The Ideal L2 Self and the integrative motive

The Ideal L2 Self is the vision of the language learner of his/her future self as a user of the target language. The strength of the vision helps and motivates the learner to reduce the discrepancy between the actual and the imagined future self. Dörnyei (2009) claimed that “traditional integrative and internalized instrumental motives would typically belong to this component” (p.

29).

Let us now examine this component in some detail. The Ideal L2 Self is one of the two dimensions that are situated at the self level in Dörnyei’s theoretical model (2005). This dimension is said to have grown out of the concept of integrativeness that was introduced by Gardner (1985). He perceived the integrative motive to be a central element of the socio-educational model (see Figure 3. for a schematic representation of the integrative motive). As it

can be seen the integrative motive is a tripartite construct and includes motivation, integrativeness and attitudes towards the learning situation.

Integrativeness, in turn, within the integrative motive construct “offers a process explanation of how attitudinal/motivational variables interact with language acquisition contexts to promote achievement in the second language” (Gardner, 1985, p. 170). Besides, as already noted, Gardner and Lambert (1959) understood integrative orientation as a goal one has to integrate into the target language community. The conflicting nature of the three concepts was one of the reasons why researchers asked for a reformulation of the concept of integrativeness.

Figure 3. Schematic representation of Gardner’s conceptualization of the integrative motive as represented in Dörnyei (2005, p. 69).

But due to “a major shift in mainstream psychological and educational psychological theories of motivation” (Dörnyei, 1994a, p. 515) at the beginning of the 1990s several scholars challenged the extent of generalisability of the concept. As Dörnyei and Csizér (2002) claimed:

We believe that rather than viewing ‘integrativeness’ as a classic and therefore

‘untouchable’ concept, scholars, need to seek potential new conceptualizations and interpretations that extend or elaborate on the meaning of the term without contradicting the large body of relevant empirical data accumulated during the past four decades (p.

456).

As integrativeness turned out to be an influential component of language motivation even in foreign language contexts (e.g. Dörnyei, 1990) where “learners often have not had sufficient experience of the target-language community to have attitudes for or against it” (Dörnyei, 1990, p. 49) researchers gradually started to enlighten new aspects of the concept (Au, 1988; Crookes

& Schmidt, 1991; Oxford & Shearin, 1994).

The perceived importance of English in the world has also gone through a considerable change which also questioned the stability of integration. Gardner (2001) claimed that integrative orientation:

reflects a genuine interest in learning the second language in order to come closer to the other language community. At one level, this implies an openness to, and respect for other cultural groups and ways of life. In the extreme, this might involve complete identification with the community (and possibly even withdrawal from one’s original group), but more commonly it might well involve integration within both community. (p. 5).

Thus, with English becoming an intercultural language it became more and more difficult to identify with the integration into ‘the other language community’ (Dörnyei, et al., 2006;

Jenkins, 2009; Yashima, 2002). Kormos and Csizér (2007) refer to Widdowson (2004, 2007) when claiming that

an additional problem is that in the case of English, which is often used as a lingua franca in many countries of the world, it is impossible to identify the specific ethnic and cultural groups that represent native speakers of the language. (p. 242).

Therefore, empirical findings that noticed the emerging intercultural status of English also pointed to the need of reinterpreting integrativeness to make it become a more feasible element in

motivation constructs. One possible starting point for expanding the notion was found to be the examination of the role and place of the integrative motive in Gardner’s (1985) theoretical construct. As it was already noted Dörnyei (1994b) reported some critical comments in terms of terminological, measurement, and conceptual issues regarding the integrative motive in the socio-educational model.

Examining the place and understanding of integrativeness in Gardner’s model was followed by a new definition of integrativeness, namely that integration “may not so much be related to any actual, or metaphorical, integration into an L2 community as to some more basic identification process within the individual’s self-concept” (Dörnyei & Csizér, 2002, p. 456).

Consequently, the appearance of the Ideal L2 Self seemed to offer a way of reconceptualizing the notion of integrativeness. Dörnyei (2010) referred to the nationwide motivation survey in Hungary and the consequent data analysis process as a process that helped him to realize the explanatory power of the Ideal L2 Self as an alternative concept to integrativeness. The survey was longitudinal in nature and took place in 1993, 1999, and in 2004.

Altogether more than 13000 13/14 year old Hungarian learners were involved in the studies.

They investigated motivation towards five different target languages. Their main finding was that integrativeness mediated the impact of all the other attitudinal and motivational variables on the criterion measure which was language choice and language learning effort, respectively. Another consistent finding was that the immediate antecedents of integrativeness were attitude towards L2 speakers/communities and instrumentality in each of three independent samples (see Dörnyei, et al., 2006 for a detailed description of the survey). Dörnyei (2010) was certain that these findings might be interpreted with the help of the Ideal L2 Self. He concludes that

with regard to Attitudes towards the L2 speakers/community we must realize that the actual L2 speakers are the closest parallels to a person’s idealized L2-speaking self, which suggests that the more positive our disposition towards these L2 speakers, the more attractive our idealized L2 self (p. 79).

Dörnyei and Csizér (2005) also proposed that integrativeness should be relabelled as Ideal L2 Self, to become able to “explain the motivational set-up in diverse learning contexts, even if they offer little or no contact with L2 speakers” (p. 30). Ryan (2006) somehow contributed to this line of thinking by acknowledging the importance of the Ideal L2 Self when arguing that it is a core component in helping the foreign language learner to keep in contact with an imagined community that uses the target language as the medium of communication.

The nature of the Ideal L2 Self as an influential independent factor explaining language motivation has indeed been verified by research findings. Kormos, et al. (2011) in their questionnaire research including 518 Chilean English learners found a strong link between their ideal self and motivation. Csizér and Lukács (2010) also asserted the dominant role of the Ideal L2 Self in their questionnaire study including 237 16/17 year old Hungarian learners. They compared the motivation construct of those who learnt English as a second and German as a third language and vice versa. They also found the ideal self to be “the most well-developed for English for learners of English as a first foreign language as opposed to their German-related ideal selves” (p. 14).

A quite similar finding was found by Kormos and Csizér (2010) in a motivation survey including Hungarian dyslexic and non-dyslexic learners of English and German. They found the Ideal L2 Self to be one of the two scales being present in the motivation system of all the four groups. The other scale was self-concept, which is also related to one’s visions of accomplishing future plans and goals.

As it was already mentioned, the ideal self was found to be related to attitudes and instrumental motives (Dörnyei, et al., 2006). Csizér and Dörnyei (2005a) claimed that these are two complementary aspects of the ideal self: “its general agreeableness and and its

achievement-related effectiveness/competence” (p. 30). As it will be discussed below, the motivational set-up of Korean learners of English and English learners of German shows a similar picture.

Kim (2009) in her interview study involving two Korean learners of English found that knowing English for career purposes related more to the ideal self of one of the learners. A similar conclusion is drawn by Busse and Williams (2010), who applying mixed method research, investigated the motivation of learners of German at two English universities. They also found evidence that instrumental reasons were closely related to the ideal self and students’ wish for language proficiency. Level of language proficiency and career plans might have something in common as they are both instances of the learners’ future visions/plans related to positive possible selves.

In another study Alastair (2009) conducted a longitudinal questionnaire study with Swedish language learners at the end of the 6^th and the 9^th grade. Interestingly, he found

“attitudes to/interest in FLs and the ideal FL self are both significantly related to attitudes to the learning situation” (p. 188). This result would suggest a strong relationship between attitudes to foreign languages, learners’ ideal self and their learning environment that are two of the three components in the Motivational Self System theory (Dörnyei, 2005a).

Ryan (2009) replicated Kormos and Csizér’s (2008) questionnaire study and found a remarkably high correlation between the Ideal L2 Self and integrativeness among Japanese learners of English, whereas Kormos and Csizér’s (2008) pointed to a moderate relationship only. Instead, they found evidence for the ideal self and language learning attitudes to be the most important predictors of language motivation among secondary school learners, university and adult students, too. Ryan (2009) also found the ideal self to be a better indicator for learning effort for secondary school students, but not for university students in his sample of participants.

As it can be concluded a huge majority of studies found the Ideal L2 Self to be a better indicator of motivation than integrativeness. However, including both integrativeness and the

ideal self as independent scales Kormos and Csizér (2008) argued that in their sample Ideal L2 Self could not replace integrativeness. But taking into consideration the efficiency of the ideal self in explaining motivation and their own research findings, Kormos, et al. (2011) proposed a refreshed look at “the Ideal L2 self as a future second language self-guide, which includes distal personal goals related to L2 learning and one’s beliefs about being able to realize these goals” (p.

16).

In the present study the Ideal L2 Self was included for two reasons. First, as it was proved to be a dominant predictor of language motivation, it seemed to be a challenging issue to explore whether it has such an explanatory power in the case of Hungarian minority learners’ language motivation. Next, the different status of the two language also could answer the question whether there exist several ideal selves with different structure or whether there are common core elements of ideal self constructs (cf. Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009b).