A Time Perspective of Motivational Fluctuation over Task Performance of Persian Language Learners (Intermediate Level)

Motivation for learning a new language does not have an all-or-none impact. It is gradually formed and fluctuated over time and on each timescale has varying levels of influence on a person’s endeavor to learn a language. At the present time, scholars claim that throughout the Second Language Development (SLD) different timescales interact with each other and this interaction is nonlinear, complex and dynamic in nature (de Bot 2015). The present study attempted to investigate the motivational dynamics of a group of Persian learners in longer timescales composed of a number of tasks performed on shorter timescales. Ten participants were interviewed at the onset, while performing tasks and at the end of the course to better picture the interplay of different motivational themes over time. The findings confirmed temporal variation in participants’ motivation. Although some individual specific variation was observed, the average group motivation was increasingly tending toward an overall stable state. Moreover, the data revealed the fact that motivational themes were not equally effective over the course and during task performance. It was shown, for example, that factors influencing learners’ initial motivation were less influential during the task completion. Finally, L2 motivation was found to contain an interrelationship of a number of dynamic and complex factors which varied over different timescales and had different motivational intensity in each specific stage. Finally, some implications were driven from the findings of the study.