activities. Instead of taking an inductive approach, this study focuses on analyzing the contextualized micro-level particularities of the Chinese classes with a focus on teacher and students acting and reacting to each other, seeking to establish mid-level hypotheses that help to analyze the motivating factors and students’ motivated behaviors in the classroom setting. One implication of associating Gardner’s recent definition of motivation with the behavior-changing theories (Atkinson & Birch, 1970; Heckhausen, 1991) is that understanding students’ motivation in the classroom requires a description of what they do, especially an attention to how teacher and students interact with each other.

In an extension of research exploring learning motivation and social construction in the foreign language classroom setting, this study uses discourse analysis grounded in an interactional sociolinguistic perspective to explore motivating factors and motivated learning behaviors in various levels of Chinese classroom, for example, how teacher and students position each other in an advanced-level Chinese language class, and how the positioning affects the learning behaviors of students. To

34 identify these factors and find approaches to apply them into actual teaching can help to enhance teaching and learning efficiency. Over forty instructional units of different levels were observed, twelve of which were video recorded. Each unit lasts an hour

(including the ten-minute class break). Face to face interviews were conducted with participants who agreed to help further understand what happened within that instructional setting. Three selected videos from the different levels of Chinese classes are analyzed through a line-by-line discourse analysis and retrospective video- enhanced analysis.

2.1.2 Theoretical framing

2.1.2.1 Motivating factors in the classroom

My approach to a discourse analysis of motivating factors and their relationship with motivated behaviors builds on theories in sociolinguistic tradition

(Gumperz, 1986; Voloshinov & Metejka, 1973) and interactional sociolinguistics applied to educational research (Bloome et al., 2005; Green & Wallat, 1981).

Learning motivation cannot be simply given or transferred to the students from their teacher or peers. Instead, it is a co-construction germinated through intensive human interaction. In the context of learning a truly foreign language in the United States, students’ motivation is largely established through what they experience in the classroom. Another earlier theory that had inspired this study is Barnes’ communication-centered constructivism (Barnes, 1976; Barnes & Todd, 1977), which argued that the basic purpose of schooling is achieved by communication and speech

35 unites the cognitive and social. One cannot discuss the cognitive process of learning motivation without investigating the speech in the classroom. One major theoretical principle of this study is: people act and react to each other (Bloome et al. 2008, 8).

Through interaction, people learn, establish relationships, modify contexts as well as construct and deconstruct motivation.

Previous studies of motivation do not have a unified understanding towards motivated behaviors in the classroom, and the observation varies in different subjects.

I am recognizing these issues. Using various-level Chinese classes as the field, I define motivating factors (hereinafter, MF) as the social signals that teacher and students co-create to increase participants’ willingness to engage, perform and practice. Motivated behaviors (hereinafter, MB) refer to the way in which students show a high interest in participation and interacting with their teacher and classmates.

It should be noted, however, a student with motivated learning behaviors has a higher chance to be a successful long-term motivated language learner, but there is no determined causation between the two.

2.1.2.2 Motivation through Levels

The study is also designed along the understanding that human behavior changes with the construction of knowledge and motivation. On a micro-level of analysis, students display distinguishable learning behaviors when they are interested in different learning tasks. In a broader sense, the observations suggest that students of beginning, intermediate and advanced level skills are unlikely to be motivated by the same factors.

36 For a novice level tennis player, learning how to hold the racquet, make the moves and handle the pace is most likely the focus. How does one sense the pleasure of progress when the practice becomes tedious and he still can’t really play a game?

Feedback from the coach or peers is extremely important at this stage. When we are new to a field, we rely on people’s feedback or reaction to adjust how we learn and stay motivated. Once we become familiar with the rules and gain some level of capacity, we can play against other tennis players. From the game results and feedback from the experts, we know our strong and weak areas. In an intermediate- level Chinese classroom, classmates’ performance helps one to evaluate his or her own performance, and the instructor plays the role of an expert. For a high-level tennis player or Chinese learner, the drive to go through day after day training is to play against strong contestants and win a real game. A good coach does not train players of different levels in the same way. There are some general rules to develop learner motivation, but motivating factors as well as motivated behaviors are level- specific construction. Therefore, the study selects classroom data from three different levels and analyze the data within its own context.

2.1.3 Research questions

The study focuses on exploring how the purposefully designed instructional setting, activities and specially teaching and learning language potentially correlate to the motivating factors and motivated learning behaviors: namely, when, where and how teacher and students co-create social signals that increase participants’ engagement. It is important to note that the understanding and assessment of

37 participation was viewed in relative terms based historical engagement of a certain cohort. For example, if a particular class generally involves 2 or 3 out of 12 students answering questions, but a particular learning activity or social unit indicates a marked increase in student participation (ex. 10 students out of 12), then this change in group behaviors suggests a context in which further investigation into motivating factors and motivated behaviors are warranted. With a high familiarity of the studied classes and curriculum, both general and level-specific questions were suggested.

Table 1 General and level-specific research questions to explore classroom learning motivation

General 1. In which micro-level activities do students display a high questions: degree of participation? 2. In which contexts do students actively interact with each other? 3. How do students at different levels react to their classmates’ performance? Any difference or similarity across levels? 4. How do students at different levels react to the teacher’s feedback? Any difference or similarity across levels? Beginning- 1. How do students perform with contextualized tasks with level limited language knowledge? 2. Do teacher or student use English (learners’ native language) in the class? If so, in which contexts? Intermediat 1. Is there a potential correlation between localized learning e-level materials and learners’ participation? 2. In which contexts do student refer to their individual learning experiences? Advanced- 1. How do students react to the authentic learning materials, level including linguistic and cultural features? 2. What roles does a teacher play in an advanced-level Chinese class?

38 2.1.4 Methodology

2.1.4.1 Research site

The classroom research data was collected during the school year of 2015

(Spring and Autumn terms of 2015)2. The Ohio State University, hereafter referred to as “OSU”, where this study was conducted has one of the earliest and largest Chinese language programs in the United States, and its advanced-level Chinese courses are influential in the field of Chinese language education. According to the Modern

Language Association’s 2006 report on regional enrollments in languages other than

English, the number of students studying Chinese at OSU was about one-fourth of the enrolled Chinese learners in the State of Ohio3.

The Chinese language program at this university is also known for its

Performed Culture approach, which originates from a pedagogy emphasizing contextualized language use and performance. All the Chinese courses are designed upon the idea that language learning involves developing students’ capability of performing in the target culture. Students are expected to learn the foreign language so that they can operate in the social contexts of the target culture.

The observed instructional units took place in a standard classroom setting at the main campus of OSU. All the multimedia classrooms are equipped with a table in

2 Institutional Review Board (IRB) Protocol # 2014E0551. 3 In the year of 2006, the enrollment of students learning Chinese in the State of Ohio is 1598, and 409 of which are students from the Ohio State University: https://www.mla.org/Resources/Research/Surveys-Reports-and-Other-Documents/Teaching- Enrollments-and-Programs/Enrollments-in-Languages-Other-Than-English-in-United-States- Institutions-of-Higher-Education/Enrollments-in-Languages-Other-Than-English-in-United- States-Institutions-of-Higher-Education-Fall-2006, accessed on June 25 2017.

39 the front and around 20 chairs with table arm (see Figure 2.1). Chinese instructors usually arrange the seats into a semicircle and use those chairs only. The teacher stands next to the table at the center of the circle or sits at one end of the circle. The video camera4 was set up in front of the research on a tripod to capture students’ faces and actions with occasional adjustment to capture some of the teacher’s action.

Figure 2.1: Floor plan of the classroom setting

2.1.4.2 Subject

The researcher selected three courses of different levels to observe and construct data with. During the semesters when this study was conducted, there were

13 students enrolled in the selected beginning-level class (Level One Chinese class at

OSU, Chinese 1101), 12 in the intermediate-level class (Level Three, Chinese 4142),

4 Video camera model: Sony, HDR-XR500.

40 and 5 students enrolled in the advanced-level class (Level Five second semester,

Chinese 5104). All the students were full time undergraduate and graduate students at

OSU.

Students in Chinese 1101 had none or little background in Chinese before they took the course. They had been studying Chinese for about one month when the analyzed data was recorded. The 12 students in the intermediate Chinese course,

Chinese 4142, had different previous learning background. For instance, one student studied and lived in China for a short period of time before being placed in this course.

Another one is a graduate student who studied Chinese to conduct his research. Four of the five students in Chinese 5104 (besides a heritage learner who was directly placed into the course) had taken level-one to level-four Chinese courses at OSU. All the students in Chinese 5104 had experiences living or studying abroad in China.

The three instructors of the analyzed classes were at the time doctorate students in Chinese language pedagogy at OSU who also worked as teaching assistants in the Chinese program. All of them are native speakers of Chinese. They had been trained to teach with the Performed Culture approach, and shared an interest in bringing Chinese language learners to a high level of fluency and cultural expertise.

2.1.4.3 Course design

The Chinese program at OSU provides eight levels of Chinese language courses with various summer or extended study abroad opportunities in China (also see Appendix G). The analyzed videos in this study were respectively extracted from

Chinese 1101, Chinese 4142, and Chinese 5104.

41 Chinese 1101 is a regular-track beginning-level, mostly speaking and listening, course. Using the learning materials developed with the Performed Culture approach, students are introduced to basic conversational mandarin in contextualized dialogues.

The main learning material Chinese: Communicating in the Culture comes with a

DVD with interactive exercises, all dialogs, coaching sessions and vocabulary, and supplemental exercises and games. Students attend the class five days a week. Each class lasts 55 minutes. Meanwhile, students are expected to spend approximately two hours to prepare with the audio and video files for each class. Classes are mostly conducted in Chinese. The goal of the course is to help students develop a basic understanding of Chinese interpersonal and behavioral culture and learn to perform in the culture with a certain level of proficiency appropriate for continuing to the next level. Students are graded daily and they are encouraged to self-evaluate their performance based on the daily grade and individualized feedback. In a regular speaking and listening class, students are expected to perform the contextualized dialogue and drills that they have prepared before the class. The course is usually co- taught by a full-time lecturer and four teaching assistants (both native and non-native speaker teachers) in the Chinese program.

Chinese 4142 is an intermediate-level intensive-track spoken class. Students enrolled in this course have a focus on improving their speaking and listening skills.

When the data was collected, the course was co-taught by a lecturer and a teaching assistant in the Chinese program, both native speakers of Chinese. Students are also daily graded and provided with daily individualized feedback. The learning material used in the course is Perform Suzhou: a Course in Intermediate to Advanced Spoken

42 Mandarin. The material was designed to help Chinese language learners raise their level of sophistication in interacting with the local people in Suzhou. However, the communication strategies developed through this course is generally applicable to other cities in China. The Ohio State University’s summer intensive program locates in Suzhou, China. Therefore, students in Chinese 4142 have a high chance of studying in Suzhou at a certain point.

The advanced level course, Chinese 5104, is the second semester course of a yearlong fifth-level course (Chinese 5103-5104), also referred as “Spring Grass class.”

The course is named after its main learning material: a modern Chinese novel titled

Spring Grass (春草 Chuncao) by Qiu Shanshan (published in 2009). The novel was later adapted into a TV series following the same name, which is also used as learning material in the course. The first semester (fall semester) of the course focuses on improving students’ speaking and listening skills, while the second semester (Chinese

5104) has an emphasis on students’ reading and writing capabilities. However, students are expected to use all four skills while engaging with the novel and the TV series. During spring semester of 2015, when the data was collected, there were five students enrolled in this course, and all of them had taken the first half of the course in the previous semester. The students meet their instructor five days per week, 55 minutes per day. They are required to understand, discuss, narrate the assigned segments in the TV series and the novel with approximately three-hour preparation every day. Students are also being graded daily in this class, and they are very familiar with monitoring and evaluating their own performances.

43 2.2 Data description and analysis

2.2.1 MF and MB in the beginning-level Chinese class

To have a thick description of the events in the classroom, one need to unfold the context and the language people use to act and react to each other. Following

Green and Wallat (1981), I divided the video recordings into a series of “message units” and “interactional units.” A set of interactional units must have its interactional function in the micro-context such as making a request, assigning a turn, closing a narrative or agreeing. What Gumperz (1986) called contextualization cues are used to unfold the events as well as draw the boundaries of messages units and interactional units. In addition, to capture the particularities of the event, factors such as intonation, volume, some distinguishable nonverbal behaviors are marked in the transcription.

Those observable language and nonverbal behaviors that indicate a relatively higher level of participation or interaction are considered as the “Evidence” to understand motivating factors and motivated behaviors.

The message units are analyzed with three categories: classroom norm, interactional strategy and role construction (see Appendix A). Within the frame of role and vision construction, the focus is on how teacher and students adopt role, perform and construct knowledge through contextualized tasks.

From Line #52 to #68 (Table 2), the instructor used prepared information cards to assign students a role. The information cards have each student’s name in

Chinese Romanization and an assigned role, such as dean, manager and professor

44 (these are target vocabularies). Students were engaged to recognize classmates’ name and title first, and perform accordingly.

Table 2 Role construction as a MF in beginning-level Chinese class

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Table 2 continued

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46 Table 2 continued

Students displayed a high level of participation in the task of recognizing their own and classmate’s assigned role by focusing their gaze at the information cards in the teacher’s hand and reacting to classmates’ performance immediately (Table 2,

Line #59). Students also indicated their understanding of the social hierarchy theme in

Chinese culture by reacting differently to a role of “vice president” (Line #62).

Students who were assigned roles with higher social hierarchy appeared to be even more excited about their role and the following performance. This also suggests that the instructor should every time take notes on which roles are assigned to which

47 students and rotate the roles they play. When students adopt a role, they also try their best to use the language that role would use in the context. A role reminds students of the Chinese working context so that they naturally avoided using any English. Also, a dean in Chinese culture will be most likely addressed as nin (a formal and polite address to others), and a Chinese secretary is expected to recognize the people he or she is meeting with. Students well associate those culture expectations with the roles they are performing.

Table 3 A beginning-level class activity with the Performed Culture approach

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48 Table 3 continued

From Line #69 to #91, the instructor invited S7 to the front and conducted a complete contextualized performance, two people meeting at a conference for the first time and introduce one’s acquaintance to the other. This performance directly involved two students, S7 and S5, but the rest of the class closely observed the entire performance and used non-linguistic signals to react to it. For instance, in Line #76, the instructor introduced herself and reached out her hand to shake with S7. Student 7 hesitated for one second to shake hands with the instructor. Other students observed his hesitation and laughed. Similar interaction occurred in Line #83 when another student, S5, was involved with the performance. Based on S7’s performance through

49 the class, he was well prepared and highly interested in performing and practicing.

His hesitation in both Line #76 and #83 was no longer than two seconds. Students who were seated had to be highly involved with the performance to catch those small interaction cues and react accordingly.

When S7 completed the above performance, the entire class excitedly applauded for him. Students realized that it was a difficult task and they evaluated

S7’s performance based on the teacher’s feedback and their own skills. S7 during the retrospective interview described the above segment as the most challenging but memorable learning experience during that day’s class. Two interviewed students reported that they were impressed by S7’s performance as it was a complete and particularly long performance. One of them indicated that he was eager to give it a try after seeing S7 complete the task. Students of beginning level constantly evaluate their language skills based on peer’s performance and teacher’s feedback. When a classmate with similar levels and skills performs well in a contextualized task, one is convinced that he can handle the task as well. Meanwhile, when a classmate with similar skills encounters some difficulties to complete a certain task, one can be afraid of doing the same tasks, or sometimes eager to repeat the task to deliver a better performance. When we discuss learner’s vision construction as a motivating factor, we should always remember that the most accessible way to help learners visualize the successful or unsuccessful future selves is to expose them to a highly comparable image with similarities, their peers. Therefore, a successful language teacher should elicit individual performance from each student, and clearly identify which performances are good and which demonstrate improvement.

50 2.2.2 MF and MB in intermediate-level Chinese class

The intermediate-level Chinese course, Chinese 4142, uses a localized learning material, Perform Suzhou. The course as well as the learning material is designed to improve students’ integrative skills to function appropriately in both academic and daily contexts. Students in the observed class had at least taken Chinese for two years. When the data was constructed, the students had been taking Chinese with the instructor for more than a semester. The observed instructor, a native speaker of Chinese, was at the time a teaching assistant in the Chinese program. The students were familiar with her teaching style, and had a certain understanding of classmate’s levels. In other words, students at this stage are able to identify stronger and weaker students within the group based on their performance and teacher’s feedback.

Three level-specific motivating factors were identified by investigating the classroom data. The first finding is that students at this level constantly expand their foreign language knowledge based on what they have already learned through the process of hypothesis verification or refutation. Compared to students at the beginning level, students at this level not only rely on their prior knowledge to learn more

Chinese but also expand their learning strategies to acquire knowledge better (see

Table 4). When this knowledge expansion occurs, students display a high level of participation in the classroom, and a strong willingness to interact with classmates and the teacher. From Line #1 to Line #14 in Table 4, students were learning a new usage of a grammar point, jiu 就. Students at this stage have learned jiushi 就是, where jiu is used as an adverb indicating “precisely.” However, in the text students encounter here, jiu is used as a preposition, indicating “on, about.”

51 Table 4 Expanding L2 knowledge as a MF in intermediate-level classroom

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52 Table 4 continued

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53 Table 4 continued

After the instructor raised the question in Line#1 (Table 4), four students made efforts to answer. S1 tried twice to answer. S2 first disagreed with S1’s answer, and

54 then gave his guess in Line #10. Comparing with the rest of the observed class time, this segment was one of the attention peaks where all the students moved their gaze from their textbook or notes to the instructor, and more than half of the students attempted to answer a question. Similar motivated learning behavior was observed when students learned a new usage of hui 会 (Table 5, Line #21). When we just start playing a new game, whether a sport or a video game, we focus on learning the rules and basic moves. But when we are more familiar with the game, we more frequently form and shape hypotheses. For students at intermediate level, to test their hypotheses in order to expand their existing knowledge becomes an important approach to sense the progress and become more motivated to learn.

The second identified motivating factor is peer attention, namely, students constantly act and react to each other to construct knowledge and motivation.

Students showed a much higher level of participation when a question is raised by their classmates instead of the instructor. More specifically, students react differently to different classmates. In the segment analyzed below (Table 5), S1 raised a question about how to understand “dou hua 都会.” Other students who were not paying full attention to the class before Line#15 suddenly raised their head, gazed at the teacher, and tried to answer the question. As mentioned above, these students have been taking courses together for more than a semester when the data was collected. Both the instructor and the students (besides S1) mentioned in the retrospective interview that

S1 was one of the best students in the class. The instructor also thought that students in the class were aware of which classmates’ Chinese is better, and always paid

55 additional attention when those students ask question. It was observed that students displayed the highest interest level when their classmates, who are considered as good

Chinese learners, ask questions. When an average student asks questions, his or her classmates did not show an eagerness to answer the question, and simply waited for the instructor to answer his or her question.

Table 5 Peer attention as a MF in an intermediate-level Chinese class

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56 Table 5 continued

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Table 5 continued

58 The interactions between the teacher and students in Table 5 also remind us that when we explore motivation construction in the classroom, we need to focus on how learning occurs instead of what is being taught. Students sometime learn more from their classmates than from their teachers. How S1 reacted to his classmates’ eagerness to answer the question he raised was also interesting. He raised another related but more specific question in Line#28, and this time the instructor did not have other students answer the question.

The third motivating factor observed in the Perform Suzhou class is that students showed a high level of interest to learn and perform localized knowledge.

The learning material Perform Suzhou was designed with a goal to help students establish language and cultural capacity to perform well with regional knowledge in contextualized tasks. The material contains localized information such as real street names, bookstore names, and popular restaurants. Students were also introduced to localized behavior cultures, such as how to invite a language partner to a meal or how to wisely refuse drinking in a business context. When students encounter these types of knowledge, they always asked the instructor if the information was true. Knowing that they will frequently use what they learn, students took notes of the localized information and actively practiced. As mentioned, most of the students in the observed class had a plan to study in China in the future. Learning localized knowledge in a domestic classroom helps students to construct the vision of using

Chinese in the target culture with specific details. When they have the chance to visit

Suzhou, it is also a motivation boost for students to testify what they have learned and modify their understanding of local culture. Students showed eagerness to learn

59 Suzhou culture which was introduced in the learning material. Once they gained some knowledge about southern Chinese culture, they often asked questions on how things are accomplished in other regions of China. The instructor who taught the class is originally from Northern China. When she introduced students the northern accent, such as “shi-er”, students demonstrated a high level of participation. They helped each other to command the pronunciation, shared interesting learning strategies and reported that they enjoy this kind of localized learning task.

2.2.3 MF and MB in advanced-level Chinese class

A segment was selected from video-taped Chuncao classes to conduct discourse analysis and retrospective video-enhanced analysis (Table 6). This segment, approximately six minutes, was a Q&A section where teacher asks students questions about the assigned chapter they have read before the class. The messages units of this segment are analyzed with three categories: classroom norm, interactional strategy and positionality. Within the frame of positionality, the focus is on how teacher and students position each other and how it relates to language learning motivation, relationship and knowledge construction.

Within the segment, there is an interactional unit where the teacher constructed cultural knowledge of Chinese by positioning herself as native Chinese people and students as someone who know American culture (Table 6, Line #38-54).

While she was doing that, students displayed a high participation in the discussion.

Two months after that day’s class, during the interview when students were invited to

60 discuss about that part with the researcher, they all remembered that part and the cultural knowledge the teacher introduced. One student even referred that section as a

“nut shock” because his previous understanding of eating nuts and timing of eating nuts is very different from the cultural knowledge his teacher introduced in that day’s class.

In Line #38, the teacher raised a content question about the assigned chapter, asking students what business the main character in the novel does. Student 1, correctly answered that question: nut business. From Line #40 to the end of this interactional unit, the teacher led a discussion on the concept of nuts and when

Chinese people eat nuts. Before this section, the teacher positioned herself as an in- group people to the students. She used “we” and “let us” to refer herself and the students. In Line#43, the teacher positioned students as someone who probably know that part about Chinese culture by asking the question “when do Chinese people eat nuts?” Within two seconds, she adjusted the question and repositioned students as someone who potentially know when Americans eat nuts. Two seconds later, one of the students basing on his personal experiences answered, “we eat nuts at any time.”

During the interview with the teacher and students, both confirmed that the first question in Line#43 was beyond students’ knowing, while the question in Line#45 was a much easier question and students were confident to talk about their own experience in native culture. The shift in positioning sends students the signal that there is a difference between Chinese and American culture on the current topic. It is often observed during the semester that the teacher has the tendency to position students as a Chinese learner who has an interest in knowing what Chinese people

61 believe and how Chinese people behave in certain contexts. She often raised the question “what would Chinese people do in this situation”, and sometimes corrected students’ inappropriate expression by stating “Chinese people would not say this in this context.” The teacher also realized this tendency in her teaching and considered it as a skill she uses to get students’ attention and help them to establish culture awareness. In Line#49, the teacher had detected that none of the students knew the answer of question in Line#44, and she began to introduce the culture knowledge.

Table 6 Positioning advanced-level students as curious and capable learners

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62 Table 6 continued

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63 Table 6 continued

64 What is also interesting in this brief section is how the teacher repositioned herself when she was introducing the cultural knowledge. From Line#49 to Line#51, she was introducing that Chinese people do not eat nuts at any time, but only in some specific occasions, where she used “we” to position herself as a native Chinese people instead of an in-group people in the discussion. When a retrospective video-enhance interview was conducted with the teacher, she stated that she was not aware of the shift of the positioning, but she does think that using the identity of a native Chinese helps her to get attention from the students. Students’ eye gaze and body language indicated a high participation in this section. Some of the students had their laptop or novel in front of them during the class. In Line#40, when the teacher asked a question that was not directly related to the content of assigned reading, all the students raised their head and gazed at the teacher. Right after Line#54, three students moved their eye gaze back to their laptop or to the book in their hand.

Students also position and reposition each other by asking and answering each other’s question, and in some cases answering questions for each other. In this class, it is very often observed that one student takes over the floor without raising his or her hand, and answers the question for a classmate when someone is obviously hesitating or struggling. Within the observed classed, the teacher sometimes but usually did not stop students when they answered questions for others. Line#56 to #73 is an example of the described case (see below or Appendix C). In Line#56, Rose (all the names are pseudonym) was called by the teacher, and she was struggling to finish her answer in

Line#57, 58, 60, 65 and 70. In Line#61, 66 and 71, Mike and Dylan respectively answered the question for Rose when she was again hesitating. Rose’s performance,

65 compared with her classmates’, positioned herself as a less-prepared student in that context. Similarly, both Mike and Dylan positioned Rose as someone who needed help, and positioned themselves as better prepared students. Borrowing Kreisberg’s terms, the researcher originally had the understanding that Mike and Dylan were constructing a “power over” relationship with their classmate Rose in the above context.

56 T: Rose? 57 Rose: Mmm…she was hiding it from the sister 58 Rose: …mmm…she was hiding…(S-herself?) 59 T: Who is the sister? 60 Rose: I am not sure…she wasn’t telling the sister she opened her own….her own… 61 Mike: Nut store. 62 Rose: Nut store. 63 Rose: She did not tell the sister. 64 T: Who is the sister? 65 Rose: The sister is…… 66 Mike: Sister Zhang. 67 T: Yes, sister Zhang. 68 T: Did she tell Sister Zhang? 69 T: Was she hiding it from Sister Zhang? 70 Rose: She… 71 Dylan: It seemed like she told Sister Zhang she was going to her husband’s working place 72 Dylan: did not say she opened her own nut store.

66 However, to one’s surprise, during the interview with the students, all of them, including Rose, indicated that it seems to be the norm in the class to interrupt a classmate when he or she is apparently struggling. The students consider the interruption as “helping classmates to answer the teacher’s question”, “searching for the right answer together” and “building a community within the group.” They mentioned that both the size of the class and the difficulty level of the class have affected how they interact with their classmates. All the students in this class have taken classes together for more than six months by the time this study was conducted.

Unlike a large class, these students have a lot of experiences interacting with each other, and they all have experienced the moment of struggling in that class. Therefore, they position the classmates as team members to “power with” and work towards a common goal. These findings from the data analyses evidently indicate how teacher and students position each other is determined by their socialization, and it is part of the communication system. Meanwhile, students’ motivated behaviors such as high participation or making efforts to meet teacher’s expectation are always influenced by their interaction with the teacher and each other.

2.3 Discussion

2.3.1 The dynamic role of a language teacher

Agar (2013) profoundly points out that Human Social Research (HSR) should focus on discovering patterns that mean something to the subjects. Following researchers who recognize the complexity of human subjects, retrospective video-

67 enhanced analysis was conducted with the subjects, both the instructors and the students. It is proved that more than a few revisions needed to be made to the data analysis after interviewing the subject. One of the main revisions was on the “power- over” or “power with” relationship among the advanced-level students. It is also mistakenly but widely accepted that teachers who “own” and “transmit” knowledge have more power over students in the classroom. Based on the data analysis across different levels and conversation with the students, it is obvious to the researcher that a “power-with” relationship among the instructor and students increases students’ willingness to participate and perform. Language learning is and should always be a collective improvement.

Reviewing the analyzed segments, these teachers made various attempts to involve students and help them construct knowledge, more importantly, establish the memory of using the knowledge. One crucial question often raised is whether teachers can motivate the language students through their teaching in the classroom? Based on the above analysis and my definition of learning motivation, teachers can certainly create and extend motivating factors in the classroom, but the ultimate people who have the power and responsibility to develop learning motivation are the students themselves. For example, the first-year class activity analyzed in Table 3 encourages the student to perform a relatively long and challenging task. The teacher adopted a

“power-with” role in this performance and provided an opportunity for the student to use the target language in the designed context so that he could sense the progress.

The student in the retrospective interview described the segment as a challenging, fun and effective learning experience. He was highly willing to repeat the experience and

68 practice to deliver a better performance. Was the teacher who increased that willingness? The teacher could potentially conduct the exactly same activity with another student and lead to a very different situation. It was an effective and motivating experience to this student for two major reasons: first, the student was well prepared so that he could perform the entire task with some minor mistakes. Second, his efforts were recognized by his classmates. Without classmates’ applause by the end of that session, the student would very likely feel frustrated about his imperfect performance. The analysis of the Chuncao class indicates that how teacher positions the students influences their participation and willingness to learn. This is a group of

Chinese language learners who had been trained with a vision of going to China and establishing a relationship with native speakers of Chinese. Therefore, in the location of this advanced-level Chinese language class, students display a high participation when the teacher positions them as Chinese learners who are interested in and have the potential to learn native Chinese culture. A motivating language teacher observes the learners, pays attention to their individual vision of using the foreign language, and positions them accordingly.

2.3.2 “Play to win” vs. “Play to improve”

James Carse in his work Finite and Infinite Games (1986) determines two types of games and game players which can be categorized by different motivations: a finite game is played for the purpose of winning, and an infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play (Carse 3). The second analyzed segment of Tiyan

Suzhou Class is a good example to illustrate these two kinds of players, language

69 learners (see Table 5). Student 1 (S1), who is considered as one of the best students in the class, asked a question to extend his knowledge of Chinese grammar. He knew the meaning of the hui 会 in kaihui 开会, and he was seeking the meaning of dou hui 都

会 (Line#15). In this micro-context, S1 was playing an infinite game focusing on improving his Chinese. Once he asked the question, S2, S3 and S4 competed to answer. S3 denied S1’s answer (Line#20). S2 and S4 immediately gave different answers to the question (Line #26 and #27). During the interview, it was confirmed with the subjects that their eagerness to answer the question is highly related to their intention to help and compete with S1. They were playing this game to win. S1, on the other hand, focused on improving, asked one further question to clarify the meaning of the sentence (Line#28). Within the classroom setting, one can observe that students play both roles to win and to improve. In a short term, a competing learning mindset could greatly contribute to students’ learning and motivation construction.

One question that may be raised is which learning mechanism is even more significant when the goal is to motivate learners through years to reach a high level of language and working capacity in the target culture? When students go to China, study or work with Chinese people, they will be surrounded by language learners with much more fluent Chinese and native speakers. A learner who is used to self- evaluating and concentrating on his or her own improvements has a higher chance to sustain the learning motivation. This also explains why a “power-with” relationship is established among the advanced-level language learners in the Chuncao class.

Successful language students gradually learn how to monitor their own performances

70 and identify their own strengths and weaknesses. Findings in Chapter 4 also indicate that learners who reached a high level of language proficiency and working capacity are the ones who focus on using Chinese to achieve a professional or personal goal— who play the game to improve.

2.3.3 Classroom as an incubator for long-term learning motivation

The study introduced in this chapter is designed to refine those extant theoretical constructs that views change in behavior as a consequence of interaction of motivation (Atkinson & Birch 1970; Heckhausen 1991; Gardner 2010). In the location of second language acquisition and Chinese language pedagogy, students’ motivated learning behaviors should be considered along with the question how they act and react to each other. Any change in students’ learning behavior in the analysis is an outcome of socialization. By the same token, instead of approaching the concept of motivation as an unperceivable mental activity, one could through conduct a microethnographic discourse analysis to investigate motivated language learning behaviors as contextualized social action. When students display a high level of participation and willingness to practice, engage and perform in the classroom, one cannot expect all of them to become long-term motivated language learners. However, students who gain richer learning experiences and sense the progress are more likely to make further motivated attempts.

Program designers and language instructors should always recognize that classroom is where the journey begins, a crucial but temporary incubating space. The fundamental goal of classroom instruction is to bridge our language students into the

71 target culture and its local communities. This chapter also suggests that some motivating factors that could potentially sustain outside classroom should be even more encouraged than others. As the Tiyan Suzhou class indicated, both peer attention and learners’ interest in localized knowledge were identified as motivating factors that increase students’ willingness in learning and engaging in the classroom. However, one’s desire to explore local community is a sustainable learning motivation that could be further expanded along the journey. Peer attention among language learners, on the contrary, usually requires an educational environment to take place. For a language learner to grow from a finite player to an infinite motivated player, a

“critical period” introduced in the next chapter is momentous.

72 Chapter Three: Creating Motivational Experiences during the “Critical Period”

Studies of first language acquisition have adequately discussed the critical period for human beings to develop first language skills at a young age. Many researchers argue the existence of the critical period and believe that the human brain cannot acquire a language natively beyond a certain age range. In contrast to that, the

“critical period” proposed in this dissertation refers to a stage of mastering of a “truly foreign language” when students make the psychological shift from learning the foreign language to learning in the foreign language. They themselves are also transferring from being the receiving end of the language learning process to becoming the contributors. Those who are not exposed to domain-related training may encounter difficulty in maintaining their long-term motivation in learning Chinese and overcoming challenges to reach high levels of proficiency and expertise.

The Midwest US-China Flagship Program (Chinese Flagship Program) at the

Ohio State University is one of the few Chinese programs in the United States that trains American students to work in Chinese language and culture. Pre- and first-year

Chinese Flagship curriculum serves as an ideal laboratory to investigate how learning and learning motivation develops during the “critical period.” Students at this stage are experiencing a shift in the learning process, specifically, they are adapting to many changing factors in the learning process such as self-managed learning materials, extended interaction with educated native speakers of Chinese, and manifold methods of evaluation and feedback. Most importantly, students are experiencing the transition from “learning Chinese” to “learning about their domains

73 in Chinese.” To understand how motivation is constructed during this critical learning period, this chapter focuses on three aspects: first, identifying the critical differences between learning Chinese as a foreign language and learning about their domains in

Chinese; secondly, using the Confucian concepts of “xi 習 ” and “xing 行 ” to conceptualize motivation during this transitional learning process; last but not least, a discussion of pedagogy is initiated to create motivational pathways in a domain- oriented Chinese language program.

3.1 Learning Chinese as a Foreign language vs. Learning in Chinese

Some transitional features of the “critical period” are introduced in this session, namely, how curriculum shifts, self-regulated learning mode develops, complex social interaction constructs, and extended learning cycle shapes.

3.1.1 Curriculum shift

The Chinese Flagship program at OSU has years of experience in training advanced to superior-level Chinese language learners to function in Chinese working environments as young professionals with certain domain knowledge. The two-year program generally divides the training into two periods of time: students take language and content courses on the U.S. campus during the first year and spend their second year of study at a Chinese University and an internship in an organization in

China. Students are expected to graduate with some working experiences in China, and a domain-related research thesis written in Chinese. These students are advanced- level Chinese language learners who expect to bring their Chinese proficiency to an

74 even higher level and gain the ability to demonstrate expertise in their chosen domains.

One of the most important courses first-year Chinese Flagship students take is a domain-based research and methodology development course. Within this course, each student decides on a research domain in which they have a demonstrable interest.

Their domains vary from public health, marketing, arts, international relations to new technologies. Each week, students as a group meet with their professor to give a presentation in Chinese on their domain research. One core component of the course is that each student is assigned a domain tutor to meet with them once a week for an hour. In the current program, some of these domain tutors are visiting professors from

China who have years of experiences teaching Chinese as a foreign language. These domain tutors as well as other people who are interested in the students’ research are encouraged to attend the students’ weekly presentations and provide feedback on their research. Being very different from a foreign language course, the focus of this domain-based course is how students use Chinese to establish their knowledge in their selected fields, convey their understanding of the topics, and negotiate with the audience. By the end of the first year, students are required to participate a summer program in China where they further explore their domain-related topics and deliver public presentations to Chinese audiences every week. The Chinese audiences have been expected to engage the speakers on the content of the talks and react to the style of the presentation. Chinese speakers with no exception in the past years were highly impressed by these American students’ capacity and motivation of studying a domain- specific topic in a foreign language.

75 3.1.2 Self-regulated learning mode

It is not reasonable to organize a beginning or intermediate-level foreign language course without providing prepared learning materials. However, once the training goal transits from learning the target language to learning in the language, students are encouraged to search for learning sources under the guidance of the professor and their domain tutors. Walker in The Pedagogy of Performing another

Culture (2010) presented two types of instruction which help to consider the domain- level learners’ mechanism of language learning and knowledge construction (Figure

3.1). He stated that “beginning students of Chinese have no inventory of cultural knowledge, words, phrases, or even potential cognates on which to draw for communicative purposes, such an inventory must be presented, practiced, and refined in a linear arrangement of dialogues, drills, exercises, simulations and situations that can be followed by the learners. As the learners accumulate knowledge and skills to the point that they can produce generalized responses to novel situations, the role of

LMI within the curriculum gradually diminishes in favor of acquisition model instruction” (Walker 58). This is also the transition from providing students language items to imparting strategies and skills for them to use their learned language items to construct domain knowledge.

Figure 3.1: The foreign language learning environment (Walker 1989)

It is obvious to most people that lower level students are not able to accomplish the tasks designed for students at advanced levels. However, fewer people have come to realize that AMI has to occur at a certain point in order for students to bridge language learning into their broader knowledge structure to remain motivated language learners (Figure 3.2). Constructivism posits that people acquire new knowledge and understandings based on what they already know and believe.

Conducting research in Chinese seems to be a completely new task to most students even at the AMI stage, but to which degree this task is “new” depends on learners’ previous learning experiences. One important notion is that this transformation from

“learning Chinese as a foreign language” to “learning in Chinese” is certainly not a sudden turning point, nor is it a completely unfamiliar task to the learners.

Figure 3.2: Bridge foreign language learning into a broader knowledge structure

The long-sequence curriculum (program courses) of the Chinese language program at the Ohio State University reflects how to prepare students for the domain training courses. One of the objects of 4th level instruction is to help students develop the awareness of interacting with audiences of different ages and social roles. Most students at this level have had some experience of studying in China for a short period of time, but few of them have rich experiences of interacting with native speakers of

Chinese in an environment outside classroom. Through using media materials and assigning students social roles during class activities, students learn to tailor their language and cultural behavior according to the specific context. From the 5th level on, students are trained to exclusively use authentic learning materials and interact with

Chinese outside of regular course-work. As a consequence, when students begin their independent research courses, they have already developed some capacity for using authentic learning materials and learning through interacting with educated Chinese speakers who are not their language teachers. That also means that for learners at this stage to maintain motivation there needs to be more than authentic learning materials and native-speaker interaction. To be specific, motivated learners at this stage should

78 own the autonomy to explore authentic learning materials that fit their domain interest, and develop reciprocal relationship with native speakers of Chinese who share common interests.

3.1.3 Complex social interaction

As K Anders Ericsson points out about expertise that “the performers will gradually acquire mechanisms that increase their ability to control, self-monitor, and evaluate their performance in representative situations from the domain and thus gain independence from the feedback of their teachers” (Ericsson 2006, 694). The higher language level students reach, the more independent and self-regulated they need to be. Students at the beginning level are graded by instructors frequently so that they know if their performance meets expectations and in which specific areas they need to invest more effort. The Flagship students discussed here ideally obtain most of their language knowledge through AMI, therefore, should no longer consider the grades or feedback given by the professor or tutor as the only evaluation of their performance.

Instead, the students are guided to develop a mechanism to assess their own progress and self-monitor the learning process through interacting with native speakers of

Chinese. The physical and social configurations among the students, tutor, instructors, and native speakers also shift as students go through their “critical period” of L2/C2 learning. As indicated in Figure 3.3, during the first year of the program, students are guided to present their domain topics in Chinese to an arranged audience. The weekly presentation is an important activity in the advanced-level curriculum where students

79 establish memories of interacting with native speakers to extend their domain knowledge.

Figure 3.3: Configuration of weekly presentation (domestic campus) (green=students, orange=tutors, red=professor, blue=other audience)

As mentioned, when this study is being conducted, most domain tutors in the program were visiting scholars from China, and several of them have taught Chinese as a foreign language. These tutors mentor the students and take a course titled

“professional networking and relations” with the students where they learn Chinese and American cultural practices. Within that course, the Flagship students have an opportunity to establish a reciprocal relationship with their tutors and other native speakers of Chinese. When students are at beginning and intermediate levels, the foreign language is the target of learning. Their instructors are the main and sometimes only source of feedback. However, working on a project in Chinese propels students into a community where they have the chance to exchange opinions and seek feedback from native speakers of Chinese who share common interests.

80 Instead of getting explicit feedback from instructors, students at this stage receive feedback in the process of negotiating meanings. In a broader sense, the audience who participate in the students’ presentations every week and the students themselves serve the important role as evaluators in the learning process. After each presentation, students receive questions and feedback from the audience. Students also ask each other questions and comment on the respective works. This type of learning activity, giving speeches in front of a large group, is familiar to most of the American students.

However, when one needs to do the speech in a foreign language to introduce his research, it is a specific genre and a challenge to all the advanced-level language learners. One important feature of expertise is the capability to monitor one’s current levels of mastery and understanding, which is also described as metacognition in some studies (e.g., Brown, 1977). Through interacting with the peers, tutors and other audience, students expand their understanding of the topic as well as construct metacognition. This type of speech training continues into the second semester and the summer afterwards in the Chinese Flagship program. However, students are then exposed to a much larger audience, mostly native speakers of Chinese, facing more challenges in many ways. In comparison with previous learning contexts, students now interact with an audience mostly consisting of people who are interested in the domain content (see Figure 3.4). The studies introduced in the next chapter include a questionnaire with 33 Flagship graduates where they identified this public speech activity as one of the most motivating learning experiences through their journey of learning Chinese.

Figure 3.4: Configuration of weekly presentation (summer program in China ) (green=students, orange=tutor, red=professor, blue=other audience)

As concluded by the end of the previous chapter, classroom is a crucial location for students to establish language capacities and motivation. However, classroom is not the ultimate playground where language students can grow into a self-regulated motivated learner. A well-designed foreign language curriculum should always prepare students for interaction with Chinese audience. In Drive: The

Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Pink points out that “Autonomy, as they see it, is different from independence. It's not the rugged, go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody individualism of the American cowboy. It means acting with choice—which means we can be both autonomous and happily interdependent with others” (Pink 2009, 88).

In the domestic learning environment, the audience is usually designed and prepared by the program (Figure 3.3). Students have the chance to take risks and practice interacting with native speakers of Chinese. An “autonomous while interdependent” learner takes full advantage of the resources to modify their research project and tries

82 different strategies to deliver the ideas. After one year of practice, students are guided to interact with the audience who are not provided by the language program (Figure

3.4). Since most members of the audience are not hired to give feedback to the students, the potential risk level of losing the audience’s attention is higher. Besides learning how to present one’s ideas and answer questions, establishing an interpersonal relationship with the audience is critical. During students’ second year in China, they need to practice and gradually grow into all these different roles and genres (Figure 3.5). They still learn Chinese on a daily basis. But more critically, they learn how to act as a Chinese graduate student, an intern in a company, or a young professional in the business setting through using their Chinese. The tasks could be new. The risk could be higher. But their accumulated memories of accomplishing this type of task have bridged them into these genres. And it is only through constant interaction with native speakers in various contexts that students at this stage could gain a sense of achievement and meet the challenges.

Figure 3.5: Extended social contexts during Flagship students’ school year in China

83 After all learning is a social phenomenon. An autonomous and motivated language learner is someone who seeks interaction with native speakers and from which they improve their performance. It is impossible for students to achieve a high level of foreign language proficiency and expertise in communication without expanding their social milieu.

3.1.4 Extended learning cycle

In David Kolb’s work Experiential Learning: Experience As the Source of

Learning and Development, three models of the experiential learning process are introduced (Kolb 1984, 21). Among these three learning models, Lewinian model

(See Figure 3.6), later well known as Kolb’s learning cycle, provides a foundation for us to understand how learning occurs.

Figure 3.6: The Lewinian Experiential Learning Model (Kolb 1984, 21)

One important notion is that beginning-level language learners meet with their language instructor every day, which makes their learning cycle one day or even

84 shorter (Figure 3.7). If we take their classroom experience as step one in their learning cycle, students need to observe and reflect on what they have learned and form their abstract assumption within 24 hours. On a more micro-level of discussion, students repeat these four steps several times within one class.

Figure 3.7: Daily learning cycle for beginning-level students, based on Lewinian Cycle

However, Flagship language learners meet once a week to give presentations on their domain topic. Their optimal learning cycle has to be different from the daily cycle of beginning-level students. In this stage, students learn how to monitor their learning progress in their domain research throughout a weekly cycle (See Figure 3.8).

They meet an hour per week with their individual tutor, an hour and a half with their pronunciation tutor. Depending on their own schedule, students had different arrangements of those two and a half hours. Some students met with their tutor for an

85 hour right before their presentation, while others smartly divided that hour into two meetings with the tutor and spread the meetings throughout the week. How these meetings are distributed also reflect a learner’s metacognition in establishing expertise.

Curriculum during the critical period should be designed to encourage a constant self- reflection mechanism receiving and searching for feedback from people other than professors and peers. As suggested in Figure 3.8, this transition of focusing on domain knowledge development extends the learning from a daily to a longer weekly cycle, and requires learners to exert their intrinsic drive for learning and improving their performance. The step of “self-reflection” needs to be explicitly emphasized with the students. Devoted beginning-level language students also constantly reflect on their own performance, but they heavily rely on provided curricular requirement and teachers’ feedback. Learners during the critical period, on the other hand, should be encouraged to self-initiate the process, seeking for feedback from various resources and reflecting on their own performance accordingly.

Figure 3.8: Optimal learning cycle of the weekly research, based on Lewinian Cycle

86 The difference in time arrangement and learning sequence also determines when and where motivating learning experiences occur, which will be further explored in the following discussion.

3.2 Framework drawn upon the Analects: Xing 行, Xi 習, and pleasure of learning

It was briefly mentioned at the beginning of Chapter one that the first line of the Analects wisely suggests the relationship between learning (學, xue), practicing

(習, xi), good timing (時, shi) and human motivational pleasure (說, yue). In this session, Xing 行 and Xi 習, two parallel concepts in the Analects, are adopted to construct a framework to understand learner motivation during the critical period.

3.2.1 Philology of Xing and Xi

3.2.1.1 Xing, a designed path

In modern Chinese language, xing, written in the form of 行, is mainly used as a verb with the meaning of to walk and to do, or as an adjective to mean being capable or operational. However, these two most common modern usages of xing are not accountable enough when we try to understand this concept in ancient literature.

In the oracle writing system, the pictographic character of xing originated from the image of crossing roads where people walk on. The modern character of xing derived its shape from the xiaozhuang, which is a much later writing system of oracle. In the

Analects, the character of xing occurred 81 times in several grammatically different structures and contexts. However, instead of universally translating the xing into

87 modern Chinese with the meaning of to do, to walk, or to operate, I would suggest always consider the philology of the character when understanding the concept of xing. Xing in the end is not any type of doing as some translations misleads us, but rather those doings with a pre-selected pattern and design. For example, a Chinese language student going to China and behaving as if he or she were in the US is not xing (such as Jamie, see Chapter 2). Xing in the context of foreign language learning involves the recognition and practice of cultural regulations.

Figure 3.9: Xing in oracle writing system and in Shuowen xiaozhuan

3.2.1.2 Xi, practice of a young bird

The philology of xi 習 reveals us even more about the practicing stage of learning. Xi, in the oracle writing system is composed of two parts: the character of bird feather (羽) on the top and the character of the mouth (口) or the character of the sun (日) on the bottom, both indicating the stage of a young bird learning to fly towards the sun. Later in the xiaozhuan system, the bottom part of xi changed into the

88 character of the color white (白), still referring to the practice stage of learning new skills.

The meaning of xi in modern Chinese had misled some of the scholars to translate xi into a broader concept of learning (xuexi), or even the meaning of reviewing (fuxi). However, within the three entries that contain the concept of xi in the

Analects, it is clear that xi is not a broader process of learning, nor the stage of reviewing. Xi, translated as “practice” in this chapter, refers to those certain types of practice a young bird repeatedly conducts to learn how to fly, namely a process of practice that takes certain amount of time, awaits an opportune time, allows failure, and witnesses differences in behaviors.

Figure 3.10: Xi in oracle writing system and Shuowen xiaozhuan

3.2.2 The Concept of Xing and Xi in Analects

3.2.2.1 Xing and its collocation within the text

Xiao & Wang (2014) discusses the character xing in the Analects, where they categorized all the entries that contain the character xing into seven groups: 1) To

89 walk, to drive, 2) To do, 3) Operable, 4) Doing, 5) To go, to leave, 6) To manage, to operate, and 7) Messenger. Among these seven categories, group two, xing used to mean “to do” has the most entries, 26 in total. The discussion here will only focus on the entries of xing where it means to do or doing, group two and four in Xiao & Wang

(2014). Three features of the concept xing are concluded through examining the usage of xing and its collocation within the text:

[1.11] 子曰:「父在，觀其志；父沒，觀其行；三年無改於父之道，可謂孝矣。」

The Master said, “While a man's father is alive, look at the bent of his will; when his father is dead, look at his conduct. If for three years he does not alter from the way of his father, he may be called filial.” (Translated by James Legge 1893)

Xing in this entry is used as the object of the action of guan, to observe. It indicates that xing, when meaning doing, is an observable behavior. What’s more, the observed doing can be adopted as the criteria to assess one’s morality, in this entry, one’s filial piety. What’s also interesting about this entry is its suggested relationship between zhi and xing: zhi is the criteria used to assess one’s morality when he is guided by models while xing is used as the criteria when there is no one directly guiding the behaviors. To conclude, xing is what a person does and it reflects one’s values and thoughts. And we should always be aware that what one does is always associated with the specific culture and the rules people agree upon in that culture.

[2.18] 子張學干祿。子曰：「多聞闕疑，愼言其餘，則寡尤。多見闕殆，愼行其餘，則寡悔。言寡尤，行寡悔，祿在其中矣。」

90 Tsze-chang was learning with a view to official emolument. The Master said, “Hear much and put aside the points of which you stand in doubt, while you speak cautiously at the same time of the others then you will afford few occasions for blame. See much and put aside the things which seem perilous, while you are cautious at the same time in carrying the others into practice-- then you will have few occasions for repentance. When one gives few occasions for blame in his words, and few occasions for repentance in his conduct, he is in the way to get emolument.” (James Legge 1893)

The second important feature of xing is that, unlike xi, it is associated with a public consequence, therefore should be dealt with adequate care. In this entry, the action of shen xing, carefully doing, accompanies with duojian quedai, seeing other’s fault and danger often. Xing, in Confucius’ description, should only take place after observing other’s mistakes, which also indicates that there is a proper timing for one’s xing.

[5.16] 子謂子產：「有君子之道四焉：其行己也恭，其事上也敬，其養民也惠，其使民也義。」

The Master said of Tsze-ch'an that he had four of the characteristics of a superior man -- in his conduct of himself, he was humble; in serving his superior, he was respectful; in nourishing the people, he was kind; in ordering the people, he was just. (James Legge 1893)

Another notion of xing is that it is used in the compound word of xing ji

(operating oneself), which generates the assumption that xing, contrasting with shi 事 (to serve) and shi 使(to make) in the same sentence, has an emphasis on those action one takes to monitor oneself. In other words, the concept of xing is highly associated with one’s inner self that includes one’s knowing and morality.

91 When Confucius being asked about the features of a shi ( 士 , officer), he described that shi is someone who behaves oneself with a judgment of shame (行

己有恥). Moreover, this inner moral standard that one can base his xing upon is certainly not innate, but learned.

3.2.2.2 The concept of Xi in the Analects

Comparing with the various entries of xing, xi only occurred three times in the

Analects. While different scholars have provided more than a few interpretations and translations of these three entries, this paper tends to regard xi as a learning procedure and agree with Walker (2010) who has translated xi into “practice, try out.” Since xi is by nature a close concept with learning, these three entries containing xi together well reflect the pedagogy of the Analects:

[1.1] 子曰：「學而時習之，不亦說乎？」

Confucius said, “To learn and at the right time to put into practice what you have learned, is this not pleasure? (Walker 2010)

Being the very first but perhaps the most commonly misunderstood line of the

Analects, Confucius wisely talked about the pleasure of learning. The problematic words here are shi (時, timing) and xi (習, practice), which were mistranslated into

“often” and “review” by some previous scholars. The character shi (時) occurred 11 times in 9 chapters in the Analects, none of these shi-s can be translated as “often” under the given context. Instead, most of these shi-s indicated a proper timing for

92 certain actions, for instance, “使民以時 (have people work according to seasonal timing)”, “不時不食用 (do not eat when the timing is not right)” and “好從事而亟失

時, 可謂知乎？曰: 不可。 (Is it smart to do things without considering a good timing? No, it is not.)” What’s more, in the Analects, a superior man is expected to know the right timing for certain action. Confucius here clearly pointed out that there is a right timing for xi. A timing that learners can sense the pleasure through trying out.

[1.4] 曾子曰：「吾日三省吾身——爲人謀而不忠乎？與朋友交而不信乎？傳不習乎？」

The philosopher Tsang said, “I daily examine myself on three points:-- whether, in transacting business for others, I may have been not faithful;-- whether, in intercourse with friends, I may have been not sincere;-- whether I may have not mastered and practiced the instructions of my teacher.” (James Legge 1893)

The traditional translation of James Legge’s version interpreted this entry from learners’ perspective, examining if one has practiced what was taught by his teachers.

However, Tsang, later well known for his teaching, could also be saying “chuan buxi hu (傳不習乎)” from a teacher’s perspective: one should not pass things that they themselves haven’t tried out to others. The idea of practice at the right timing as an important process of learning applies both on students and teachers.

[17.2] 子曰：「性相近也，習相遠也。」

93 By nature we are close to each other, by practice distant from one

another. (Walker, 2010)

It is recognizable that some of the learners are instrumentally more prepared for certain activities than others, but researches of successful people in different fields have shown that the assumed genetic talent is not an accountable condition for high levels of performance (Colvin 2008). As Confucius suggested in the above words of wisdom, what distinguishes a high-level performer from the rest is his devotion to practice. Although the concept xi only occurred three times in the Analects, its importance is clearly stated as in the opening line: to achieve the pleasure of learning which helps to sustain a learner’s performance through the advanced level, learning should always be accompanied with practicing at the right time.

3.2.3 Xing and Xi during the critical period

Before we associate these two Confucian concepts with our discussion of motivation construct during domain training, we shall consider one more question: the relationship between xi and pleasure of learning was demonstrated explicitly in the first line of the Analects, but is xing also related with any kind of pleasure? The answer is: not in the Analects. Xing, doing things with rules, is considered as a subsequent as well as much more serious stage than xi. While xi is a stage during which mistakes are common and allowed, xing always comes with an observable consequence, and therefore, should be dealt with caution. The pleasure of learning is much weaker in the stage of xing. What’s more, one’s morality and inner self is assessed by exposing their xing. If we consider xi as the stage where our language

94 students are trying out by using some newly-learned language patterns and expressions, xing would be the stage when language learners effortlessly use their language skills to interact with native speakers of the target language. The potential social risk involved in an actual interaction is much higher than it is in the classroom environment. Xi is the stage from “don’t know” to “know”, while xing is the stage where knowing is observable and assessed through one’s doing.

When considering pre- and first-year Chinese Flagship students at the transitional stage, one layer of the broad context is clear to us: these learners are transferring from practicing (xi) Chinese language knowledge to doing things in

Chinese language (xing). However, a more hidden but equally critical aspect of this stage is that these learners are practicing doing things in Chinese language in the school setting so that in the near future they will be able to act upon those rules and do things (xing) in a working environment in China (Figure 3.11). This complexity influences learners’ behavior and motivation in many ways. Along with Confucian understanding of the concept of xing, when learners use their language knowledge to interact with native speakers and acquire domain knowledge, there involves few guidance on conducting the action but a public judgment of their knowing. When the target of the class transfers from learning Chinese as a foreign language to learning in

Chinese, it is very common to observe students at this level being careful and less active in the classroom. Considering students as the users instead of learners of the language, native speakers have higher expectation for the communication. Students who realize that expectation sometimes will be less willing to take the risks. As

95 indicated, the stage of acting upon rules, xing, involves more seriousness and less possible pleasure than practicing, xi.

Figure 3.11: The complexity of Xing and Xi during the critical period

It is also very commonly claimed by learners at this level that they sometimes know how to do certain things in a Chinese manner but lacking the willingness to do so. We need to refer to the second layer of the context when discussing this specific attitude. Most students have studied Chinese for years before they reach this level of instruction, and many of them have gained relatively rich experiences of using

Chinese to interact with Chinese people. Their memories of using Chinese in various contexts convinced those students that they know how to accomplish many things in

Chinese culture (xing). They are not completely wrong. However, living and studying in China as an international student is a significantly different context from working with provided rules. Most students during the transitional period haven’t had a chance

96 to work in a professional Chinese environment. In other words, they are at advanced xing-level in learning Chinese as a foreign language, but in terms of learning in the language, they are at the xi-stage. As discussed, a practicing stage always accompanies with waiting, failure, reluctance, and slow change in behaviors. Previous studies of intercultural-self more than often lead the discussion to identity conflict and development (Guilheme 2002, Norton 2000). I will instead argue that, first, during the practice period, it is fully natural for students to hesitate about adopting a new cultural persona and changing their behaviors accordingly. Second, I propose that one explanation of students’ reluctance to adjust their behaviors could be due to the lack of a vision of their ideal future L2-self, which is further explored in the following session.

3.3 Creating motivational pathways in a domain-oriented Chinese language program

3.3.1 Domain knowledge and transferable skills

Establishing expertise in a foreign language is not different from any other domian in terms of the investment of time and deliberate practice. First-year Flagship students are in the process of discovering their research interest, and establishing their expertise in that specific domain. Meanwhile, both the teachers and students should be aware of and motivated by the fact that the expertise of Chinese language is established together with a dynamic mechanism that includes many other transferrable skills.

97 Students during the critical period should be guided to use only Chinese to discuss research topics with their faculty professor, tutors, and classmates. They also need to display their appreciation or dissatisfaction in the target language. For someone who conducts research in a foreign language for the first time (xi-stage), mistakes and misunderstandings are guaranteed. Students at this stage are not familiar with the discourse of criticism in Chinese. But how well students can take criticism to some degree affects how they further deepen their understanding of the research topic.

Each student is expected to negotiate their opinions with professors and tutors. From my understanding, the process of the negotiation sometime matters even more than what opinions students hold by the end. One of the findings reported in the next chapter indicates that students’ interaction with their individual tutors is not always considered comforting. However, students who survived the critical period and eventually achieved a higher level of language and cultural capacities (subjects of the study introduced in Chapter four) identified those interpersonal experiences as one of the most motivating factors.

Besides interpersonal communication skills, students develop research and analytic skills through conducting their individual project. They use both Chinese and

English references in their research. They learn how to locate and assimilate new information from academic papers, websites, and communication with Chinese people.

They also need to understand complex information and synthesize it. Some of the students start with a broad interest at the beginning of the semester, and gradually develop a more specific interest under that broad topic. The process is accomplished with the help from professor and tutors, but students have a high autonomy in

98 searching for their interest. Students also learn how to analyze and solve research problems, including locating the access to the reference, specifying the topic, adjusting the methodology and tailoring the presentation to meet different audience’s expectation. Not everyone who attends student’s presentations is familiar with their topics. Students practice how to convey the ideas to an audience with more or little knowledge of the domain. This ability of conveying information to the non-expert is an important transferrable skill once students step outside classroom setting (Figure

3.4 &3.5).

Effective curriculum during the critical period no longer provides students pre- selected learning materials and interactive language partners. Instead, the program should focus on transmitting our language students into active, self-regulated and interest-driven language users who are prepared for unknown and unexpected situations in the target culture.

3.3.2 Visioning future self

The attempt of creating motivational pathways in a domain-oriented Chinese language program mostly builds on the theories of Dö rnyei and his colleagues

(Dö rnyei & Ushioda 2009, Muir & Dö rnyei 2013, Dö rnyei & Kubanyiova 2014) where they propose that visioning possible ideal selves helps to “consciously create a motivational surge of energy which can focus action towards a specific target in the future” (Muir & Dö rnyei 359). They view vision as “the sensory experience of a future goal state, or in other words, a personalized goal that the learner has made his/her own by adding to it the imagined reality of the goal experience” (Dö rnyei &

99 Chan 454-55). As discussed above, most learners at the transitional stage have rich experiences of interacting with Chinese people. Many of them have studied abroad and established good relationship with their Chinese teachers and language partners in a school setting. However, few of them have any working experience in a professional

Chinese working environment. When being asked to adjust their native culture behaviors and conduct tasks that are culturally appropriate in Chinese business contexts, students do not recognize convincing reasons of doing it. It is suggested by

Muir & Dö rnyei (2013) that the ideal future self should be an image that is sufficiently different from a learner’s present self, but achievable through procedural strategies at the same time. One important feature of the stage xing, in Confucius’ perspective, is that it is only carried on after conducting observation of other’s mistakes. Visioning a future self does not mean designing a “perfect” model. Instead, one needs to observe both success and failure through visioning to be able to understand the progressing.

A student can greatly improve his skills and interest in public speaking by delivering twelve presentations during one semester. Two factors particularly contributed to the consequence of learning and vision construction. First, the professor and mentors, who play the role of audience and judges, need to give detailed feedback to each speech, and a comprehensive comment on student’s efforts, space for further improvement, and suggestions for the right next step of study. Through demonstrating what one can achieve within a week, teachers can help students set short term goals and a detailed vision of their next presentation. Secondly, an ideal future-self is usually built upon an image who performs better but not dramatically

100 better than the student himself. There is more than one way to provide that image as a motivational pathway in a foreign language program. One of the most efficient learning environment is where learners at similar but different levels could interact with each other and conduct one learning activity within the same space. In the summer program of OSU, pre-, current- and previous Flagship students are organized to interact with each other occasionally. While second-year Flagship students give presentations on their domain research, pre-Flagship and 4th-level students attend the presentations as audience. Post-Flagship students who at that time (2015) worked and lived in China were invited to provide feedback in Chinese to the presenters. It was a good chance for the pre- and first-year students to vision their future self, and also an opportunity for second-year and post-program students to reflect how much they had achieved. This type of learning activity is a two-way motivational pathway for both ends. As suggested in Figure 3.11, students at this critical stage have reached a xing

(doing without too much guidance) stage of using Chinese language in school setting, but they are beginners in terms of learning and working in Chinese. When they are provided a chance to meet their very possible self who reaches a xing stage of learning in Chinese and accomplishing things in China, students are expected to be more motivated to work towards that concrete goal. Indeed, the role this future self plays just cannot be substituted by teachers or learning materials.

3.3.3 Reflecting on the past self

One aspect in which I would like to refine Dö rnyei’s theories is the absence of the past-self. We all have experienced the pleasure of repeating a newly achieved skill,

101 the power of contrasting and reflecting on one’s past self. When we just learn how to do something that the past self could not do we are motivated to practice this new skill repeatedly. The previous discussion has introduced how different the learning cycle is at this level of instruction from the beginning level (Figure 3.8). In a beginning-level curriculum, students learn new vocabulary and sentence structures on a daily basis. It is relatively easy for students to realize the difference between the current and recent past self, and sense the progress. However, students who focus on domain knowledge find it hard to monitor their progress in language proficiency. It is necessary to constantly remind students to reflect on their past self and identifying their language and domain achievement. As mentioned at the beginning of my discussion, self- regulated learning plays an important role at certain stage of learning, and one of the many skills students obtain through domain training is the metacognition of monitoring their own progress and weakness in performance. In a broader sense than language learning, we constantly imagine our future-self performing in predictable contexts through reflecting on the current- and past-one. This transition period soon in turn will serve as the “past self” students can reflect on when they move forward to an even higher level of learning. When they do so, it would be obvious to the learners that there was a change in their learning behavior and communicative capacity.

Students by the end of the Flagship program are required to write a thesis in Chinese, which is considered as a great challenge to any foreign language learner at this level.

Knowing when and how to reflect on the past self helps students to sustain their motivation to accomplish this challenging task. During the first year of training, students are not required to submit papers to the professor, but they submit written

102 scripts of their presentation every week. Tutors edit the script with students and some of them require students to submit a second draft of it. One feature of these scripts is that it is a combination of both written and spoken languages. Students learn how to write on different level about their specific topic with specific terms and conjunctions, and transform the script into an oral presentation every week. There are two noticeable positive outcomes of this exercise: first, when composing presentation scripts, students have a clear idea who is the target reader and potential audience.

Both reading and writing are socially constructed activities in this learning process.

Based on the feedback given by the people who attend the presentation, students tailor their writings to the expectation of the audience, and select readings accordingly.

Secondly, these presentation scripts serve as the most accessible materials for students to reflect on when they write the thesis. Reflection materials that record one’s own mistakes, images and efforts serve as the most ideal resources in terms of motivation construction.

Based on the researcher’s observation and interaction with those Flagship students who have achieved superior-level proficiency and currently accomplishing their career-related goals in China (some of the subjects introduced in Chapter 4), the biggest challenge of their learning is no longer a language issue, but what I would identify as an issue of “continuous transforming.” As displayed in Figure 3.9, many of these learners have reached the xing stage of learning in Chinese, but that is certainly not the end of the journey. Living in China, particularly functioning in a Chinese working environment demands these language learners continuously practicing (xi) newly assigned roles, such as being a manager, a coordinator, or a CEO. Someone

103 who does not have a vision of a possible successful self will find it hard to maintain their long-term practice. What I also want to emphasize here is that students’ transition during the critical period provides them a transferrable past-self to reflect on, which, from my understanding, is a critical motivational pathway for them to continue their journey of growing into more possibilities.

3.3.4 Design rewarding experience based on xing or xi?

Foreign language educators over the past few decades have been paying adequate attention to what is being taught in the classroom setting. At the same time, as curriculum designer, one should have a higher awareness to design, capture and reward “the flying moment of a young bird.” Reviewing the beginning-level classroom data introduced in the previous chapter, a “flying moment” can be guiding students to perform a brief contextualized dialogue in the class with few errors. It is a task that students would not be able to accomplish without devoted practice. In the transitional advanced-stage discussed in this chapter, learning in Chinese is the target of practice. Therefore, most of the feedback and rewarding experiences should be designed with an emphasis on students’ skills of using the language instead of their language proficiency. Also, as the first line of the Analects suggested, good timing is the key. Practice at a demanding level when students are not prepared could be harmful to learner motivation. And the moment of flying wouldn’t even be exciting without having invested efforts and experienced some failures. Constructing learner motivation, to a certain degree, is to design learning tasks where challenges can be met after a reasonable amount of trying and failures. Once students have a good

104 command of a certain skill and act upon it without too much guidance and attention, they are at a more natural, effortless but less rewarding stage of doing (xing).

When considering motivation construction during critical period, one should focus on and design based upon what is being practiced as well as the method with which students practice. The stage of xi, practice at the right timing, is where failure, continuous attempts and pleasure derived from learning occurs. Also, motivation should not be understood as a fixed psychological existence or a given production.

Instead, motivational pathways are constructed through certain activities, particularly, reflecting on the past self and visioning the future one.

105 Chapter Four: Study of Motivation to Perform Beyond Language Proficiency

4.1 Rationale of the study

Reaching an advanced level in a foreign language is a long and complex journey, especially when we consider it as an extended career extending beyond language proficiency. The notion of language proficiency has long been widely embraced by federal agencies and some college-level institutions in the United States, where students’ capability in the foreign language is highly correlated with their scores in a standardized test such as the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI).

Language Testing International (LTI) defines proficiency as “one’s ability to use language for real world purposes to accomplish real world linguistic tasks, across a wide range of topics and settings.5” Students who aim for a high proficiency rating in the OPI test mostly focus on their command of linguistic codes and their ability to use the language knowledge in the context of an idiosyncratic oral interview. Factors such as test performances and teacher’s feedback play an important role in motivating learners in this type of program. However, when we expand our view and extend our discussion into learners’ expertise in living and working successfully in Chinese culture, the definition and construction of learning motivation should likewise be revised.

Before we begin our discussion of motivation and cultural expertise, one basic question is whether we want our students to be like Jamie (introduced in Chapter one) who is fluent in Chinese but does not establish a relationship with the Chinese people

5“Understanding Proficiency.” Language Testing International. http://www.languagetesting.com/understanding-proficiency

106 she interacts with? If not, what should we supplement in the language training?

Kolb’s learning cycle mentioned in Chapter 3 illustrates how learning occurs in the beginning and advanced levels of instruction. Learners who want to improve their language proficiency and working capacity to an even higher level while living and working in China also need to go through cycles of concrete experience, observation and reflection, formation of abstract concepts and generalization and testing implications of concepts in new situation (Kolb 1984, 21). When in China, native speakers of Chinese become the only source of feedback. It is hard to imagine

Chinese people reacting positively towards Jamie’s camera while being willing to interact with her on a deeper level. In reality, her “clever method of protection” hinders her from having more concrete experiences with Chinese and forming any new hypothesis of learning. Thus, further progress becomes extremely difficult since such behaviors preclude socialization and relationship building.

Students should be prepared for interaction with Chinese people that is not necessarily considered pleasant in the context of the speakers’ base culture. It is commonly understood by Chinese people that calling a foreigner “big nose” is a harmless comment that contains no hostile intentions. In fact, one would be amazed by how hard Chinese people strive to have a western “tall nose.” However, what is obvious to Chinese people is not necessarily clear to a learner of Chinese who has little or no introduction to Chinese culture. Since these rules are so elementary/foundational to native speakers of Chinese, instructors generally would not think to explain these concepts to the language learners until miscommunication happens. It is impossible for learners who work in China to avoid unpleasant

107 experiences: however, motivated language users are intentional about building working expertise and finding ways to convert unpleasantness into lessons learned, thus continually forming new hypothesis for functioning in Chinese culture that can be verified in later interactions.

As briefly discussed at the end of Chapter 2, James Carse (1986) determines two types of games and game players, finite and infinite. Students as infinite game players are prepared to monitor their progress and master new skills. Even though there is no full mastery in any aspect, the possibility of breaking through to higher levels or surpassing one’s own best performance brings enjoyment to students of this category. Finite players as students, however, are usually motivated by competition, such as comparing one’s own performance with those of classmates. They might be strong players within a designed learning environment. However, without having a clear goal that conforms to their long-term career, finite players can easily lose the motivation to compromise, adjust and practice over an extended period of time. Two main questions that initiate this empirical study6 are: 1) What motivates finite learners to grow into infinite learners of Chinese, and 2) How does their journey extend into advanced-levels and beyond.

4.2 Research questions

Breaking the divide between social-psychology and cognitive approach, I propose that motivation construction involves three interrelated components: socialization, vision and progression (see Figure 4.1).

6 IRB protocol # 2016E0438.

108

Figure 4.1: Cyclic of motivation construction

Human beings act and react to each other in a multitude of social contexts on a daily basis. It is through meaningful socialization that we construct and reinforce the motivation to learn. For beginning-level Chinese students, those interactions with native speakers mostly take place in a classroom setting. One could argue that a high level of proficiency could be achieved through limited social interaction, namely through practicing in the classroom setting or even individually. However, when we examine and focus on language learners’ working capacity in the target culture, it is reasonable to agree that socialization with native speakers is a critical component in the process of learning. A language user of Chinese needs to practice and gradually grow into different social roles or personae. Their accumulated memories of doing various tasks with Chinese people provide the drive for them to complete more complicated and challenging tasks. The motivating strategies and mindsets one establishes through the journey also make it possible to construct a self-sustaining

109 motivation system that operates on higher and higher levels of tasks. In this sense learners who work in China are very similar with experts in sports or music who need to constantly monitor and adjust their strategies to be able to perform successfully in changing contexts.

Some of the subjects in this study joined the Chinese Flagship language program with a clear vision about linking their language skills with their areas of interest. If the goal is to train our students to be capable of accomplishing tasks in

Chinese culture with Chinese people, creating a vision is extremely important. One is more willing to invest time and efforts in learning when he or she knows what could be achieved. It is important to note that the mere existence of vision is not necessarily beneficial to language learners. In fact, an incorrect or unrealistic vision can have serious negative effects on learner motivation. A beginning-level Chinese language learner could envision herself speaking fluent Chinese within two years. A learner who has never been to China could envision that Chinese people operate with similar social rules to their own and thus concluded that Chinese people would agree that calling someone a “big nose” is indeed rude. However, these learners would soon find out that many interactions are conducted in unexpected ways based on a differing set of rules in the target culture. And when this type of expectation gap occurs, it could potentially affect the motivation to learn the language. Fortunately, language learning motivation is closely connected to socialization and progression simultaneously. We have all experienced some sort of expectation gap when living or working abroad.

With a well-established learning mechanism, we adjust our expectation and test our new assumptions by interacting with more native speakers of the target culture.

110 This study is designed to understand various learning experiences from successful Chinese learners’ perspective, and better modify the cycling model of motivation construction. By investigating the learning journey and discussing motivating experiences at different stages of Chinese learning, the following questions are addressed: First, which experiences were considered as crucial and motivational by these advanced-level Chinese learners? Second, how does their vision of using

Chinese relate to their long-term willingness to learn and perform in a specific domain? Third, how does their interaction with Chinese associates relate to their willingness to engage, perform and practice? Lastly, which learning behaviors are considered as motivated by Chinese people, and do those behaviors potentially influence their interaction with Chinese language learners?

4.3 Research background

4.3.1 Program introduction

The study was designed to identify what motivates Chinese language learners to reach high level of language and cultural capacity and further extend their Chinese learning into their careers. The 33 research subjects selected to participate the study graduated from a Master-degree granting Chinese program at Ohio State University.

Over the past decade, the program has trained more than one hundred Chinese language learners who not only achieved superior level proficiency as indicated by

OPI testing, but also developed demonstrable working capacities in Chinese culture.

111 The Chinese Flagship program, as introduced in Chapter three, has the clearly stated goal of training Chinese learners to work in China. In addition to writing a master’s thesis in Chinese during the second year of the program, students also work in a Chinese company or institution as an intern. Learners who are expected to perform well in a Chinese-speaking working environment need to establish their memories of “playing” the language in the target culture. Those memories can be constructed through both daily life situations and pedagogically designed settings.

Students in this program are expected to work closely with their language tutors and native speakers of Chinese outside the classroom. The tutors’ purpose and intended impact expands far beyond merely helping learners improve their Chinese. The intensive interaction between the students and tutors provides the context for each learner to use domain-related Chinese with native speakers and, more importantly, negotiate a working relationship with them. The more “cases”, “sagas” and “themes” in which a student learns to participate, the more likely that student can construct a

“second-culture worldview (Walker and Noda 2000). With an intention to negotiate, students will be willing to engage in and sustain communication with Chinese irrespective of perceived comfort and discomfort. Viewing language learning through this type of framework, students in this program are driven by how many “cases”,

“sagas” and “themes” they are collecting.

One significant feature of Chinese language program at the OSU is how

Chinese working experiences are constructed within the curriculum. Students who have gone through educational institutions in the United States are used to having a contract-like syllabus from their instructors and plan their study accordingly. In

112 contrast, being able to deal with unexpected last-minute changes or decisions is not merely considered to be an optional ability, it is an essential survival skill in Chinese working culture. It is indeed very important for language students to establish a mutual understanding with their instructors. However, it is even more important for advanced-level Chinese learners to practice adjusting their expectations and working strategies.

Revisiting Jamie’s story: When being called “big nose” by a stranger, Jamie was annoyed and later decided to take some “smart action” as revenge. Can a language program train our Chinese students to be comfortable with each of those random, harmless comments? Probably not, but students could be better prepared to understand and perform in such contexts, and that is what the program aims at.

Responding to a stranger’s random comments can be considered as a genre. When being called “big nose” by local Chinese people, Jamie had a chance to turn the

“annoying memory” into an interesting conversation with Chinese by simply replying

“big nose nowadays understands Chinese!” Additionally, a learner who establishes a second-culture worldview will try to understand why Chinese comment on foreigners’ noses and assess whether the true underlying intention of such comments is to be rude.

Lacking the knowledge of playing the language game in the Chinese code, in Jamie’s case, directly affects the development of motivating learning experiences. On the contrary, the subjects in this study were exposed to adequate learning experiences that focused on negotiating meaning and establishing resilience.

113 4.3.2 Subjects: learn in Chinese and work in China

In Chapter 3, I discuss how students transfer from learning Chinese to learning in Chinese, and concluded that students at the latter stage are more motivated by their progress in using Chinese to learn than their progress in language proficiency. The 33 subjects recruited in this study joined the master-degree Chinese program with various learning backgrounds and individual goals. Some of them who attended their undergraduate school within the same institution were more familiar with the pedagogy of the program than the others. Some of them joined the program with years of experience living in China. Some subjects attended the program with a clear goal of working in China after graduation while others focused on developing a career in government. All learners joined the program after learning Chinese for at least 4 years and achieving a language proficiency level of intermediate-high to advanced.

Shortly after these students join the program, they are guided to develop an individual research domain. Students work closely with professors and tutors to determine their research domain and gradually establish a discourse in that specific field. In contrast with the ACTFL scale, which emphasizes one’s ability to conduct linguistic tasks in a wide range of topics and settings, the concept of domain training focuses on constructing learner’s knowledge and performing memories in a specific field within which they have already demonstrated an interest. Each subject of this study had their own personal project, and more than a few indicated in the study that they directly or indirectly developed foundations for their long-term career through domain training experiences. By the end of the first year, these learners had developed the capacity to explore authentic learning materials that fit their domain interest and

114 build a reciprocal relationship with native speakers of Chinese who share common interest either in person or through social media. One major positive outcome of training students to learn a specific domain in the target language is that they have successfully bridged into communities in China by the conclusion of their program.

Another important feature of the Chinese language learners recruited in this study is that they are also active Chinese language users. Namely, they utilize language skills to achieve their personal and career goals. They were required to work at a Chinese company or institution during the second year of the program. Some of them returned to the United States after that, but most of them stayed in China and developed a short-term or long-term China-related career. They become researchers, lawyers, CEOs, artists, business founders and perform other social roles that are recognized in Chinese communities.

Living and working in China as a foreigner is a very different life from being a foreign student in China. When examining some of the basic skills one needs to work in Chinese culture, such as negotiating with Chinese administrators, dealing with unexpected changes in the schedule, or conveying one’s domain knowledge to people with little background, we very soon realize that none of these “basic” skills can be developed within a short period of time. Instead, these skills together with establishing the long-term motivation required to achieve said skills should be considered as a step-by-step process. A language learner, such as Jamie, who does not have a good understanding of negotiating meanings with Chinese people would be unlikely to succeed in Chinese working culture. In this regard, the subjects of this

115 study should be considered high achievers in the Sino-US game they play. They are the infinite players who bridge the two cultures.

4.4 Methodology

4.4.1 Online questionnaire

4.4.1.1 Procedures for conducting online questionnaire

An online questionnaire with 15 Likert-scale questions was conducted with 33 advanced-level Chinese language learners who had lived and worked in China (See

Appendix D). The researcher worked closely with the Chinese program since 2010 and had attended and observed all required first year courses offered by the program.

During later years, she organized some of the presentations given by the students enrolled at the time. The researcher had developed a working relationship with some of the subjects through interacting with them in professional contexts. Some of the subjects graduated years before the researcher got involved with the program. Their contact information such as email address was provided by the program administrator.

The subjects were provided a link to access the online questionnaire, and their answers were recorded and submitted through an online platform. They were not allowed to redo or revise the responses after submission. The subjects later indicated that they spent approximately ten to fifteen minutes to complete the survey.

116 4.4.1.2 Purpose of the questionnaire

The questionnaire was designed to provide a general and quantitative understanding of the research topic, namely which experiences are considered as motivating learning experiences from the perspective of advanced-level learners’.

Based on the hypothesis that Chinese language learner motivation is a combination of socialization, vision, and sense of progression (Figure 4.1), the questions included in the survey were designed around these three aspects.

For example, the importance of socializing with native speakers of the target language for the purpose of improving language proficiency has long been emphasized by researchers and language teachers. However, is interaction with native speakers of Chinese a motivating factor that encouraged learners to improve their

Chinese? The first question in the questionnaire aims to explore learners’ understanding of the social influence. Based on the subjects’ response to the statement, further discussion around the same topic is initiated in the individual interview. For example, the interview subjects are elicited to discuss which interaction with native speakers encouraged them to make more effort to learn Chinese and which interaction were not considered to be motivating.

The researcher is aware that it is not sufficient to draw some quantitative conclusion based on a data pool of 33 subjects. One thing to note is that Chinese language learners who have reached advanced-level proficiency and developed working expertise in Chinese culture in some sense are not very different from world- class athletes or musicians. The current data pool is small-scale, however, as the awareness of training students to successfully reach functional levels in Chinese

117 culture increases, the data pool is surely to expand in coming years. One significant purpose of the questionnaire is to provide the researchers a direction to design interview questions. Meanwhile, the questionnaire focuses on exploring the research questions: which experiences were considered as crucial and motivational by these advanced-level Chinese learners, and how does their interaction with Chinese associates affect their willingness to engage, perform and practice?

4.4.2 Qualitative analysis of interviews

4.4.2.1 Procedure for individual interviews

Twenty subjects were selected for one-on-one interviews (See Appendix E).

Seventeen of them made time to participate in the interview. The researcher attempted to include learners of different backgrounds in the interviews, including: learners currently working in China (2 subjects), heritage learners (2 subjects), and learners who returned to the United States but still use Chinese in their work (10 subjects).

Subjects who agreed to participate in the study were asked to schedule a time to talk to the researcher on Skype or by phone due to their distant physical locations. They were informed that the interview was designed around the same questions they encountered in the online questionnaire, but they were not provided specific interview questions in advance. Although these subjects speak fluent Chinese, the interviews were primarily conducted in English with only a few examples given by the subjects in Chinese. Subjects’ native language was used during the interviews as they were encouraged to provide rich and detailed information about their learning experiences.

118 Also, the researcher avoided translating subjects’ words to a different language except when it was necessary. Each interview lasted approximately 30-40 minutes, and was audio recorded for the purposes of data analysis7.

Interviews with similar procedure but different questions were also conducted with nine Chinese native speakers who had worked closely with the selected subjects

(See Appendix F). The interviews with these Chinese associates were conducted in

Chinese.

4.4.2.2 Purpose of the one-on-one interview

The one-on-one interview focuses on exploring learner’s individual learning and working experiences. The subjects were elicited to discuss their learning experiences, including examples both successful and frustrating interactions. One goal of the interview was to explore the most influential experiences that moved these learners along their journey from beginner to sophisticated language users or even experts in some cases.

One important feature of a motivated leaner is how he establishes resilience through failures and sustain his journey of learning the foreign language. Dö rnyei and his colleagues (Dö rnyei 2005, 2009) develop a L2 Motivational Self System based on the possible-selves theory of Markus & Nurius (1986). In their discussion of language learning motivation, vision should be used with pedagogical design to create effective motivational pathways to directly energize long-term, sustained learning behaviors

(Muir & Dö rnyei 2013). They proposed a redefinition of language learning

7 The interviews were voice recorded by and stored in the researcher’s personal computer, Lenovo X230.

119 integrativeness relating it with L2 possible selves: what learners might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming. Along the line of these studies, the interview with selected learners aimed at exploring how advanced- level Chinese learners’ vision affects their learning motivation.

The interviews with native speakers of Chinese were conducted to explore which learning behaviors are considered as MB from the perspective of Chinese people and how these behaviors influence their interactions with language learners.

4.4.3 Case studies

Two case studies are constructed to further examine the learners’ vision of personal development, their overall learning experiences, and motivation construction. The two subjects were selected because of their distinguishable but representative learning backgrounds. Further discussion about their learning journey were elicited and transcribed for data analysis. Chinese people who have studied and worked closely with them were invited to participate in an interview and discuss the overall performance of the subjects. The case studies provide a comparative view of two learners who possess differing training backgrounds, ethnicity, and career development trajectory, and examines the role vision plays in their language learning.

The two case studies also shed light on which learning behaviors are considered to be motivated and valued by Chinese native speakers.

120 4.5 Data analysis and Discussion

4.5.1 Analysis of quantitative data

4.5.1.1 Salient findings

First, subjects indicated an exceedingly strong agreement with the statement that interaction with native speakers motivates them to spend more efforts on learning the language, 25 subjects out of 33 indicating that they strongly agreed to the statement (Q1 in Figure 4.2). This finding was also supplemented by the numbers of

Q5 where 28 subjects strongly agreed or agreed to the statement that their eagerness to improve the language abilities increased after their first study abroad experiences.

Figure 4.2: Advanced-level Chinese learner motivation survey result

121 Subjects who participated the follow-up interview suggested that they were highly motivated to study Chinese during or after study abroad programs because of their direct interaction with native speakers. They had all encountered difficulties and misunderstandings, but being able to use what they had learned in the classroom in an authentic context with Chinese people was a significant motivating experience. This also helps us to understand what we should emphasize when designing study abroad programs. Preparing students for communication with native speakers and bridging them into a local community is just as crucial as improving students’ language proficiency. It is only through interacting with native speakers that students gain a strong sense of achievement, and constantly realize their space for improvement. In some study-abroad programs, students are expected to spend most of the time on campus with their classmates, instructors and language partners. Being able to interact with Chinese peers and teachers in academic contexts is an important genre to command. However, the subjects of this study who intended to work in Chinese culture took full advantage of interacting with people outside the campus. Their answers to Q3, if their interaction with their language teacher motivated them, also confirms that those interactions with native speakers other than the instructors was highly valued by this group of language learners who reached high levels of proficiency and working capacity. Only 14 subjects strongly agreed to that the statement that their interaction with their teachers motivated them. The importance of socializing with native speakers of Chinese is critical to the success of motivation construction. Accordingly, the possibility of involving native speakers into the

122 Chinese program through new technologies should be taken into serious consideration.

More pedagogical application of the findings will be discussed in the next chapter.

Secondly, the survey has shown that most of the subjects did not have past exposure to the language, such as family roots, Chinese-related hobbies, or working experiences. Previous studies of language learning motivation have long been interested in the “reasons” that bring students into the foreign language classroom

(e.g., Williams et al. 2002, Ceuleers 2009, Ardasheva et al. 2012). By the same token, heritage learner’s motivation has more than often been studied with their ethnic background (e.g., Comanaru & Noels 2009, Xiao & Wong 2014). However, motivation, in this study, is understood as a long-term driving force that is constructed through human interaction and the learner’s overall experiences. Students’ past exposure to the foreign language and culture has an important impact on their decision of which language to study, but it is not sufficient to sustain them on the long journey towards becoming an infinite player. As the numbers in Q7 indicated, only 9 out of 33 subjects considered their previous exposure to Chinese as significant motivating experiences.

Thirdly, one finding of the survey which was also supported by the follow-up interviews is the inessential role of short-term goals in the context of foreign language learning. Goal-setting has long been associated with efficient learning and motivation construction by researchers and instructors (e.g., Locke & Latham 1984, Stratton

2005, Gómez-Miñambres 2012). It is widely accepted that students who are good at setting goals are expected to achieve more than those ones who are not. The results of the survey showed that among this group of successful Chinese language learners

123 only a small percent of them (6 out of 33 subjects) strongly agreed that they were motivated by short-term goals. This finding was further clarified through the interviews with selected subjects. Along the journey of Chinese language learning, students are constantly assessed. The Chinese program at OSU utilizes a daily grading system where students are expected to pay attention to their grade each day that they attend class. As mentioned in previous discussion, many parallels can be drawn between the training of a Chinese student to reach superior level of working expertise and the coaching professional athletes. Essential to this is the frequent delivery of feedback and the continued participation of players in varying types of games. When students are defined by levels and selected for scholarships and study abroad opportunities based on their performance, it is inevitable for them to associate short- term goals with curriculum requirements. However, it is important to note that only goals set by the individual learners themselves can have lasting influence on learning behaviors.

Lastly, when asked whether future career and life had any influence on subjects’ motivation to learn Chinese, not a single respondent indicated an answer of neutral or strongly-disagree (Q9 in Figure 4.2). There is more than one way to interpret this answer. Eighty-five percent of these associate their language learning motivation with future career prospects subjects (28 out of 33 subjects indicated strongly agree and agree to the statement). Five of the subjects indicated disagree to the statement. The transition from learning Chinese to learning in China is defined as a “critical period” in Chapter three. Students also gradually establish a vision of whether or how to use Chinese in their future career during this period. As the survey

124 answers illustrate, it is a vision one either clearly has it or not. Through more in-depth discussion of this statement with selected learners, it was clear that those who had established the connection between language learning and career development, indicating strong agreement in Q9, were the students most likely to reach a higher level of working capacities compared to other members of the cohort.

4.5.1.2 Motivating factors

A total of fifteen motivating factors were categorized into five groups:

Socialization (Q1 native speaker, Q3 language teacher, Q8 role model, Q13 public presentation); Vision (Q8 role model, Q9 future career & life, Q10 resilience, Q11 short term goals, Q12 established foundation, Q14 professional application);

Curriculum design (Q3 language teacher, Q4 learning material, Q5 study abroad, Q8 role model, Q9 future career & life, Q11 short term goals, Q13 public presentations);

Tangible rewards (Q6 scholarship, Q15 professional advancement); and Pre-exposure

(Q2 personal interest; Q7 past exposure). The factors were not categorized as mutually exclusive. For example, Q13 public presentation is listed under both

“socialization” and “curriculum design” as it is an event associated with both human interaction and program goals.

125

Categorized Motivating Factors

Social

Vision 1 - Strongly Agree 2 - Agree Curriculum Desgin 3 - Neutral 4 - Disagree Tangible Rewards 5 - Strongly Disagree

Pre-exposure

Figure 4.3: Categorized motivating factors of advanced-level Chinese learners

As discussed above, subjects showed the highest agreement to the motivating influence of socialization. This group of Chinese language learners who have gained different levels of expertise in Chinese working culture explicitly indicated in follow- up interviews that interacting with Chinese people is not always pleasant. In fact, several of them stated that it was through a combination of pleasant and unpleasant experiences that they learned the skills necessary to achieve their personal and career goals in China. Another important notion in the understanding of socialization is that language learners’ interaction with their peers and learners whose Chinese was one or two levels higher than theirs (role model) is as crucial as their interaction with native

126 speakers of Chinese. The Chinese program at the Ohio State University encourages students at different levels to work together. Students who graduated from the program and those who currently work in China are invited to the classroom on campus and talk to junior learners of Chinese about their career in China. These interactions were described as one of the most motivating experiences by some subjects as meeting real life examples of people with similar backgrounds who have already achieved similar career goals was a unique experience. The positive effects of bonding between previous and current students tightens when those experiences are intentionally designed into the program.

It is also through curriculum design, including both pedagogical materials and learning activities, that learners have the chance to present their ideas in front of a

Chinese audience. This is a challenging task to most students. However, the sense of achievement, the attention and individualized feedback received from such training was recognized as having a positive effect by the subjects. Being able to clearly present one’s ideas in public is a greatly admired skill in Chinese culture. When foreigners possessed this skill, they are very likely to be respected and embraced by their Chinese associates. Aside from incorporating learning activities such as public presentations, identifying the best type of learning materials to motivate learners is also a curricular decision. When selecting learning materials, the motivating dimension of said materials is usually not the primary concern. Based on the findings of the survey, curriculum design plays an important role in motivating students.

However, there are two common misunderstandings about what to include in the learning materials to motivate language learners. One is the introduction of Chinese

127 culture through a separate section commonly entitled “culture notes.” It is claimed by those materials that introducing cultural facts about the target culture, such as Chinese festivals, the Great Wall or modern city life in China, “motivates” students to learn the language. As suggested by this study, students’ previous exposure to Chinese culture has minimal impact on their lifelong Chinese learning journey. A “reason” or an “interest” in the target language or culture does not necessarily increase learners’ efforts, or affect their long-term learning mechanism. Another more serious phenomenon of some popular Chinese learning materials is the attempt to “motivate” students by selecting the topics that are perceived to be interesting to young American adults, such as air pollution, organ trading, eating endangered species, or contraception in China. The rationale of selecting these “interesting” topics is clearly stated by the authors (e.g., All Things Considered 事事關心, 2011). It is believed that by increasing students’ participation in the classroom, they are more motivated to learn and use Chinese. As someone who has first-hand experiences of using this type of materials, I do not doubt that students show a high interest in discussing these topics in the Chinese language classroom. What concerns people is that how do the language students construct and sustain their learning motivation if they were already fully interested in discussing contraception or air pollution with people they meet in

China? How many Chinese people will be willing to interact with these students to any significant depth? We are what we speak. What we train our students to speak about is highly related to what they can achieve in the target culture. The results of the survey showed that curricular design has a relatively high impact on learner motivation. A motivating pedagogical material or learning activity not only produces

128 a fluent Chinese speaker, it also prepares learners for the establishment of long-term motivating relationships with their Chinese counterparts.

“Vision” is defined by Dörnyei & Chan (2013) as “the mental representation of the sensory experience of a future goal state, or in other words, a personalized goal that the learner has made his/her own by adding to it the imagined reality of the goal experience.” A Chinese language learner’s vision is tightly associated with what they want to do with their language skills: 27 out of 33 subjects indicated strong agreement or agreement to the statement that their biggest drive toward improving their Chinese after they reached advanced-level is to apply it to what they do as a professional (Q14 in Figure 4.2). As mentioned above, the program invited alumni who currently work in China to return to the campus and talk with current students. Those learners who intend to work in China after graduation are likely more motivated and better able to picture their future selves when presented with living examples of people who have achieved similar goals to their own. Chinese language in and of itself hardly constructs an appealing and sustaining vision. We imagine what we could do with our foreign language skills, and become excited by what can potentially be achieved through use of language skills. As I argued in the first chapter, the idea of establishing a learner’s vision builds upon future events that one can imagine. It is important to remember that our vision as well as motivation is an accumulation and reconstruction of our prior experiences, the past.

In addition, the subjects showed similar arbitration to “vision” and “tangible rewards” in the survey. Tangible rewards consist of things such as a scholarship, an award or an intern position in a company in China. A tangible reward certainly

129 contributes to the vision construction by providing a specific goal and a more detailed picture of future activities. Meanwhile, tangible rewards, as the subjects asserted during the interviews, serve as a meaningful recognition of their long-term efforts and achievements, also, a review of their recent past.

4.5.2 Analysis of qualitative data

4.5.2.1 A general motivation map

Seventeen subjects participated in one-on-one interviews where they were asked to describe their journey of learning Chinese and identify motivation-related experiences (see Figure 4.4). The blue circles in the chart are the prompts mentioned by the researcher to guide the interview. The blue dots represent those motivation- related experiences mentioned by the subjects. The greens dots are categorized as motivation enhancing experiences that increase learners’ long-term willingness to engage, perform and practice. The red dots represent learning experiences presented by the subject during the interview that were seen as challenging the learners drive to engage.

130

Figure 4.4: A general motivation map of advanced-level Chinese learners

Some of the motivating experiences have been widely recognized by researchers and instructors of different languages, such as study abroad opportunities and using authentic learning materials in intermediate-level instruction. However, some of the experiences mentioned by the subject are features only shared among

Chinese language learners, such as experiencing a period of frustration after investing two intensive years towards learning the language. Meanwhile, it was mentioned by most subjects that competing with their classmates was a significant motivating factor during their first year of learning Chinese. And once they reached higher levels, they constantly compared their performance with Chinese learners who were one or two years ahead of them. This competitive and self-evaluating learning mechanism is not

131 necessarily shared among all Chinese learners. However, it was an explicit characteristic of learners who have reached advanced or even superior level.

It is worth mentioning that every Chinese language learner who reaches an advanced-level of fluency and working capacity has experienced some type of frustration and challenges to their motivation. These challenges to motivation, represented by red dots in Figure 4.4, should not be viewed as purely negative factors.

When combined with motivating experiences, these challenges produce well-rounded learners. Instead of trying to avoid those moments of frustration, instructors and program designers should focus on learning experiences that help learners to construct their resilience. For example, it is important for instructors to recognize and address the challenging points often experienced by intermediate-level students by emphasizing what students can achieve with their language skills. One ideal solution for this low point is the study abroad experience. Students with one to two years of experience of learning Chinese should have been well prepared to accomplish many common everyday tasks. When encouraged to use Chinese with native speakers in the local community through interactions such as ordering a bubble tea or chatting with a taxi driver, students gain a strong sense of achievement that is patently different from motivating experiences that take place in classroom settings. It was indicated by the subjects who experienced this challenging period in the domestic learning environment that being introduced to authentic learning materials helped them to recognize their progress. However, intermediate-level learners are not yet prepared for watching a Chinese TV show or movie. Being introduced to a material that is too far beyond one’s level was reported as a demotivating experience. Students’ learning

132 motivation is highly influenced based on the kinds of authentic learning materials their instructors select and design into the curriculum.

What was not expected by the researcher is the critically low point reported by the subjects about their post-study abroad “expectation gap.” More than half of the subjects indicated that they were no longer satisfied with the domestic learning environment after living in China for a few months. Study abroad allowed students to realize and sense the cognitive pleasures of using Chinese outside the classroom through socializing with native speakers. By returning to the United States, they are once again restricted to using Chinese within a limited number of places and with a limited amount of people. This finding supports the survey result that demonstrate the heavy influence human interaction has on learner motivation. It also suggests us to reconsider the limitations and function of classroom learning. What should we do in intermediate to advanced-level Chinese classroom? Do we train students to be fluent, or do we prepare students to perform in the target culture and bridge them into the

Chinese community? The latter task is much more complicated, but that is indeed where we should be focusing our efforts. A student’s social milieu ideally expands with his or her interaction with Chinese people. When students return to the domestic learning environment from study abroad, they should be guided to maintain their interaction with people in China by using social media. In addition, it was reported by students that being able to discuss their professional interests with Chinese tutors was a meaningful experience that associated their language learning with their future career.

133 The subjects consistently reported that the initial inclusion into Chinese companies or institutions as an employee was a critically low point of motivation.

Being a semi-insider in the working environment, the language learners were no longer surrounded by people such as their Chinese teachers and language partners. In other words, in a working context, Chinese learners are expected to use Chinese to achieve common goals with their colleagues. In some regions in China, Chinese is the primary working language, while in cities such as Hong Kong or Shanghai, our language learners need to be extremely persistent to get their colleagues to consider using Chinese with them. The frustration is also caused by Chinese employer’s expectation for a foreign employee, for example, when to be a Chinese culture expert and when to be a foreigner. A foreign employee who considers himself as an insider

Chinese-like employee would be highly demotivated when they are treated as a foreigner in some contexts. In fact, learning when and how to strategically use the most effective foreignism is an essential skill that needs to be gradually developed. A learner who has never been trained to understand and adopt a working persona in a foreign culture has a much smaller chance to overcome the motivation challenging period than students who were required to perform the role of a Chinese employee from their first Chinese class. By the same token, a Chinese learner, such as Jamie, who does not know how to negotiate the meaning of a joke with Chinese people, would be in an even more challenging situation when trying to navigate the Chinese workplace.

134 4.5.2.2 Case One: Alex, the filmmaker

Alex followed the Combined Bachelor’s/ Master’s Degree path to complete his Bachelor’s degree in a non-language major and a Master’s Degree in advanced

Chinese language and culture. Alex started learning Chinese in a high school in

Chicago, attended the Ohio State University with a clear vision of improving his

Chinese and extending it into his future career. He was introduced to the combined undergraduate-graduate Chinese track during his first year in college and then worked toward that goal. Alex developed an interest in researching China’s influences on

Hollywood films during his study at the Ohio State University, and eventually attended the prestigious Beijing Film Academy. He now works in a film production company in Beijing and frequently interacts with young and well-known Chinese movie directors. Referring to the cyclic of motivation construction (Figure 4.1),

Alex’s overall motivation of learning Chinese and interacting with Chinese speakers has long been related with his vision of using Chinese to achieve his professional goals.

135

Figure 4.5: A motivation map of Chinese learner Alex, a filmmaker in China

Alex’s learning journey helps us understand the following important questions relating to Chinese learner motivation. First, what impact did Chinese learning experiences in a high school setting have on Alex? As Chinese gained in popularity among foreign language learners, the number of students beginning their Chinese learning careers as early as middle school and high school also grew steadily. An ideal Chinese language program in high school should focus on both language skills and learner motivation. In fact, there is a causal relationship between these two factors.

Students are motivated when they see they can use their Chinese to accomplish real life tasks. In other words, a dumpling party where everyone uses English is a meaningful event that increases learner’s interest and knowledge about Chinese culture, but not necessarily a motivating experience. Alex recalled those little field

136 trips he took with his high school classmates and Chinese teachers to Chicago’s

Chinatown. Those experiences were particularly memorable and fun to him because it was the first time he could actually “use” his Chinese to order bubble tea and conduct some basic interaction with Chinese people. It was not the tasty bubble tea that motivated Alex, but instead the sense of progression and growth that he gained through socializing with native speakers. One of the biggest misunderstandings of learner motivation is the idea that it is merely a supplementary construct that can be simply tacked on to any Chinese program. In fact, learning motivation is constructed through everything students do both in and outside the classroom. Alex, being a superior-level Chinese language learner now, recalled in the interview that he did not learn that much Chinese in high school, but his initial teachers made learning Chinese so enjoyable that he applied to the well-known Chinese program at Ohio State

University. Considering how much time one needs to invest in learning Chinese to reach advanced level, high school curriculum is usually just a starting point. If a young learner is able to leave the program with a strong desire to improve his Chinese and a host of learning experiences that bring light to the rewarding and pleasurable nature of learning Chinese, then the learner is well equipped for the long journey towards superior level proficiency.

Second, how does his vision of using Chinese affect his long-term willingness to learn and perform in a specific domain? Alex is one of the few subjects who attended the Ohio State University for the reputation of its Chinese program. He was also introduced to the undergraduate-graduate track during his first year, and had been working towards that goal from early on. Alex recalled that after his conversation with

137 the Chinese program administrators about the design of the program, he was immediately convinced that it was a great way to learn Chinese and he needed to join.

Knowing that he will eventually attend the master’s program and live in China for year, Alex constantly pictured himself using Chinese in those contexts. Markus and

Nurius (1986) suggested three types of possible selves that are associated with our motivational construction: what a person might become, what they would like to become and what they are afraid of becoming. Alex had clearly created images of those three types of himself along the journey of learning Chinese. Knowing that he would use Chinese everyday motivated him to learn more and concerns about looking bad or unattractive when applying for jobs made him work even harder. The most effective way to help our language learners create visions of learning and using

Chinese is through wise use of technology, reflecting and projecting their performance in the target culture. However, when students are not provided a technology supported vision, their interaction with more advanced Chinese learners serve the motivational purpose. Alex recalled his interaction with a program alumni who manages a game company in China. He said, “I remember just being blown away by his Chinese ability and we were all like ‘man, if we could all get to be that good’.” Knowing that someone who had gone through the same training and is now using Chinese to achieve his professional goals in China is particularly motivating. The more similarities one shares with the role model, the more effective and motivating the interaction would be. On the other hand, such a powerful and detailed vision could influence learner attitude towards different types of learning materials and curriculum.

When being required to learn Chinese through a story that describes the efforts of a

138 young Chinese woman to get out of her village, away from traditional familial relationships and rural life, Alex found it difficult to relate his future self with the story. However, when Alex took a course about the history of Chinese language, he constantly pictured himself discussing these topics with Chinese people and impressing them with his knowledge. When he associated Chinese learning with his interest in the film industry, he greatly expanded his social milieu and visions of utilizing his Chinese skills.

Thirdly, how does one develop expertise in motivating himself to practice and perform on a higher level? When being asked if he ever felt frustrated about learning

Chinese, Alex answered, “all the time.” Learning Chinese and reaching advanced level is a long and challenging journey. It requires time, resources, resiliency and a comprehensive learning mechanism, including motivating oneself. Different from some other subjects, Alex had a determined mindset to invest years into learning

Chinese from the very beginning of his journey. He started in high school and did not experience the motivation dipping point after studying Chinese for two to three years.

He did not expect himself to be fluent after two years of studying in high school.

Instead, he described his frustrating moment when he joined Beijing Film Academy as an advanced level language learner. He had studied Chinese for nearly seven years at the time, and lived in several cities in China for short periods. However, he was all of a sudden surrounded by “male classmates who like to swear, all want to make movies and are artists in their own right.” Alex just couldn’t pick up on what they talked about and he described it as the most frustrating experience in recent years.

Motivation challenges occur when there is a gap between one’s understanding of the

139 situation and the reality. The difference between Alex and those students who experience the motivational challenge during the first two years and did not bounce back is his resilience and expertise in motivating himself. Motivation construction is not different from any other physical or mental exercise, the more you practice, the better you are at it. A successful Chinese program should not aim at pleasing students and reducing their stress level. Instead, we should design certain amounts of failure alongside pathways to establish learners’ resilience. The ability to use Chinese in the workplace together with the long-term motivation to achieve the skills should be considered as a step-by-step and evolving process. As Alex and many other subjects who reached a high level of expertise working and living in China stated: they learned through the years how to deal with unexpected situations and adjust themselves and their actions accordingly. Their motivation for learning Chinese becomes more complex and stronger when it is closely intertwined with career and life goals. Being asked to use English with his colleagues and act as a “foreigner” in some social contexts is still a motivational challenge for Alex. However, he had years of experiences interacting with Chinese people in and outside the classroom which gave him a facility for understanding this culture. His vision of achieving career goals and succeeding in a Chinese workplace help him stay positive and motivated. To conclude, a language learner who gains expertise to successfully work in China must also have a plethora of motivating experiences in a variety of learning contexts, and be able to bridge language learning with his long-term career or life goals.

Lastly, which learning behaviors are considered as motivated by Chinese people, and how does it affect their interaction with Chinese language learners? Two

140 Chinese native speakers who study and work with Alex were invited to talk about their observations on his learner motivation and learning behaviors. One of them is

Mr. Li, who works with Alex in the same film company and describes him as a highly motivated Chinese language learner who always asks questions about Chinese culture, actively uses newly learned language, appreciates the difference between the two cultures, and interacts with Chinese friends by using social media. Mr. Li indicated that seeing a foreigner with these learning behaviors convinces him that this learner sincerely wants to learn the language. And, a learner’s motivation determines his interest and willingness to help him with Chinese learning. When the same interview was conducted with several Chinese people living in Shanghai who work with the subjects, this correlation between learner motivation and native speakers’ attitude is even more obvious. A fortunate situation for Alex is that most people he encountered do not use English in their daily work. Mandarin Chinese is the primary and sometimes only working language in the film industry in Beijing. In contrast, six language learner subjects of this study who have lived and worked in Shanghai reported that they had to fight very hard to use Chinese with their associates. Neil, who shares a similar training background and Chinese skills with Alex, now works in an international trading company in Shanghai. When his Chinese colleague, Mike, was interviewed to discuss the same topic, Mike said, “Efficiency is what I care about when it comes to work. Using English saves both of us some time so I usually prefer using English. Later when Neil and I become friends and hang out after work, he uses

Chinese even when I talk to him in English, so I know he really wants to practice his

Chinese. As a friend, I can compromise when it is not in a working environment.”

141 Mike has lived abroad and speaks very fluent English. Using Chinese to talk to a foreign friend is a “compromise” to him, and he is only willing to do so if he sees a high level of motivation in that learner. Another Chinese associate of Alex interviewed is his classmate at the film academy, Wen. Wen moved to Beijing from

Southeast China to fulfill his dream of making movies. He is in his early 20s, and doesn’t speak fluent Mandarin. Wen and Alex met at school and worked on some projects together. They helped each other to translate some movie scripts and gradually became friends. In Wen’s observation, Alex always asks questions about

Chinese language and shows strong desire towards learning about Chinese movies.

They share a lot of interest in common, but Wen emphasized, “I think he is a friend worthy to make because he is modest and eager to learn. Chinese is so difficult. I really admire his efforts and passion for learning the language. Although he is already good at it, he still challenges himself very hard to improve his Chinese. I think that is very cool.” What Wen said about his friendship with Alex inspired us to think further about how much learner motivation is valued and appreciated by the surrounding

Chinese people. The feature of being eager to learn, haoxue 好學, is highly valued in both Chinese classics and modern society. Western educators and researchers have for decades sought out ways to increase learning and working motivation through designing better curriculum and reward systems. Meanwhile, in Chinese culture, one’s motivation to learn is usually considered as one’s own morality. In Wen’s opinion, a motivated language learner is much more appealing to become friends with than someone who doesn’t show that motivation.

142 4.5.2.3 Case Two: Heritage learner and social worker, Jenny Liu

Jenny Liu is an American-born Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is Jenny’s native tongue as her parents, originally from Taiwan, taught her Chinese when she was learning to speak. Her parents, like many first-generation immigrants in the United

States, use their native tongue at home and expect their children to learn both the mother language and English. Her father forced Jenny and her siblings to use Chinese at home, and sent them to Chinese school during the weekend. When Jenny was 10 years old, they also put her in a 4th grade classroom in Taiwan for a month so that she could have an immersion experience and speak Chinese more fluently. Jenny took some intermediate-level Chinese courses at the University of Arizona where she earned her Bachelor degree in journalism. She spent a fascinating summer in China as a tourist when she was 19, but she was not studying Chinese intensively during those years in college. After graduation, Jenny worked as a crime and general-assignment reporter for two newspapers in Arizona and later went to graduate school in public administration at Arizona State University. She recalled that she lost a lot of her

Chinese during those years because she didn’t use it as much and wasn’t living with her parents anymore. In 2007 at the age of 27, she decided that she would do the

Chinese Flagship program at OSU and devote herself to really working on her

Chinese, hoping to turn her Chinese skills from a hobby into a career.

143

Figure 4.6: A motivation map of heritage Chinese learner Jenny

One convention of understanding heritage learner motivation is to focus on their cultural identity, considering their ethnicity as the most influential or even the only factor in the entire framework. It is indeed true that most heritage students begin to learn the language because of their family background, but their journey of becoming an active language user must involve other personal and career goals. Jenny, as well as other heritage learners being interviewed in this study, all stated that learning Chinese to know their heritage or understand their roots is not a very good motivator. They felt they knew enough Chinese to be tied to their family and roots, but to use Chinese professionally and put it into practical career use is totally different.

When Jenny joined the Master’s program at OSU, she finally had a chance to use

Chinese to learn what interests her, public administration and NGOs in China. During

144 the pre-program summer in Qingdao, Jenny discovered the Spring Buds Program, a hope project created by the All-China Women’s Federation in 1989 to aid young female drop-outs to return to elementary or middle school. She very soon decided that she wants to research that program and those people. She later moved to a relatively underprivileged area in Shandong Province and conducted her research there. Jenny had always sought out opportunities to improve her skills in reading, writing and presenting professionally. Therefore, when she had the opportunity to actually apply these skills in a field that she was knowledgeable about, she was highly motivated to bring her Chinese to the next level.

Another hidden fact about heritage learners is that although they are sitting in the advanced-level Chinese classroom, they may not have established a comprehensive learning mechanism as their non-heritage peers. Chinese learners, such as Alex, have fully experienced both success and failures along the journey of reaching advanced level. Over the years, they are able to identify the specific learning strategies that work best for them and understand how to motivate themselves.

However, Jenny had never learned Chinese intensively before she attended the

Flagship program at OSU. Regardless of her Chinese proficiency level, she was actually experiencing a critical transition period when she joined the program. It was also a motivational challenge to Jenny as she, for the first time, was not one of the most fluent Chinese speakers in the classroom. Her Chinese instructors, tutors and even herself all consider her as the student who has been involved with Chinese language and culture for the longest period of time. Although she was competing with classmates who had studied Chinese or even lived in China for extended periods of

145 time, people expected her to perform just as well, if not better than her peers.

Moreover, the way in which a learner like Jenny builds her vision and possible future selves is different from non-heritage learners. As previously mentioned, the ideal pathway to help someone envision her successful future self is through modern technology. While we are still developing a system to do so, the presentation of other successful learners from similar backgrounds is the best vision-evoking signal. In other words, when Alex meets a male non-heritage learner who has developed a fruitful business in China, he can create a meaningful and motivational vision much more easily than Jenny does. In fact, realizing that a foreign appearance sometimes contributes greatly to one’s career in China could be a disturbing fact to heritage learners.

The important role of socialization and sense of progression in the framework of motivation construction has been discussed. How does this cyclic structure (Figure

4.1) fit in Jenny’s case? Jenny was described as a very hard-working, sincere and respectful student by the Chinese professors who taught her at OSU. When she worked as an intern in Pingdu, her boss and colleagues all liked her. However, different form Alex who made a lot of Chinese friends during his internship, Jenny did not establish a strong personal relationship among the people she worked with. As she recalled, “being a Chinese-American, people had different standards for me in terms of my Chinese level. If it was not perfect, there would be a problem. So sometimes that was frustrating…My boss and colleagues would say ‘Your parents should have taught you Chinese!’ And I would be like ‘Yeah, they did.’ She obviously had never been to the U.S. and had no idea what it was like.” In most areas

146 in China, people expect foreigners to know very little about Chinese, so they always generously praise foreigner’s Chinese. Unfortunately, American-born Chinese do not belong to this category. Chinese people’s expectation for their Chinese skills is sometimes unrealistically high. You can only imagine how willing Jenny is to make friends with those who blame her parents for not teaching her Chinese well enough.

That makes Jenny feel the Chinese people she works with are hard to connect with. It was discussed previously that motivation challenge occurs when there is a gap between one’s expectation and reality. Since Jenny’s years-long efforts were not recognized and appreciated, it seemed to be extremely difficult for her to sense progression through interacting with her colleagues. Jenny said she knew she was making progress because she was getting higher and higher scores in Chinese tests, and eventually wrote her thesis in Chinese. Another heritage learner, whose parents were originally from Mainland China, also reported very similar experiences to that of

Jenny. She was even more frustrated when her Chinese colleagues criticized her

Chinese as she was “returning” to China with the expectation that she would easily blend in and be embraced. We cannot change Chinese people’s expectations and attitudes towards foreigners including heritage learners, but we can better prepare our students to negotiate and understand the expectations of their Chinese associates. And as it is indicated in Figure 4.1, learner motivation is considered as a co-creation of their vision, socialization experiences and sense of progression. Constructing a detailed domain-related vision or a strong sense of progression helps heritage learners to overcome some of the challenges that they encounter in interacting with native speakers.

147 Jenny has been teaching Chinese at college level for the past five years, and recently started working in a non-profit in Seattle. Her current job is not very China- related, but Jenny is able to use her Chinese to help her colleagues solve problems.

She also seeks a career that could combine her specialty and have her work on her

Chinese skills. When being asked to provide two Chinese contacts who know her language learning capacity and motivation, she suggested to interview her professor and program director at the Ohio State. Her professor, Dr. Zhang, who taught her for a year at OSU described her as one of the most hard-working and respectful students he has had, also commenting that her thesis was well written. Dr. Zhang, originally from

China, said that he constantly reminds himself about being politically correct and treating heritage learners in the same way as others. He even avoids correcting their pronunciation imperfections caused by their native dialects to protect their cultural identity. However, this awareness is not commonly shared by Chinese people living in

China. When heritage students are treated differently from their classmates in China, they get confused and frustrated. This raises the question of how to best prepare our heritage students for these situations. What can be designed into a curriculum to help heritage learners better adjust to their life in China? One person was mentioned repeatedly in different contexts by the subjects during the interview, Xue Laoshi

(Teacher Xue). Ms. Xue worked in a TV station in China before she moved to the U.S. in her 50s. She only speaks Chinese, and doesn’t know much about American culture.

She worked in the Flagship Chinese program as a tutor for several years. She criticized students in the way a Chinese mentor (boss) would do to her students

(employees), being very direct and sometime politically incorrect. Students loved or

148 hated her. With her typical Chinese mindset, heritage learners should, of course, read and write better than their peers. She was extremely harsh on them, and expected them to improve faster than non-heritage learners. Interestingly, those heritage students who had Xue Laoshi all mentioned in the interview that she was an influential figure along their journey of learning Chinese. Thanks to their interaction with her, when they actually moved to China, they were accustomed to very Chinese types of interaction and would end up thinking “Oh, China is actually not that bad!”

An advanced-level Chinese program with the goal of preparing students to perform well in Chinese working culture needs such a role as Xue Laoshi, who behaves as an authentic Chinese and cares less about political correctness. Since Xue Laoshi has the reputation of being difficult and non-American, students do not feel greatly frustrated when they fail to meet her expectation. For heritage learners, interacting with Xue

Laoshi is an effective warm up exercise that helps prepare them for the real game.

When the program director, Dr. Wei, is interviewed to discuss Jenny’s overall performance, he concluded that, in the study abroad context, heritage students compete with their classmates in terms of language skills as well as attention from the local community. Jenny and other heritage subjects all mentioned that when going out with their classmates in China, people would show more interest towards interacting with their “foreign looking” classmates. So, to balance the attention within the group,

Dr. Wei would suggest heritage students to lead some projects or organize events outside class. Meanwhile, as demonstrated in this study, heritage students at higher level are not motivated by their cultural roots, instead they are eager to improve their reading and writing skills in hopes of accomplishing more professional tasks with

149 their business Chinese. To motivate this group of learners, we should no longer focus on “what they should know and learn as American Chinese.” Instead, we need to recognize their motivation challenges, and emphasize their progression in the areas of interest to them.

150 Chapter Five: Toolkit for Designing Motivating Language Learning Experiences

5.1 Design elements of a motivating learning environment

5.1.1 Domestic Chinese programs

5.1.1.1 Campus diversity and language learning

As briefly addressed in Chapter one, our world is becoming a more and more diverse environment where cultural novelty and differences can be leveraged as significant learning resources. A diverse campus encourages students to expand their knowledge and capacity to interact with cultural understandings and world views that differ from their own. Hannah Chenetski, of thelantern.com, reported that among more than 6000 international students who attend the Ohio State University, over 60 percent of these students are from China. The Chinese students Chenetski interviewed indicated strong willingness to interact with domestic students and the local community. With about 3600 native speakers of Chinese on campus being interested in interacting with their American peers, Ohio State has transformed into a campus that is mutually beneficial to language learners and native speakers of Chinese.

First, for American students, Chinese culture is uniquely accessible in an authentic form. Being roommates or classmates with a Chinese peer helps young

Americans to understand modern China and how Chinese people see and behave in the world. Domestic students, whether they study Chinese or not, should be encouraged to observe and understand how their Chinese peers perceive the world.

151 One of the courses at Ohio State that helps Chinese and American students to understand both cultures is titled “Interpersonal relations and professional networking in China and America.” The course encourages American students, international students and visiting scholars from China an opportunity to observe and learn how to perform appropriately in the target culture—be it China or America. Students are required to group with classmates from the target culture and work together to design and perform a variety of contextualized interactions. During the class, students receive valuable feedback from classmates and tutors who possess cultural expertise.

This course was originally designed for language learners with a certain level of fluency to achieve a target-culture working capacity while they are in a domestic learning environment. However, such courses also greatly contribute towards helping freshmen adjust to a diverse campus environment.

Second, on a campus where the number of Chinese native speakers far exceeds that of enrolled Chinese language students, establishment of an effective language partner system can greatly enhance the language learning experience on a domestic campus. As discussed in the second chapter, students at beginning or intermediate level rely heavily on teacher’s feedback to obtain a sense of progression, however, this type of learning cycle is far from optimal. Ideally, each student should have access to a language partner with whom he can frequent practice newly learned vocabulary or sentence patterns. The primary objective of adopting a language partner system is to increase the learners’ sense of progress and awareness when using

Chinese outside the classroom.

152 Third, people generally have an inherent drive to participate and contribute to their local community. Learning and using Chinese outside the classroom should not be introduced and enforced as a mandatory task. Instead, we should guide our students to pay attention to what can be practically achieved other than a higher level of language fluency outside classroom. For example, requiring the students to spend an hour to explore the local Asian market is a good extracurricular activity, but it is not as motivating as providing students a detailed shopping list and having them buy things for an upcoming Chinese New Year event. Contextualized learning tasks initiate multiple reasons for action and human beings learn faster and better with a real need to solve problems.

5.1.1.2 Technology-supported curriculum

In reality, most higher education institutions in the United States do not have as big an enrollment of domestic and international students from China as Ohio State.

In fact, most Chinese language programs are located in small towns and cities and have limited direct contact with Asian cultures; thus, motivating language students becomes greatly dependent on the informed and intentional use of technology in the curriculum.

Over the years, I have encountered many English learners in China who, despite having limited interactions with native speakers of English, can speak the language with a high degree of fluency. When asked how they learned the language, the answer was consistent: watching American movies and TV shows. This suggests that classic American sitcoms such as Friends have probably improved these students’

153 English listening skill more than traditional standardized tests in China. The use of authentic learning materials in the language classroom, particularly movies and TV shows, is not a new idea. However, to achieve the greatest impact on the motivation of language learners, instructors should design specific and active learning tasks when incorporating media into the curriculum.

Meanwhile, as discussed in Chapter 4, providing opportunities for language students to interact with peers who have a slightly higher level of language fluency than their own is indeed a positive motivating experience. In language programs with a large number of students at a variety of proficiency levels, these types of activities are easy to arrange. However, in a small Chinese program where students are at similar levels, it is necessary to utilize technology to help students to create the vision of successful future selves. For example, with students’ permission, pictures or

Chinese names of the students can be designed into the learning materials and classroom drills. Instead of learning Chinese through Zhang Tianming’s daily life stories (a created character in Integrated Chinese), students should be guided to project themselves into the scene, then act them out, and observe their own performances. Also, on a campus with few native speakers of Chinese, students have limited opportunities to gain a sense of achievement through using Chinese outside classroom. Periodically inviting native speakers of the language to participate in classroom discussions or to practice online with students can be very helpful for learners.

154 5.1.2 Study and work in China

5.1.2.1 Short-term (summer) programs

In the context of SLA and Chinese language pedagogy, adequate studies have been conducted to investigate students’ short-term learning motivation in a study abroad environment. It is obvious to language teachers and students that using

Chinese with native speakers in a local community further motivates students to invest time in learning the language. As indicated in the general motivation map

(Figure 4.4) in Chapter 4, study abroad experience is described by subjects as an overall motivating experience, although the time in China may be accompanied with frequent demotivating incidents.

According to the cognitive dissonance theory introduced in the first chapter, human beings have the motive to reduce the cognitive gap between their feelings and pre-event expectations. Students’ understanding of language learning and their pre- program mental preparation directly affects how they interpret a specific learning experience. One of the most controversial practices popularized in the study abroad programs is the language pledge, where students promise to use only the target language, even when off campus. People who support the idea claim that being highly committed to the use of the target language helps to increase students’ language fluency and automaticity. Regardless whether that claim can be verified or not, students who are introduced to this perspective and are required to sign a vow to follow this rule naturally consider using only Chinese as one of the most efficient ways to improve their language abilities. Moreover, people who use English with

155 them are viewed in a negative light as potential rule breakers. Learning English and becoming a fluent English speaker is a trend among young people in Modern China.

An American student who studies abroad in China is going to be surrounded by people who prefer using English with them. What messages are the students delivering by wearing a shirt that says, “I only speak Chinese”? And how does this rule affect student learning motivation? In a study abroad context, enforcing a language pledge requires students to prioritize their needs of practicing Chinese when interacting with native speakers. With that mindset, being approached by Chinese people who want to practice their English is perceived as a negative or even demotivating experience. Instead of negotiating a possibility to fulfill both sides’ needs, students who deeply believe in the language pledge resolve their cognitive dissonance by misinterpreting the Chinese interlocutor’s intentions or even their own devotion to learn the language.

5.1.2.2 Achieving professional goals in China

Students studying in a C2 school towards a degree and working as employees in a Chinese company are categorized as the most serious C3 players in Walker and

Jian’s diagram of the third space (Figure 1.3). To successfully achieve their academic or professional goals, these language learners need to constantly negotiate and compromise their meanings and intention with their Chinese colleagues, people with whom they share social and career interests. As discussed in Chapter one, one of the most important tasks of beginning and intermediate-level students is to learn how to do things with their contextualized C2 persona, such as ordering food in a Chinese

156 restaurant, visiting a doctor in a hospital, or delivering a speech to a Chinese audience.

Language learners need to go through adequate training to be able to perform these difficult tasks. Short-term study abroad programs should take full advantage of the learning environment and design these tasks into the learning materials. However, language learners who study and live in China for a long term face a different kind of fatigue and frustration. The studies introduced in Chapter four indicate that advanced and superior-level language learners experience a critical motivation challenge when they need to be deeply involved with Chinese working culture. They report that working in a Chinese company is a much bigger challenge to their mindset than to their Chinese language abilities.

A healthy working mindset that can contribute to language learners’ long-term willingness to improve their Chinese working expertise must be established though a

C3 worldview. Requiring students to use Chinese only when they are in China is an attempt to enforce C1 beliefs and needs into cross-cultural interaction. Whether or not this rule can actually help students improve their language fluency without sacrificing accuracy is a matter of debate, however, it is clear that language learners with a

“language pledge mindset” are unlikely to sustain their learning motivation and succeed in Chinese culture. In fact, those students who are able to negotiate a balanced and mutually beneficial set of rules for interacting with their Chinese friends are the ones who later achieve a higher level of language and working capacities.

The Chinese flagship program at Ohio State is a two-year program where students spend their second year in China studying in a Chinese university and working in an organization as an intern. The second year provides an opportunity for

157 students to get used to working and living in China for a relatively long period of time.

It is also a critical training process that regular language courses cannot provide. What an advanced-level language program should focus on is the critical period discussed in Chapter three which guides language learners to transition from learning Chinese into learning domain-related knowledge in Chinese. One fundamental advantage of the domain approach is that it reduces the gap between learners’ C1 and C2 identities, and incorporates the language learning into one’s long-term career aspirations. In terms of motivation construction, the more contextualized activities we can project successful future-selves into, the more willing we are to invest time and efforts to negotiate an ideal C3 space to extend our language learning.

5.1.3 Individualized instruction and learning

5.1.3.1 Towards an understanding of motivation in individualized instruction

The Individualized Language Learning Center at Ohio State has been offering individualized foreign language instruction since 1976. As one of the longest running and most well-established individualized programs in the United States, the

Individualized Language Learning Center at OSU currently offers eight foreign languages including three East Asian Languages: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

These individualized language programs meet students’ practical needs by providing them with great flexibility in both scheduling their class time and adjusting their credit hours. Students come to the center and take class with the instructor individually. They also receive individualized feedback on their performance. Each

158 individualized session is 15-minutes at Ohio State. In Chinese I.I., by the end of each session, instructors usually leave two to three minutes for students to ask questions in Chinese or English. Meanwhile, the Individualized Language Learning

Center clearly states in their courses principles that “students who have succeeded in

I.I. are those who have experienced success in their foreign language study and are motivated to learn the language 8.” This understanding of successful learners and language learning motivation raises the following questions: How do students experience success or failure of their language studies in an individualized instruction learning environment? Is motivation a given condition that students already have when they decide to study a foreign language, or does it need to be constructed and reinforced throughout the learning process? Most importantly, can we pedagogically motivate a language learner in this unique learning environment where socialization among peers is absent?

When discussing learning motivation in the context of I.I., we need to pay adequate attention to some micro-level features of the learning context, such as the restricted social milieu, lack of peer interaction, students’ high willingness to communicate with their teacher during class and the type of feedback and evaluation students have access to. Applying Gardner (2010)’s framework (see Chapter one) to understand the motivation to learn a foreign language in the Individualized Language

Learning Center, “attitudes to learning situation” could be generally understood as how learners views the foreign language they are studying, such as considering

8 Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures at OSU: https://cllc.osu.edu/undergraduate/individualized

159 Chinese language and culture as an exotic, challenging and useful subject to learn.

Students’ attitudes towards the learning situation could also affect their decision of taking I.I. or classroom instruction. The “integrativeness” of a learner taking I.I. is clearly different from that of a learner in the classroom track due to their very different learning experiences. Students constantly compare their performance with their classmates’ in the classroom. They learn from each other’s mistakes, and are often challenged or discouraged by each other’s performance. However, in the context of I.I., students’ only mechanism to evaluate their own performance is through their grades and feedback received from the teacher. Individualized instruction seems to be a simpler learning context than the classroom, missing the interaction among peers.

On the other hand, the ability of adjusting one’s stress-comfort level is crucial in the context of individualized instruction. Unlike in a traditional classroom setting, students travel between anxiety and boredom depending on how much attention they receive from the instructor and classmates. In a well-designed foreign language class, students should always be prepared to participate. They cannot truly rest, but the class naturally continues if one student fails to answer a question. However, it is a much higher level of attention in the I.I. where the class totally stops if the student is not prepared. Each success or failure is magnified in this context.

5.1.3.2 Motivated learning behaviors in Individual Instruction (I.I.)

Using Gardner (2001)’s description of motivated learners as the criteria to evaluate learner’s behaviors in I.I., one can simply reach a conclusion that most students are highly motivated during the class. However, from my year-long

160 observation of Chinese language learners in a traditional classroom and

Individualized Instruction Learning Center, the learning environment of I.I. has a direct and significant impact on learners’ behaviors. In other words, students’ learning behaviors, including some defined-as motivated learning behaviors, are highly enforced in the I.I. class. Taking as an example “expends effort to achieve the goal, is persistent, and attentive to the task at hand (listed by Gardner)”, it is rare to observe students in I.I. do not making efforts for the task at hand. When siting face to face with the teacher and being told to repeat after the teacher, each student shows a high degree of participation and persistence to improve their performance and achieve learning goals. It is also much easier to observe students’

“positive reinforcement from his or her successes, and dissatisfaction in response to failures (listed by Gardner)” in the individualized instruction than a regular classroom. Does it mean I.I. students are generally more motivated than students taking regular classes? Meanwhile, motivated I.I. students might display some specific motivated learning behaviors, such as:

1) Paying close attention to and accepting their teachers’ individualized feedback

and improving their performance accordingly in a short period of time. Different

from learning a foreign language in the classroom setting where students receive

a lot of group feedback and correction, in the Individualized Instruction Learning

Center, students are usually provided with detailed, instant and individualized

feedback from the instructor. A motivated language learner is always eager to

bring their performance to a higher level, and this eagerness is much more

obvious when students respond to teacher’s individual feedback frequently if not

161 daily. In individualized sessions, it is often observed that a student shows the teacher that he remembers the feedback given in the previous classes, and self- corrects his own mistakes. It is also observed that some students take a close look at their teacher’s corrections on their writing assignments while others do not.

One major advantage of taking I.I. is that students can focus on finding and practicing their own shortcomings, such as pronunciation or reading skills.

Motivated I.I. learners know how to make use of this advantage and work hard on their specific mistakes or areas of improvement.

2) Motivated I.I. learners seek the instructor’s detailed feedback when being corrected, takes notes on the feedback, and return the next day with an obviously better performance. Those students who do not focus on improving their language skills would very likely regard corrective feedback as negative or useless information instead of an opportunity.

3) Raising meaningful questions by the end of a session: Those students who focus on improving their performance always make full use of the time to ask the questions they prepared, seek out more practice with the teacher, or discuss learning strategies. Learning a foreign language and culture that is very different from one’s own, students are expected to ask questions and solicit suggestions.

4) Trying to incorporate language learning into other dimensions of life: Motivated

I.I. learners are eager to use their foreign language with native speakers other than their instructor. Students who take classroom track have their classmates with whom to share learning experiences and use Japanese or Chinese with. I.I. students, on the other hand, must reach out and look for opportunities to practice and use

162 their foreign language, a challenging task for students at any level. Therefore, only

motivated I.I. students ask their teachers about how to actively extend their

language learning into their social life, such as joining a Chinese culture club or

having a Chinese roommate.

5.1.3.3 Creating motivational vision in I.I.

Muir et al. (2013) suggests using vision, the mental image of the sensory experience of a future goal state, to create an effective motivational self-system. They also give detailed instructions for designing this motivational pathway:

1) The sensory experience ideally involves more than one sense;

2) Ideal self must be sufficiently different from a learner’s present self;

3) Learner must believe that it is not certain that they will reach their goal;

4) Ideal self must be perceived as plausible, and not clash with other elements

of self-concept;

5) Ideal self must be regularly activated;

6) This ideal self must be contrasted by a feared self;

7) It must be accompanied by procedural strategies.

Students in a classroom setting frequently compare their performance with their classmates. A well-prepared student could be potentially projected as an “ideal future self” while an unprepared student can be a possible image for a “feared self.”

However, current I.I. students do not have access to anyone else’s performance. And it is hard for the students to notice their periodical progress with a grade. An effective way to expose students to their good and poor performances is to video record their

163 class performance once a month. Students should be required to compose self- reflections on the videos focusing on areas of improvement of their previous performances. Meanwhile, we want to help students visualize themselves as language users in the target culture using the language they have learned recently. We can also provide students a prepared script, have them voice-record their best attempt of reading the script, and incorporate their voice and image into an authentic contextualized performance. The more contexts students can project themselves into, the more willing they are to make efforts to realize the ideal future self. This motivational pathway of visioning ideal self seems to be even more in need in the context of I.I. learning due to the lack of peer comparison.

Another implication, drawing from the flow theory, is to realize that students in the I.I. program are under a much higher stress level for a shorter time period than they are in a classroom setting. Reviewing some of the findings introduced in Chapter two, beginning-level language students gain a strong sense of achievement when they accomplish a complete contextualized performance with the instructor, and intermediate-level students show interest in expanding their prior language and cultural knowledge. These two findings can be applied into designing motivating I.I. learning experiences. To reduce the pressure level and create a flow learning experience in that unique environment, the instructors of I.I. need to be aware of the importance of repetition and recognizing student’s prior knowledge. In other words, within the limited instruction time, we need to create moments where students can catch a breath, recognize their achievement, and feel encouraged to continue.

164 5.2 Teacher training toolkit

5.2.1 Learner motivation as a co-construct

Teachers should not be the center of the classroom, nor are they able to create learner motivation alone. A successful language teacher co-constructs motivating learning experiences with the students, but each individual student has the fundamental responsibility and power to sustain the motivation to learn.

One basic question a language teacher should always ask is how would a particular learning experience influence the learner behaviors in the long run. For example, whether the instructor should provide students with a prepared vocabulary list has been a long-debated pedagogical decision. Students who are required to use the vocabulary list and participate in daily dictation often indicate a good command of the new words. However, how does vocabulary-based exercise affect students’ long- term behavior in learning or using the language? Students who are graded by their quiz performance are sent the message that memorizing vocabulary is the key to learning the language well. More importantly, they become accustomed to learning the foreign language with a provided list and receiving regulated feedback. The fact is that there will be no prepared vocabulary list or guaranteed positive feedback for the language learners when they extend their learning into real life situations interacting with a Chinese community. Furthermore, being able to use a few difficult words or phrases does not impress native speakers of Chinese in the way as performing appropriately in specified contexts. Teachers’ pedagogical choices directly influence how students understand and approach the foreign language.

165 Although teachers can’t magically turn a student into a motivated learner, we can predict that some learning behaviors are more likely to nourish rewarding learning experiences in the long run.

A well-trained language teacher effortlessly adopts and switch between different roles in the classroom setting: a stage builder, an actor, a commenter, or simply an audience. As the classroom data in Chapter 2 indicated, students show a high level of participation when the teacher positions herself as a native speaker of

Chinese and shares cultural observations with them. They also embrace the idea of learning localized knowledge such as regional customs or accents. It is certainly important for a Chinese language teacher to speak and teach “standard” Mandarin, but good language teachers also know when and how to use their regional identity and knowledge to enhance learner motivation. For a non-native speaker language teacher, the role as a successful and experienced language learner is a major classroom resource to be used to full advantage.

5.2.2 Strategies to construct motivating learning experiences with students

The richness of the learning experience can be enhanced by teachers, but students always play the center actor in constructing motivation. Some basic strategies that a well-trained language teacher should be aware of include:

Strategy 1: Distinguish motivating experiences from pleasurable moments. A dumpling party where students get together and primarily use English is a short-term pleasurable moment. It could be very enjoyable and instill a deeper interest in learning the language in some students. In contrast, the primary effect of a motivating

166 experience is to increase the learner’s sense of progression and encourage them to invest more time to improve their language skills. Therefore, a dumpling party organized by the Chinese program generally will not create a motivating experience in the same way as students pro-actively searching for opportunities to interact with native speakers and use their Chinese.

Strategy 2: Co-create a flow experience. A teacher alone is not able to provide a flow-based learning environment in the classroom, it must be dynamically created from a mix of teacher-student and student-student interactions. Students constantly observe their peers’ performances and adjust their own performance accordingly. For example, an extremely well-prepared student who is surrounded by unprepared classmates is not very likely to achieve a flow experience. In fact, the role of the teacher should be to design a variety of activities with differing levels of difficulty in a way that stronger and weaker students can both experience their own optimal level of stimulation.

Strategy 3: Help students define and realize their stretch goals. As indicated in Chapter 2, it is possible for students who have only studied Chinese for a short period of time to successfully accomplish a complete contextualized interaction. In beginning to intermediate courses, a teacher should work towards having students realize how many contexts they can successfully perform in with their basic language skills. During the critical period discussed in Chapter 3, a teacher should focus on guiding students to integrate their language learning with domain interests. Initially it would appear to be a nearly impossible goal to the students, but through a series of designed activities and stretch goals, such as weekly public presentation and

167 individual domain tutoring, students are able to gain a sense of achievement and develop a stronger desire to continue the journey.

Strategy 4: Help learners visualize their respective development. One of the biggest challenges intermediate to advanced-level Chinese language learners face is recognizing the progress they are making. This is especially the case in a domestic learning environment where students have limited opportunities to use what they have just learned. Teachers design classroom activities and assessment systems that reflect students’ progress and achievement. Students should also be guided to monitor their own achievement closely, for instance, keeping track of how many new contextualized performances they have mastered during the past two weeks. Ideally, students’ daily performance should be video-recorded at regular intervals. Teachers should analyze learner performance with the students to identify areas for improvement and acknowledge their progress.

Strategy 5: Be familiar with what has been learned and soon to be taught. A well-trained language teacher must be familiar with the entire curriculum of the language program. The classroom data introduced in Chapter 2 clearly illustrates that students are highly motivated to expand their existing knowledge when they see a correlation between what is being taught and what they have already known. A teacher who is good at creating motivating learning experiences must be someone who maintains the delicate balance between what is known and unknown information to the learners.

Strategy 6: Bridge students into the Chinese-speaking world. A well- established language program should not merely focus on how fluent our students can

168 be, it should also pay attention to how well they can perform in the target culture.

With this understanding, language teachers should design learning activities that connect students with the native speakers’ world. Examples of this include introducing current topics that young Chinese people are keen to discuss or having students install and use WeChat, the most widely used social media app in China. One thing to notice is that a Chinese speaking environment created by the language program, such as a Chinese language table, is beneficial to a certain degree, but what influences students more in the long run is their ability to participate or initiate their own “Chinese language table” when they go to China or even when they are studying

Chinese in their base culture.

Strategy 7: Help students envision a domain-related successful future-self. The more detailed and achievable this “future-self” is, the more likely students can be motivated to become that better self. A decade ago, Chinese learners used textbooks and dictionaries to learn the language. Now almost all the language-learning materials provide audio files. The materials developed with the Performed Culture approach at

Ohio State University encourage students to watch the video performance in DVDs.

Looking forward, students will be able to project their own image and voice into the learning materials, and be more directly motivated to become that future self. More importantly, students should not envision themselves becoming a native speaker.

Instead, mastering language skills within a certain domain is a more motivating and sustainable goal.

Strategy 8: Encourage learners to negotiate a third space. Advanced-level

Chinese learners who participated in the studies from Chapter 4 have reported the

169 fatigue and frustration of being a foreigner in a Chinese working environment. The motivation challenges these learners are facing have little to do with their language skills. A common assumption when learning a foreign language well is to speak and act like native speakers. Therefore, it is almost natural for learners who reach high levels of fluency and working capacity to expect that they are working in the same cultural space as their Chinese colleagues. It is certainly demotivating to realize that performing like a Chinese employee is not only a demanding task but also often unappreciated by people in C1 or C2. As language teachers, it is important to develop the concept of the 3rd space and design activities that allow students to develop the necessary skills to innovate and work in C3. For example, explaining the perspective and expectations a Chinese employer will have towards a foreign coworker. To effectively navigate C3, advanced learners must master the art of appropriately utilizing aspects of C1 in combination with C2 cultural knowledge to successfully progress and win high-level games.

5.3 Game and foreign language learning

5.3.1 Game mechanisms

Learning Chinese as a foreign language is a long and intense process. The biggest challenge in achieving a level of mastery that allows the learners the ability to engage native speakers and effectively transmit intentions in Chinese is maintaining a consistent “game mechanism” over a long period of time. The concept “game” has been constantly associated with commercial video games and other types of

170 entertainment. Fun does not define the essence of a game. What makes any game meaningful and enjoyable is its well-designed failures with ways out, namely a strong sense of progression and engagement. The emotion we create in the learning process when students feel they have been constantly improving is what encourages them to invest more time in practicing.

Pine & Gilmore (2011) described four realms of an experience: entertainment, educational, escapist and esthetic (Pine & Gilmore 47). Considering foreign language learning as a game, motivating learning experiences must incorporate all four elements. Meanwhile, unlike escapist video games, this long- term language learning game focuses on extending one’s social milieu and developing culturally significant personae. Devoted video game players gain an immense sense of pleasure through escaping from their daily life, while successful language learners gradually expand what they can do in the daily life of the target culture.

Despite this fundamental difference, video games still serve as good lenses for us to explore the motivational mechanics. First, well-designed video games feature progression dynamics that a traditional language curriculum does not provide. For example, players are simultaneously informed of their efforts and achievements by gaining more EXP points, stars, newer and cooler avatars, or positive feedback from fellow players. In contrast, language students in a traditional

Chinese program are periodically graded and receive few instances of individualized feedback. The daily grading system used at Ohio State successfully increases

171 students’ awareness of their progress, but a more dynamic and explicit demonstration of students’ progress is needed.

Second, both competition and cooperation play critical roles in any type of game. The advanced-level learners introduced in Chapter four reported that the competition among peers serves as one of the most effective motivating factors during beginning-level instruction. The competition among language students is unavoidable and can be motivating with teachers’ guidance. A good language class must incorporate learning tasks that allow students who learn at different paces to participate while feeling challenged. Learning a foreign language to some degree is a “single-player game” where each player is expected to focus on improving his or her own language skills. Using the foreign language skills to learn or to achieve profession goals, on the other hand, is a game that requires team efforts. As discussed in Chapter four, cooperation with people from the target culture serves as a major motivating factor to students who consider language learning as an extended pursuit.

Third, rules and roles are the two key factors that define a game. One same move could lead to completely different results based on the specific rules of the games. For beginning-level language learners, the rules of grammar and pronunciation are indeed the focal point of learning, but it is necessary to prepare students for a higher level of game rules: cultural appropriateness. Cultural appropriateness does not only refer to behavioral rules such as submitting homework to the teacher using two hands or adopting politeness in the working environment, it is a general rule that guides the students to understand and respect

172 the target culture and people. Enforcing or projecting one’s C1 game rules into C2 scenarios can only result in unpleasant experiences and frustrated players, producing language learners such as Jamie who will never attain advanced levels in communicating with C2 members.

Lastly, two core elements that game developers focus on are how to effectively increase the user “stickiness’ of the product in the short-term while also enduring long-term popularity. Players’ ownership and loyalty to the game directly affect how much time and money they are willing to spend on a given product. By the same token, to maintain or increase the student enrollment in a Chinese program, we should consider what experiences keep them engaged and interested long-term.

Besides an evolving vision of one’s progress, another key factor of learner motivation is the creation of a sense of ownership through addressing what students want and feel. Traditionally, language students are provided with a list of mandatory learning tasks and graded by a predetermined assessment that allows no space for creativity or negotiation. A highly-controlled learning environment helps beginning- level students establish good learning habits, but leaving a space in the higher-level curriculum for students to explore and incorporate their individual needs helps to foster and maintain enduring engagement.

173 5.3.2 Gamify Chinese learning experiences

5.3.2.1 Development foreign culture personae

A persona is a completely different concept from personality or foreign identity in a sense that learners of Chinese as a foreign language should be able to develop and appropriately use specific foreign personae in a short period of time. As the findings in Chapter two suggest, a well-designed language program should encourage the students to present a language learner persona whenever they attend a class or interact with their language teachers. Furthermore, under this broad persona of a foreign language learner, a student should enter the classroom expecting to perform a specific foreign culture persona, such as a C2 employee, a student in a C2 school setting or as a daily customer at a Chinese restaurant. It would be extremely hard to imagine a video game player engaging with an unchanging avatar for more than four hours. We cannot expect our college-level language students to sustain a high level of interest in performing one single fixed persona, a Chinese language student, for four school years.

As discussed, beginning-level language learning to some degree is a role- playing game (RPG) where students focus on their own language skills and developing different personae. Once they grow into language users who constantly cooperate with other players to reach their professional goals, they are expected to effortlessly adopt a specific persona that fits the team’s structure and strategies. Like devoted players of multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, sophisticated language learners become more and more aware of their advantages and limitations in

174 the game and focus their energies on developing mastery level expertise in a few of the most advantageous personae in the target culture.

The subjects who participated the studies from Chapter four are a group of serious players of this cross-cultural game. When recalling their experiences of delivering public presentations during their first program year, more than a few of them mentioned that being required to wear business attire helps them to establish the persona of young professionals working in China. As language instructors or program designers, we should always emphasize on establishing detail-rich, varied and developing foreign culture personae into the curriculum.

5.3.2.2 Gamify the grading system

Based on the above understanding of Chinese language learning, a web-based

Game Point System (GPS) project was initiated at Ohio State to alleviate the challenge of learner motivation through a gamified design that combined course grades with additional points given for community-based language learning tasks.

This allows learners to obtain a sense of achievement as they earn higher and higher statuses in the system. The GPS project was designed to mirror the point accumulation and achievement systems commonly seen in video games and airline membership programs. As the learners gain more points and language ability through participating in courses activities and using Chinese to accomplish tasks outside the classroom, they earn more recognition and rewards in the program. Students can view their daily learning efforts and receive informative comments from the instructors in real-time (see Figure 5.1). However, different from a traditional grade sheet, students’

175 accumulated points are emphasized to focus their attention on overall performance in the program and steady improvement over time.

Figure 5.1: Student performance presented in the Game Point System

Students are also clearly informed of how many points they have earned and how many more they need to level-up in the system. By using the quick links on the right side of the website, students can click “View Teacher Feedback” to read the daily feedback teachers give for their performance in each course. A motivating grading system helps students visualize what they have achieved with their recent efforts and how much more they can improve within a relatively short period of time.

176 5.3.2.3 Design localized learning tasks

Instead of focusing on improving language proficiency solely through classroom instruction, a motivational curriculum encourages and guides the learners to extend their language learning and application into the local community. Using the

GPS project, teachers deliver program messages or post updated learning quests regularly, and students can conveniently complete and submit their task materials directly through the system (see Figure 5.2). Depending on the purpose of the tasks, students are required to record their voice or type in their mobile devices to submit their completed quests. For example, one quest in the “Exploration” category is to

“find a big supermarket around the campus and try to tell others how to get there in

Chinese.” This quest is designed with three learning objectives: exploring the surrounding areas, practicing telling directions, and describing the local campus.

Students have a high chance of using their speaking skill in these real-life tasks; therefore, they are required to voice-record the completed quest. A tight correlation between the localized quests and students’ daily life increases their participation. In addition, to increase students’ sense of ownership, they are encouraged to add new items into the quest pool and rate the ones they have accomplished.

177

Figure 5.2: Quest webpage in the Game Point System

In addition, students need to accomplish one quest to unlock the next one. All the quests are designed with one aim: sending students out into the local community and encouraging them to interact with native speakers (see examples in Table 7).

Instructors depending on their own specific location and curriculum needs can design and upload custom quests. The quest database is designed to be an open resource that allows both domestic and study-abroad programs to participate and collaborate.

178 Table 7 Selected examples of localized quests in the Game Point System

Category Quest Talking with 1. Find a Chinese person on campus, introduce yourself and ask people about some basic information. Take a photo with him/her in the end. (picture) 2. Talk with one of the hotel receptionist and find out his/her name and hometown. (audio) Exploration 1. Find a big supermarket around the campus and try to tell and others how to get there in Chinese. (audio) adventure 2. Take a picture of a sign on the street and make a brief introduction of it. (picture, text) Living skills 1. Learn to say the names of three dishes you would like to order most. (audio) 2. Find out what kind of common medicine you can buy from a pharmacy around the campus. (text) Culture 1. Go to the grocery store and identify a few types of fruit that observer you don’t have at home. (audio) 2. Go visit the dining hall in the campus. Talk about the differences between Chinese and American student dining hall. (audio) Knowledge 1. Do some research on Suzhou’s history. Find out what other seeker historical names this city has had. (text) 2. Say the names of five gardens in Suzhou. (audio)

5.4 Conclusion and future research

Through microethnographic analysis of classroom discourse at different levels,

Likert scale questionnaire and one-on-one interviews, the studies suggest that language learning motivation should be approached as a comprehensive, collaborative and cognitive mechanism that is facilitated by students’ interaction with teachers, native speakers, and peers.

The data analyses in Chapter 2 demonstrates that conducting longitudinal microethnographic studies in the Chinese classroom to understand and enhance level- specific motivated behaviors and motivating factors is a beneficial approach. The

179 current discussion is based upon the selection of some types of analytical lenses, for instance, positionality, knowledge expansion, peer attention and contextualized communication. For future research, more context-specific analytical agencies should be applied to further explore activities in various classroom settings. In addition, the current research data is constructed in a specific location where classes are all taught with the Performed Culture approach. Although the current data is collected in

Chinese language classrooms, future research may adopt a similar methodology to identify motivating factors in a variety of foreign language programs, and develop and categorize more meaningful frameworks to understand classroom language learning motivation.

Mentioned in Chapter 3, students who aim for developing language and working expertise in C2 have to go through a critical period during which they incorporate their domain or personal interest with language learning. At Ohio State

University, this critical stage is designed into advanced-level Chinese curriculums, particularly, learning activities during the first year of the Master’s program in

Chinese. One area that was not discussed in depth was how study abroad experiences can potentially influence learners’ perception and adjustment during this critical stage.

Investigating when and how to increase the correlation between learners’ domain and foreign language career within a timeline of four school years, involving study abroad summers, is a research project worth pursuing.

Findings in Chapter 4 present a generalized framework for us to understand the learner motivation required to reach advanced and superior-level proficiency and working capacities. The analyses are drawn upon the questionnaire results and

180 Chinese learners’ description of their previous learning experiences. The two case studies of Alex and Jenny indicate that each learner’s motivational map differs in detail, especially between heritage and non-heritage students. An ethnographic study to trace different types of individual learners over a number of years and across different working environments and roles may be conducted in the future to enhance the understanding of their motivating learning experiences and motivation challenges.

This type of research becoming more feasible as the number of learners of Chinese as a foreign language reaching truly advanced levels increases enough to have a significant data pool.

Finally, as suggested in the research implications sections in Chapter 5, motivating learning experiences are jointly created through wide array of elements including well-designed learning environments, teaching strategies, learning materials, grading and socialization systems. That is to say, one cannot expect to increase learner motivation by simply improving a single aspect in the language program, especially if the program improvements only focus on changes to instructors and classroom activities. Given the ever-expanding demand for cross-cultural working expertise, a clear imperative for the expeditious adoption of new technologies that can facilitate the training of individuals to advanced levels of proficiency has emerged. A learning-centric gamified social media platform where students, teachers, language partners and native speakers can collaborate and enhance students’ learning experiences is worth future development.

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188 Appendix A: Contextualized role-play in beginning-level Chinese classroom

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224 Appendix D Online questionnaires with advanced-level Chinese language learners

1. Interacting with native speakers of Chinese encouraged me to improve my Chinese. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 2. My personal interest, such as music, sports or business, encouraged me spend more time on improving my Chinese. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 3. At certain stage of my Chinese learning journey, I was motivated to work hard by my language teacher. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 4. Some learning materials I used have influenced my willingness to engage and practice. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 5. I was eager to improve my Chinese after I visited China/Taiwan for the first time. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 6. I was once motivated to improve my Chinese for a scholarship or job opportunity. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 7. I had a clear reason to start learning Chinese (family roots, Chinese-related hobby, job, etc.) Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 8. I was once motivated by Chinese language learners who can speak fluent Chinese, and wanted to reach their level some day in the future. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 9. When I realized that Chinese would be related to my future career and life, I was more willing to improve my language performance. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree

10. I have experienced a tough time of learning Chinese, but I eventually pushed through because I knew Chinese will be related to my future life or career. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 11. I did not have a long-term goal for learning Chinese, but I had some short-term goals that kept me going. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 12. The Flagship Program I attended helped me to establish a foundation of using Chinese in my career. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree

225 13. Being asked to give presentations on our own research project in a public setting encouraged me to practice a lot. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 14. My biggest drive to improve my Chinese after I reached advanced-level is to actually apply it to what I do as a professional. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree 15. I will work hard to improve my Chinese at this point if there is tangible reward involved, such as money, promotion, or a new job opportunity. Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree

226 Appendix E: Interview questions with selected learners

Based on your answers to the online questionnaire, I will ask you some questions. As mentioned in the consent form, this interview will focus on your memorable Chinese learning and working experiences. You can pause the interview, and skip the question you do not feel comfortable to answer at any time. 1. A lot of students who study Chinese do not continue after one year or two. Few have reached the advanced-level as you did. In your opinion, what are the major reasons for you to continue with Chinese learning? Can you list three? 2. Now you look back, who was the most influential people in your journey of learning Chinese? Your family, teacher, classmate, Chinese friends? 3. Did you interact with native speakers of Chinese often when you were beginning or intermediate-level student? Did you always enjoy it? 4. Can you recall any learning material that you used in school setting was particularly motivating or demotivating? 5. When did you have your first study abroad experience? Now you look back, do you think it motivated you to improve your Chinese, or made you want to give up learning Chinese? 6. Was there a certain period or moment that you realized Chinese was going to be closely related to your career? 7. Do you think it would make a difference if you associate Chinese learning with your career at an early stage? 8. Who did you compare your Chinese with at different stages? Your classmates? Previous Flagship students? Or native speakers? 9. Was there a point that you felt frustrated about learning Chinese and wanted to give up? If so, what brought you back? 10. Did you set long-term or short-term goal of your Chinese learner? Can you give some examples? 11. What is your biggest take-away from the Chinese Flagship Program? 12. During your first year of the Flagship Program, you took course and prepared for conducting your research project in China. Was any learning experience during that first year particularly useful to your later professional life? 13. Was any learning experience during your second year particularly helpful to your later career? 14. What will motivate you to spend time on learning Chinese and bring it to an even higher level at this point? 15. Last question, do you mind providing the contacts of two Chinese people you have worked together with recently so I can interview them about your language learning capacity and motivation?

227 Appendix F: Interview questions with native Chinese speakers

You can choose to use English or Chinese to participate this interview. You can pause the interview, and skip any question that you do not feel comfortable to answer. As indicated in the consent form, this interview focuses on your observation and perspective of the learner’s language performance and their learning motivation. 1. How did you know this learner? 2. Do you usually communicate in Chinese or English? 3. If you use both languages, in which particular contexts do you use English or Chinese? 4. Based on your observation, is he a motivated Chinese language learner? Can you give some examples? 5. Based on your observation and opinion, what distinguished him from other language learners who do not reach his language level? Can you give some examples of his specific behaviors? 6. Did he ever mention why he wants to learn and improve his Chinese with you? 7. In your opinion, what kind of learning activity or learning tips can help him improve his Chinese at this stage? 8. Have you discussed about these suggestions with him? Did he follow your suggestion? If not, what could be hindering him in your opinion? 9. What kind of rewards can motivate him to improve his Chinese at this point? A promotion? A higher income? 10. Do you think his learning motivation level affects his socialization with Chinese people? On the other hand, does his socialization with Chinese affect his motivation level of learning Chinese? 11. You have mentioned some of his motivated learning behaviors, can you think of any other possible motivated learning behaviors of an advanced-level Chinese language learner? 12. Last question, do you think it is necessary train our language learner to “appear motivated” in Chinese culture?

你可以选择用中文或者英文来完成这次采访。和在您之前签的采访同意书中提到的一样，这次采访主要是听取您对这位学生的语言能力和学习动机的看法。您可以随时暂停采访，也可以跳过让您觉得不合适回答的问题。

1. 您是在什么样的场合认识他的？ 2. 你们平常交流用中文还是英文？还是都使用？ 3. 在哪些情况下使用中文，哪些情况下使用中文呢？ 4. 根据您的观察，他对学中文的热情高吗？您能举几个例子吗？

228 5. 根据您的观察和看法，他为什么中文能够学得比较不错？你能举几个你观察到的他的学习习惯？ 6. 在您和他交流的过程中，他有没有和你讨论过他为什么要学中文？有什么事情是让他很希望提高他的中文的吗？ 7. 在你看来，目前什么样的训练或者学习方法可以帮助他的中文进一步提高的？ 8. 你有没有和他提出过这个建议？他接纳你的建议并有所行动了吗？如果他并没有，你能不能根据你的看法谈一下为什么他没有那样做吗？ 9. 在你看来，什么样的刺激或者奖励可以让目前阶段的他愿意提高自己的中文？升职？加薪？还是别的什么呢？ 10.你觉得他学习语言的积极程度是不是影响他和中国人的交际？反过来，他和中国人交际的过程是不是影响他学习语言的动力和积极程度呢？ 11.在你看来，学生的哪些行为会让中国人觉得他有提高中文的动力？ 12.你觉得有没有必要再教学的过程中训练学生在中国文化中表现出学习积极性呢？

229 Appendix G: Ohio State University Chinese language curriculum

Level Course # of # of Course descriptions Instructional goals number hrs crdt s One 1101.01 70 5 Beginning 1 Classroom Performed culture materials and 1101.02 5 Beginning 1 Immersion instruction delivered in classroom and in 1101.51 5 Beginning 1 Individualized individualized instruction. Emphasis on 1102.01 70 5 Beginning 2 Classroom recognizing and responding to situations 1102.02 5 Beginning 2 Summer Immersion and events in Chinese culture. Writing 1102.51 1/5 Beginning 2 I.I. focused on spoken language events. FACT/ACT management of instructional time. Two 1103.1 70 5 Early Intermediate Classroom Performed culture materials and 1103.2 5 Early Intermediate Summer Immersion instruction delivered in classroom and in 1103.51 1-5 Early Intermediate Individualized individualized instruction. Emphasis on 2102 70 5 Intermediate Classroom recognizing and responding to situations 2141.01 70 5 Intermediate Oral Intensive and events in Chinese culture. Gradual 2141.02 5 Intermediate Summer Immersion introduction of film, television, and print 2151.01 70 5 Intermediate Written Intensive media materials. Written compositions 2151.51 1-5 Intermediate Written Intensive focused on narrative. FACT/ACT Individualized management of instructional time. Three 4101 70 5 Late Intermediate Classroom 1 Performed culture materials and 4102 70 5 Late Intermediate Classroom 2 instruction are balanced with materials 4142.01 70 5 Late Intermediate Spoken Intensive from film, video, and contemporary 4142.02 5 Late Intermediate Spoken Summer journalism. Focus on recognizing and 4152.01 70 Immersion describing formal communicative events 4152.51 5 Late Intermediate Written Intensive and building and directing extended 1-5 Late Intermediate Written Intensive discourses. Written composition focuses Individualized on written style language and written genre. FACT is delivered in Chinese most of the time. Four 5101.01 42 3 Advanced 1 Classroom Materials predominantly taken from 5101.02 3 Advanced 1 Summer Immersion contemporary media and instruction 5101.51 1-3 Advanced 1 Individualized focused on eliciting responses appropriate 5102.01 42 3 Advanced 2 Classroom to the social expectations of Chinese of 5102.02 3 Advanced 2 Summer Immersion different ages and social roles. Written 5102.51 3 Advanced 2 Individualized compositions are focused on commonly 6193 42 3 Independent Study recognized genre. Instruction in Chinese only. Five 5103 42 3 Chun Cao 1: novel and video series Original materials only. Focus on spoken 5104 42 3 Chun Cao 2: novel and video series and written narratives. Engagement with 6194 42 3 Service in Chinese community Chinese beyond the coursework. 7151 42 3 Scholarly Readings 1 Narrowing down on topics of long-term 7671.51 70 5 Domain I: Research and topic interest. Classroom communication development follows along Chinese expectations. Six 7152 42 3 Scholarly Reading 2 Deepening knowledge of a chosen 7660 42 3 Professional Networking and Relations domain. Performance requirements for 7617 42 3 Contemporary Chinese Media formal social roles and capacity to analyze 7655 42 3 Language in China contrasting social expectations. 7672.51 70 5 Domain II: Research and Proposal Development of research topic. Development Developing Chinese style teacher-student relations. Seven 7615 42 3 Chinese Perspectives on China’s Deepening exploration and understanding 7670 42 3 Civilization of fundamental Chinese concepts and 7650 42 3 Literary Language in Modern Mandarin attitudes. Develop ability to recognize and 7701 42 3 Negotiation in Chinese Culture respond to necessary or preferred social Pedagogical Syntax maneuvers. Successfully function in Chinese-style teacher-student relation. Eight 6998 Masters Project Work with faculty advisor 6999 Masters Thesis Total 1,470 hrs

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