Current Issues in Education > Volume 7, 2004 > Number 4

Citation Information

Jernigan, C. G. (2004, May 4). What do students expect to learn? The role of learner expectancies, beliefs, and attributions for success and failure in student motivation. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 7(4). Available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number4/

What do Students Expect to Learn? The Role of Learner Expectancies, Beliefs, and Attributions for Success and Failure in Student Motivation

Christine Galbreath Jernigan

Abstract

This study uses the foreign language classroom to examine students' beliefs about learning, perceptions of goal attainment, and motivation to continue language study. Survey and interview results indicated students’ attributions for success and failure and their expectations for certain subjects’ learnability played a role in the relationship between goal attainment and volition. It appears that over-effaciousness negatively affected student motivation. For other students who felt they were "bad at languages," their negative beliefs increased their motivation to study. Suggestions for how these results apply to other disciplines and interventions for increasing student motivation are offered.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Theoretical Framework
• Value-Expectancy Theories
• Self-Efficacy and Attribution
• Significance and Objectives
• Methodology and Procedures
• Measurements and Pilot studies
• Participants
• Data collection
• Data Analysis
• Results
• Research Question 1: Student Expectations
• Goals for the course
• Expectations and Perceived Goal Attainment
• Speaking Goals
• Cultural goals
• Research Question 2: Student Attributions
• Research Question 3: Goal Attainment
• Discussion and Recommendations
• Limitations
• Future Directions
• Notes
• References
• Appendix A: First Survey
• Part I: Background Information¹
• Part II: Reasons for Studying Portuguese
• Part III: Your Goals in this Class
• Appendix B: Second Survey
• Part I: Background Information¹
• Part II: Goal Attainment this Semester
• Part III: Factors Influencing Continuance of Portuguese Study
• Part IV: Factors Influencing Discontinuance of Portuguese Study
• Appendix C: First Interview Questions (30 Selected Students)
• Appendix D: Second Interview Questions (30 Selected Students)
• 1. Motivation Type
• 2. Goal Modification
• 3. Additional Questions for Specific Students
• 4. Representative

Introduction

"Life is largely a matter of expectation." Horace (65 BC-8 BC)

Over the past decade, second language acquisition researchers have added greatly to their understanding of motivation. Their discoveries are often relevant to educational disciplines outside language learning, but are rarely mentioned in academic journals or texts for more general education. The present study looks specifically at language student expectation and motivation to see how student expectations relate to their motivation for continued language study. This paper examines several affective aspects of expectancy. These include students’ attributions for success and failure as well as students’ self-efficacy - defined as "assurance of capabilities" (Bandura, 1994). These aspects were chosen because they are under the learners' control and can therefore be changed through interventions (Weinstein, 1994).

The relationship between expectations and motivation is relevant for educators in disciplines other than language learning, particularly for instructors or researchers of mathematics. In studying language, much like studying math, students come to the class with preconceived notions of their abilities to succeed. Just as students of math "tend to see themselves as either mathematically inclined or disinclined" (Watson-Acosta, 2003), language students tend to decide early in their studies whether or not they have the "special gift" of language learning ability (Horwitz, 1989).

A brief history of motivational theories is offered, followed by the study’s significance to current literature.

Theoretical Framework

Value-Expectancy Theories

Most relevant to this study is the social-cognitive approach to motivation, a theory generally used by educational psychologists. It emphasizes the influence that students' beliefs and interpretations of their experiences have on cognitive processes (Weiner, 1986 in Pintrich et al, 1993). The decisions involved in goal setting are influenced by the degree to which individuals expect their goals will be met and by their beliefs about the importance of effort and abilities. Described formulaically, the attraction to a certain subject or task equals the value the person places on it "times the apparent probability it will be attained" (Klinger, 1977, p. 303). Value levels affect both initial and continued motivation. Learners’ reactions to difficulties faced throughout the goal attainment process are influenced by whether or not they feel what is gained from their efforts is worthwhile-- meaning, is the effort put forth moving them in the direction they want to go (helping them make a certain grade, giving them a sense of accomplishment, etc.) (Noels, 1999).

The importance a task holds for an individual relates to what goal theorists term "goal orientation." Orientation involves the reasons affecting students' initial choice, the degree and direction of effort, and whether or not students persist in that activity (Nam Yung, 1996). Individuals may be oriented towards learning goals (also called mastery goals) or performance goals (Covington, 2000). Students with learning goals demonstrate an incremental belief about ability, wherein ability level is perceived as changeable, not fixed. They acknowledge the possibility for growth and focus their attention on mastery instead of just trying to get by. Those with performance goals, conversely, demonstrate an entity belief about ability, wherein ability is fixed and not affected by increased effort. They tend to avoid difficult tasks for fear of failure. Learning orientations have been shown to affect motivation and student achievement. Mastery goals have been shown to lead to more active engagement in learning than performance goals (Pintrich, 2000). Students who are less cognitively engaged employ fewer learning strategies and self-regulatory practices which in turn affect their achievement (Covington, 2000). Schommer (1990) sees a direct link between beliefs and achievement. Her study found college students who perceived knowledge as "fixed" demonstrated less appropriate, overly-simplistic writing styles compared to students who saw learning as more incremental and multi-dimensional (Schommer, 1990 in Mori, 1997). This is perhaps because those self-regulating strategies that help students try multiple solutions to challenges are the same strategies used in the complex thought of writing tasks (Diener & Dweck, 1980).

Self-Efficacy and Attribution

The connection between student beliefs and volition has received little attention in language learning motivation research. Further investigation could aid instructors and program developers in determining how to best meet students’ needs.

Albert Bandura’s work in aptitude beliefs is the cornerstone of self-efficacy research. He asserts that highly efficacious students see difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered, not threats to be avoided: "Such an efficacious outlook fosters intrinsic interest and deep engrossment in activities" (Bandura, 1994, p. 73). Self-efficacious students employ more strategic planning towards accomplishing their goals (Oxford, 1994). Efficacy levels also affect the type of linguistic information they choose to pay attention to, which in turn affects proficiency (Mori, 1997).

Student efficacy often comes from vicarious experiences (Schunk, 1991). For example, students may assess their language learning ability based on ‘myths’ propagated by classmates or on advertisers' promises of quick success. Many university students expect to be fluent after one or two years of study (Horwitz, 1989). They become frustrated when they do not progress that quickly and often discontinue study of the language when their expectations go unmet (Horwitz, 1989; Altman, 1985). Bandura (1994) argues that the resulting frustration lowers self-efficacy and makes students "slacken their efforts and give up quickly in the face of difficulties" (Bandura, 1994, p. 8).

This frustration is not unique to language study. The negative stereotype about women and math, for example, affects students’ efficacy. Female students are so averse to reinforcing the stereotype that they become overly anxious in math courses, impairing their performance (Oswald & Harvey, 2003). Their lowered self-efficacy makes them use fewer autonomous learning behaviors necessary for achievement (Greene et al, 1999) and causes attrition in future math-related courses (Oswald & Harvey, 2003).

Clearly, however, not all students desist when faced with challenges. To explain this variability, researchers in educational psychology point to student attributions, defined as perceived causes for success or failure (Schunk, 1991). "Locus of control," a generalized control over outcomes, describes how individuals perceive success or failure as either independent of their own actions and thus "externally controlled" or dependent on the way they behave and thus "internally controlled" (Rotter, 1966 in Schunk, 1991). An attribution such as "motivation" or "effort" would most likely be considered "controllable," whereas "luck" or task difficulty would be considered uncontrollable (Weiner et al., 1983 in Schunk, 1991). Whether students believe they have control over learning outcomes affects how much effort they expend in learning and how long they persist in their efforts (Oxford, 1994). According to Dolinger’s (2000) study of college students’ locus of control, students who feel they have internal control may be more successful learners because they are more perceptive of their environments: "Internals more readily acquire and utilize information that is relevant to their goal situation" (Dolinger, 2000, p. 1). Other studies show that students with internal attributions of control demonstrate higher achievement because they are better at planning how to complete academic tasks (Biggs, 1987 in Hall, 2001). Conversely, attributions of low ability negatively affect long-term success and student retention, as students desist in the face of lower self-esteem and a sense of helplessness (Graham, 1990 in Tse, 2000)

In recent years, these causal attributions have been more frequently mentioned in interpreting results of foreign language studies (Nam Yung, 1996; Wen, 1997). Yet few foreign language researchers have included attributional theories in the design of their studies. The present study operationalizes the concept of attributions within the context of the foreign language classroom.

Significance and Objectives

This study will examine university students of Portuguese, a population chosen for two reasons. Portuguese is the world’s eighth most widely spoken language (Family Education Network, 2003) and is considered a "critical language" for the federal government. Survey figures, however, show Portuguese language programs in U.S. universities are not keeping up with other language programs in terms of growth (National Security Education Program, 2001; Silva, 2000).

Students of Portuguese were also chosen as participants for examining expectancies and attributions since changes in beliefs may be most needed for students of languages that are less commonly taught (LCTLs). Over-efficaciousness has been shown to be problematic for students of more commonly taught languages such as French and Spanish (Horwitz, 1989). It can be even more problematic for students of lesser commonly taught languages because they have generally had less exposure to the language before its introduction in the classroom. They therefore have less real world experience on which to base their assumptions. Of the limited studies on LCTL students, several found that students were not aware of the level of difficulty of the language; the ensuing over-efficaciousness proved a barrier to continued motivation (Wen 1997, p. 236). In fact, two years of instruction, the amount required in most universities, leaves the LCTL student at only the very beginning stages of the language (McGinnis, 1994). In the case of Portuguese students, many already know a bit of Spanish and therefore may hold unrealistically high expectations of reaching advanced levels of Portuguese within a short amount of time.

This study seeks to answer the following research questions to see how students’ expectations, attributions, and beliefs about learning affect their motivation and their decisions to continue or discontinue formal study of the language:

1. What are students’ expectations for goal attainment?
2. What are students’ attributions for success and failure in meeting their language learning goals? What are their beliefs about language learning?
3. What role, if any, might students' perceived goal attainment play in students’ motivation and their decision to continue studying the language?

Methodology and Procedures

A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to survey a large pool of participants while also obtaining more in-depth data from open-ended questions and interviews. If we consider qualitative and quantitative research as two ends of a continuum rather than two completely distinct methods, this study would fall closer to the qualitative end of the spectrum. The study is therefore more exploratory than confirmatory. It offers a new perspective on this student group, but avoids the causal "certainties" that purely quantitative data pursues.

The various types of data in this exploration worked together. Numerical survey data (Appendices A and B) gave general background information on students and an overview of their goals, expectations and motivations. It also helped determine which students to interview (a full description of this decision process is found in the "Participants" section of this work). The more qualitative open-ended survey items added details to responses to the more numerical survey questions. They also pointed out key informants to interview and helped guide interview questions. For example, several students mentioned an advisor who had told them how easy it was to learn Portuguese. I therefore interviewed this advisor to find out more about her interaction with students.

Post-survey interviews asked students to elaborate on their survey responses and thus obtained a more in-depth picture of students’ beliefs and motivations. These measures were developed through a series of pilot studies.

Measurements and Pilot studies

Several pilot studies at the University of Texas at Austin (U.T.), where the actual study would be performed, elicited information about students' motivations. This information helped formulate interview questions and modify previously used survey instruments to fit this specific population. In the first pilot study, the researcher observed 30 class hours at the University of Texas to become familiar with the Portuguese classroom setting. Opening and closing interviews were performed to see how students would articulate concepts like goals and goal attainment.

The next pilot used three Portuguese classes as its subjects. Students were given an open-ended questionnaire that asked them to brainstorm their reasons for taking Portuguese and their goals for their class. They then circled their three most important reasons and goals. The reasons students gave were coded and used to modify the motivational survey "Reasons for Studying Spanish" (Ely, 1986), which after further pilot testing became the survey section "Reasons for Taking Portuguese" (Appendix A Part II). Similarly, the goals students mentioned were used to modify a goals survey previously used with students of French and Spanish (Harlow & Muyskens, 1994). At the close of the semester, students completed Speiller’s (1988) questionnaire "Factors Influencing Students to Continue or Discontinue Language Study" and were asked to comment on any confusing or non-applicable parts of the study. Based on students’ comments, the survey was broken down into two separate surveys, one for continuers and one for discontinuers.

The third pilot study administered the revised surveys to students in two other Portuguese classes. Results indicated the importance of students' expectations to their perceived goal attainment. Though no specific hypotheses were made based solely on pilot data, some preliminary assumptions served as a skeleton for examining patterns, testing the conditions of various relationships, and building theories.

To gain richer data and ensure that students’ individual responses would be elicited, the open-ended questions were added to the surveys. To test this combination of open-ended and Likert scale items, the modified surveys were piloted. The actual study would begin soon, so this version of the surveys was given to a group of Spanish students at another Texas university to avoid having students see the surveys in both the pilot and in the actual study.

This pilot was helpful in ensuring that students would understand the survey’s breakdown of cultural items. Cultural items were broken down into four elements, as recommended by the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The council notes that the culture taught in the classroom is not just one entity. Instead, it consists of both products distinct to different countries and cultural patterns as well as the actual understanding (perspectives) of those products and patterns of behavior. In the surveys, the breakdown was described as follows:

• country's products (e.g. books, art, music, political systems, etc.);
• cultural perspectives on those products (attitudes explaining why certain products exist and are valued);
• cultural practices (how people use cultural products; patterns of behavior such as how people celebrate, dress, etc.); and
• cultural perspectives on those practices (i.e. the attitudes and ideas that explain why people behave as they do) (National Standards in Foreign Language, 1999).

This breakdown is important to avoid problems faced in previous research on foreign language goals. A prime example is found in Alalou’s (2001)'s questionnaire on students' perceived needs in foreign language courses. As Alalou admits, since the term "culture" was not defined, results were difficult to interpret:

Although in this study, 'culture' is understood in its broad sense, referring to both high and popular culture,..we know very little about students' definition of 'culture' because students in this study were not asked to provide a specific definition of the term (Alalou, 2001, p. 461).

In concluding this description of measure development, it should be noted that before beginning the actual study, the researcher realized the limitations of using self-report measures. One could argue, for example, that students may say that in the next few weeks they plan to register for another Portuguese class and continue their studies, when in fact they may not actually register for that class when the time comes. This study examines students’ motivations, however, as opposed to all the many factors that affect course registration (illness, finances, etc.). As such, self-report measures appear to reveal the data necessary to better understand what encourages students to want to learn more.

Participants

Participants in this study included 101 lower-division Portuguese students at U.T. Austin, their instructors, and four student advisors. The research was reviewed and passed by the university’s Human Subjects Review Board. Before any surveys or interviews were completed, the subjects received a consent form discussing the purpose of the research, their anonymity as subjects, and that their participation/non-participation would not be discussed with their instructors or otherwise affect their standing in the department.

Information on individual student participants was gathered through the background questions completed by eighty-four students- forty-three females and forty-one males. Most students were undergraduates (71.3%) with most of those sophomores or seniors, 26.2% were graduate students, and two students had already graduated. Nearly half were humanities majors with the remaining students studying sciences or registered as ‘undeclared.’ Well over half of the students were Caucasian (63.1%). A large percentage were Hispanic (29.8%). Other students described their ethnicity as Asian-American, African-American, or "other." Most spoke English as a first language though over half of all respondents had studied Spanish formally for over two years. Twenty percent spoke Spanish as a first language. Just over half were taking the Portuguese to fulfill a requirement.

Data collection

Data sources included surveys and interviews with students, instructors and advisors. In the actual study, the first week of class, the researcher administered the first survey on students' backgrounds, initial motivations, goals, and expectations (See Appendix A). The second survey, administered the antepenultimate week of class, examined students' perceived goal attainment and reasons for (dis)continuing formal study (Appendix B).

Telephone interviews were conducted with the following student groups: seven of the eight students who dropped the class before the end of the semester; all six students who were auditing courses; and five ‘extra’ students whose survey responses merited further inquiry. In addition, thirty students taking the course for a grade were selected to do both opening and closing interviews (See Appendices C and D). These thirty subjects were selected using a stratified purposeful sampling technique (Mertens, 1997) based on students' goal values and expectations ratings. Groups were formed by coding goal value and expectation sections from the first surveys (Appendix A Part III C and D). Using EXCEL, students were divided into four groups: those with a tendency to have low-valued goals paired with low expectations, those with low-valued goals paired with high expectations, etc. Participants were separated into level (beginner, intermediate, etc.). Each class was separated into the four groups and participants names were then randomly chosen from each group. To follow up on students’ responses, the researcher interviewed four teachers and four administrators whom students mentioned as having influenced their decision to study the language.

Data was also collected at Tulane University to compare their students’ motivations for taking Portuguese with University of Texas students. Tulane was chosen because it is a small private university (12,000 students) compared to the University of Texas, a large public institution (49,000 students). The purpose of Tulane’s inclusion was not to show that results from the University of Texas study are transferable to all other universities. Instead, by comparing U.T.’s data to a different university, it was useful in giving thicker description of U.T.’s population and environment. This may aid readers in deciding the degree of transferability this study has to their own situations. Survey and interview measures and selection procedures were identical to those used with the University of Texas sample, except that the second survey was not administered to the Tulane population. Thirty-five participants from Tulane took part in the study. Judging from non-participant observation, course descriptions and syllabi, and instructors' and students' comments, U.T. and Tulane’s first and second semester courses seemed fairly similar in content. One Tulane course, a Portuguese literature class with five students, was not offered to U.T. undergraduates, and was therefore not included in the results.

Data Analysis

Survey data analysis used the statistical software SPSS and included frequencies, means, and standard deviations, and factor analysis of Likert scale responses. These figures and the reliability for each scale are found in the results section of this work.

Qualitative analysis used the qualitative research program "QSR NUD*IST" (Qualitative Solutions and Research Pty Ltd.’s Non-numerical Unstructured Data: Indexing, Searching, and Theorizing). It is a code-based theory-building program useful in forming and describing categories, making connections between categories, constructing theories, and validating or rejecting theories about categorical relationships. Its flexible searching features were helpful in working with large amounts of text and coding. Its compatibility with SPSS helped link the quantitative and qualitative data.

As the data were collected, I transcribed interviews and employed a grounded theory approach for analysis and for analysis of the qualitative survey responses. I used Strauss and Corbin's (1990) analysis method: a "systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively derived grounded theory about a phenomenon" (Strauss & Corbin, p. 24). Grounded theory involves going into a research situation (in this case, a college classroom) and finding out what is taking place and how the people relate to that situation.

The first stage of procedures involved the "open-coding" of interview data, defined as "breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing, and categorizing data." (Strauss and Corbin, 1990, p. 61). All 60 transcripts from the thirty main interviewees, along with those from the seven "drop" and the five "extra" interviews, were read for emerging commonalties and patterns. I used a line-by-line approach analyzing each sentence and separating data into categories relevant to students' motivation. Categories were given descriptive names like "Beliefs about learning culture," and the categories were described in memos. Throughout the coding process, I reread category names, their descriptions, and their coded information to ensure new information fit the categories. Often times these re-readings, coupled with the constant addition of new data, prompted the collapse of two similar categories into one. Or the addition of new data prompted the expansion of one category into several, for a richer description of the phenomenon. For example, at first I had only one category for students’ beliefs. Later, however, this category was expanded into two categories: one for "Beliefs-about-language-learning" (with subcategories for beliefs about "Natural ability," the importance of "Early exposure", etc.) and one for "Beliefs about learning culture" (with students’ comments about how culture was learned separately from the language, how teaching culture was laden with bias etc.). The split was made as it became obvious, in analyzing student responses, that patterns emerged differently under those two categories.

The next step involved "axial coding" in which connections were formed among the categories found in open coding. A tree-like structure contained each category, with "motivation" as the root from which branches (categories) and limbs (sub-categories) emerged. The tree diagram was modified as I worked and reworked the connections among categories, confirming relationships with data from other sources such as teachers' and administrators' interview data or responses to open-ended survey items. There was a constant interplay between the interview data and responses to questionnaire items to validate and refine relationships among categories. The tree sketches were helpful when interpreting and confirming quantitative findings. For example, I was not surprised when, during factor analysis, a survey item about students’ desire to "Translate Portuguese" clustered with less practical items such as "Enjoy myself" and "Improve my accent." Interview data had similarly shown that many students whose goals fell into a "Hobby/fun" category also had more "Practical goals" and wanted to put Portuguese to work-related use.

Data analysis took place both during and after data collection, in line with Creswell’s (1998) emphasis on a zigzag approach between data gathering and its analysis. It was essential that the analysis begin during data collection because the patterns, commonalties and differences that emerged early in the collection process could then be examined in further detail in later interviews, follow-up emails or extra interviews.

Results

Research Question 1: Student Expectations

Reasons for taking the class: Initial Motivation

To give a better idea of students’ expectations for goal attainment, it is important to examine why students initially decided to take the class. The "Reasons for studying Portuguese" section consisted of thirty items, including an "other" item; each item was ranked in importance ranging from 0-3. Rankings of the top 10 means for responses for the "Reasons for studying Portuguese" section appear in descending order in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Top 10 Students' Ranking for Reasons for Studying Portuguese

The scale was subjected to an internal consistency reliability analysis. Very few students responded to the "other" item so it was not included in determining internal consistency. The Cronbach Alpha was .73 which is somewhat low, suggesting multidimensionality within the survey items. As such, some clusters of items may tend to vary together more than others, bound by an underlying commonality (SPSS, 1999). A factor analysis was performed (Tables 2-7) to show the underlying factors that link certain survey items.

Factor analysis was chosen over principal components analysis since it is recommended in cases where items are correlated. In fact, items did appear to be correlated as shown by the .718 Kaiser-Meyer Olkin Measure sampling adequacy. Maximum Likelihood extraction method with a Promax rotation was used as it is suggested for use in cases where items are correlated (Rennie, 1997). There were nine eigenvalues greater than 1.0. I decided to set the number of factors at six rather than nine since, judging from the scree plots, there appeared to be a leveling off after six factors, indicating that six factors were sufficient to account for the variance. Values lower than .3 were suppressed. It is questionable in a confirmatory factor analysis to include variables whose correlations with the other variables are below .4 in absolute value (Hedderson, 1993, p. 174). However, since this was an exploratory factor analysis and since the two variables with loadings just under .4 appear to fit conceptually, I felt the information gained from including the two variables outweighed any reservations about relatively low values.

Six factors accounted for 45.4% of the total variance and the factor correlation matrix showed a low correlation of .28, indicating that the six factors, or clusters, were distinct. These groupings of items were helpful in interpreting survey responses because items clustering together could be considered part of the same underlying concept. For example, the first factor to emerge was labeled "Cultural interests" since it housed items related to students' interests in the target countries' cultures, including their history and their importance among other countries in the world. Table 2 illustrates the questionnaire items that form this cluster and the factor loadings. This cluster accounted for 17.81% of the total variance and the Cronbach alpha for this factor was .87.

Table 2: Factor Loadings for the "Cultural Interests" Cluster (for Tables 2-9, see Appendix A Part II for full survey items)

The second cluster of items that emerged was labeled "Career/academic advancement." The total variance explained by this cluster was 7.96% and the Cronbach alpha for this factor was .73. The items and loadings for this cluster are listed in table below.

Table 3: Factor Loadings for the "Career/academic Advancement" Cluster

Though it may appear that the "Portuguese-speaking friends" item is illogically grouped among more practical motivations, interviews with students revealed that this cluster is not purely pragmatic in nature. The following student quotes show how work and pleasure cannot be so easily divided.

The future career wasn't at all important at first. I was just interested in being able to understand what my (Brazilian) girlfriend was thinking. But the sounds, I always liked..the cultural items came up later. Then after taking the language, I started moving in the company towards Latin American and then became interested..in Latin American and Brazil.

(The main reason I am taking Portuguese is that) I wanted to learn another language and have covered the western hemisphere with English and Spanish.I never considered the job part. The job part I didn’t think of until later when it was like, ‘If I keep doing this, I could put it on my resume.’

I'm a Spanish speaker and I inherently love the (Portuguese) language and there's a trilingual fascination because of business which grew out of my love for Spanish and Brazil. So it (my reason for studying Portuguese) does have to do with love of other cultures and Brazilian friends, so I love to sell Brazil.

The third cluster, "Requirement motivation," had a Cronbach alpha of .37 and accounted for 7.55% of the total variance. The "travel for pleasure" item loaded positively for "Requirement motivation" while other variables loaded negatively. The sign difference indicates that as interest in "travel for pleasure" increased, interest in "requirement" and "scheduling" decreased and vice versa.

Table 4: Factor Loadings for the "Requirement Motivation " Cluster

The fourth cluster, "Language as hobby," accounted for 4.99% of the total variance and its Cronbach alpha was .71. Its items were characterized by a love of language study due to ease, experience, and intrinsic interest.

Table 5: Factor Loadings for the "Language as Hobby" Cluster

The fifth cluster, "Fun," accounted for 3.98% of the total variance and its Cronbach alpha was .73. Items in this cluster described students' desire to enjoy learning Portuguese due to its interesting sounds and to the fact that is less commonly taught than Spanish or French.

Table 6: Factor Loadings for the "Fun" Cluster

The final cluster, "Heritage," accounted for 3.08% of the total variance and its Cronbach alpha was .62.

Table 7: Factor Loadings for the "Heritage" Cluster

These results indicate that students were taking Portuguese for a variety of reasons, in particular future career and travel-for-pleasure plans; cultural reasons were also frequently mentioned.

Tulane University’s Results for Initial Motivation

In comparing Tulane’s results of the Reasons section of the survey, independent sample t-tests found that only eight of the twenty-nine reasons were significantly different, and all eight were related either to language requirements, language-as hobby-items, or cultural items. The table that follows compares the ranking of means of U.T. and Tulane students' reasons for enrolling, with the statistically significant reasons highlighted for the university with the higher mean.

Table 8: Reasons and Tulane Reasons Rankings (SD=Standard Deviation)

The table shows that Tulane students placed less emphasis on the language requirement than U.T. students. Interviews with administrators at the University of Texas and with professors at Tulane suggested that U.T. students use Portuguese to fulfill the language requirement more than Tulane students. This is most likely due to larger U.T. enrollments which cause Spanish classes to fill up early. Students therefore turn to Portuguese as a viable option for meeting their requirements. Since Tulane is a smaller, private university, it has fewer problems with students' demands exceeding course openings. U.T. also has a longer language requirement of 4 semesters where Tulane’s is three.

Tulane students’ ranking of "Easier given Spanish background, "Love languages, and "Languages come easy" as higher than U.T. students may owe to differences in language backgrounds of the two populations. Table 9’s background survey results show that with the exception of the "over 2 year" category, Tulane students tended towards greater exposure to Spanish language than U.T. students.

Table 9: U.T. (in comparable classes to Tulane participants) and Tulane Participants' Formal Study of Spanish

The background section of the survey also showed that Tulane students had spent more time in a wider variety of Spanish-speaking countries than U.T. students. Perhaps differences in experience with Spanish, be it formal study or travel/work abroad, could account for the higher number of Tulane students noting that Portuguese and language in general come easily to them.

Survey responses showed a general tendency for a broader range of responses from the University of Texas population. Results from the independent sample t-tests of the "Reasons for studying Portuguese" section showed higher standard deviations for U.T. than for Tulane responses. Examination of boxplots of responses from both populations indicated that this range of response from U.T. was not caused by outliers. These results could indicate that Tulane is a more homogeneous sample. It could be argued, therefore, that the University of Texas sample, with its wider dispersion of responses, gives a broader cross section of the larger population of Portuguese students. Though the nature of this study as a whole is exploratory, these results are helpful for researchers interested in conducting more confirmatory type analyses and for readers deciding how this study’s results transfer to their own situations. They indicate that U.T.’s population gives evidence of being a somewhat representative sample, offering diversity of responses that may be found in other university settings.

Goals for the course

On the Goals section of the survey (Appendix A Part III), students ranked each goal item from 0-3. The scale was subjected to an internal consistency reliability analysis. The Cronbach Alpha was found to be .85. Rankings of the top 10 goals are listed below.

Table 10: Students’ Top 10 Goal Value Rankings

To have a clearer picture of patterns emerging from students' responses, survey items underwent a factor analysis. I used a Principal Axis Factoring extraction method with a Direct Oblimin rotation. This extraction and rotation are recommended in cases where the items are correlated. There were only three eigenvalues greater than 1.0. I decided to set the number of factors at four rather than three, however, since scree plots showed more of a leveling off after four factors than after three. Values lower than .3 were suppressed.

Four factors accounted for 56.2% of the total variance. Again, clusters were labeled according to the underlying factor they appeared to represent. Each factors’ percentage of the total variance (PTV) is listed in each table along with its Cronbach alpha.

Table11: Factor Loadings for the "Four Skills" Cluster

Table 12: Factor Loadings for the "Culture" Cluster

Table 13: Factor Loadings for the "Requirement" Cluster

Table 14: Factor Loadings for the "Linguistic Hobby" Cluster

It was obvious from survey results that several students’ goals followed from their reasons for taking the course. The four skills of "Speaking," "Listening," "Writing," and "Reading" ranked as the most important goal categories. This fits logically with the highly ranked reasons for studying Portuguese "Future career" and "Travel for pleasure." Meeting goals within the four skills categories would facilitate work-related contact with native speakers and travel to Portuguese-speaking countries. It makes sense that the goal category "Enjoy myself" ranked highly given the high ranking of "Fun" as a reason for taking Portuguese.

It is important to note, however, that in many cases, students’ reasons for taking Portuguese were different from their goals. The most marked difference was that of culture, ranked as an important reason for taking the class, but not ranked as highly as an actual goal for the course.

Expectations and Perceived Goal Attainment

Results from the second survey indicated students felt most of their objectives were met except those involving speaking and cultural goals. The rankings for the top 10 goals attained are found in Table 15. Using a scale from one to ten, students ranked the degree to which they felt their goals for the semester were met.

Table 15: Rankings for Students' Perceived Goal Attainment

Ranking relatively low were goals of speaking (ranking 9^th), accent (10^th), and the four cultural items (ranking 11^th-14^th). Students interviewed were asked about these specific items. Responses indicated that they either lowered their expectations as the semester progressed- especially with respect to speaking goals- or they held low expectations for these goals from the outset- particularly for meeting cultural objectives. These trends in expectations deserved further inquiry.

Speaking Goals

Interview results showed that Portuguese students, like students of more commonly taught languages, believed it is best to learn how to speak the language "naturally" in the target country rather than by taking classes (Wenden, 1987). Instructors of other disciplines may find that students hold similar beliefs about subjects such as art, music, social studies, etc. Students may come to the class with preconceived notions that such topics lend themselves only to "learning in the real world" and thus may not see them as learnable in the classroom.

One might assume that after actually spending time in class, students would come to see the classroom as a workshop for experiential learning. They would thereby increase their expectations for meeting goals they had previously thought were incompatible with the classroom setting. Yet students in this study often times held even lower expectations for meeting speaking goals as the class progressed. This was due to not getting many opportunities to speak the language in class and not finding native speaker contacts to practice with outside of class. Instructor interviews indicated teachers felt they were giving students the chance to practice and the opportunity to have a hand in their own learning. The activities teachers cited as practice, however, were often seen by students as rote, time-wasting exercises. For example, one teacher gave a biweekly answering machine assignment that he felt "motivated students to work on their own". However, several students described the activity as "silly," and one student said she felt "it wasn't really applying.. it was more like putting the words together from the vocabulary list".

Nearly half of the students interviewed felt that Portuguese pronunciation itself and their speaking goals in general were more difficult than expected. Surprisingly, many of these students spoke Spanish. The following citations are only a few examples of comments that demonstrate how Spanish slowed students’ learning.

It's a little more difficult for Spanish speakers because the accent is tough for Spanish speakers to grasp. (Researcher: That's interesting because you thought a Spanish background would make it easier to learn Portuguese.) Right, the grammar, the reading is not hard but the actual speaking is difficult.

It's more difficult than I expected. The Spanish helped with sentence structure but the pronunciation is hard whereas in Spanish, when you read it, every letter is the same as it is written.

It's strange because it seems it should be easier than it is, but phonetically it is a challenge. It still amazes me the differences (in Spanish and Portuguese) and it's difficult.

With non-native Spanish speakers it's brand new but we (native Spanish speakers) have a lot of problems. To us, it's not right. I have to say it over and over and unteach myself (the Spanish way) to say it in Portuguese.

Interestingly, students in this study mentioned that university advisors- instead of helping them make more realistic expectations about learning to speak Portuguese, had instead overstated the ease with which they would learn the language. One undergraduate advisor was interviewed because her name in particular was mentioned as having suggested Portuguese as an "easier" alternative to Spanish. In the interview, the advisor said that she recommended Portuguese to students for "practical reasons," explaining that the structure of Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, that the vocabulary is 70-85% identical to Spanish, and that Portuguese grammar was "easier than Spanish grammar". Based on these comments alone, students may come to Portuguese class with the idea that Spanish will be more helpful than it actually is, and they may set goals that are not attainable within the time frame they expect.

Another reason behind some students’ difficulty in learning to speak was their anxiety. Spanish-speaking students in particular mentioned anxiety as a stumbling block. Students who acquired Spanish at home felt that they did not have the language learning tools that other students had. Their comments below were revealing:

They (non-native Spanish speakers) learn.. with like "predicate" yada, yada, yada and I learned it by.. hearing people and knowing that's the way you say it whereas in a language class, they teach you "this person," "that person," structurally, I guess so I learn it different..I don't know how to get into that.

From my standpoint, I've never had to learn a new language.. so it's completely new to me..so it's actually more difficult than I expected. I find myself being very frustrated at times.

Cultural goals

Interview responses on expectations for cultural goals revealed that many did not expect to learn culture in the classroom:

I was going into the course understanding that if you're not in the society or with the group of people, you're not going to really learn much.

You can only learn so much about cultural aspects before you go. You have to live there for awhile.

Importantly, students’ expectations of what is learnable in the classroom had obvious effects on the degree to which they valued certain goals:

I'm interested in learning, but I haven't kicked in..My attitude's not in the mood to learn. It's hard because I have the mentality that in a classroom, it's more difficult to learn the language than in the country because that's how I always saw it.

Only one of the four Portuguese teachers interviewed mentioned culture in his response to the question, "What are your goals for this Portuguese class?" After discussing his goals of communication, he added, "Also I like to teach a lot of culture and have them teach each other culture, so every Friday we had cultural presentation". Though the teacher's intent was to help students know more about Brazilian culture, the "Friday's only" nature of its inclusion only reinforced the idea that learning culture is not integral to learning the language. As one student said, learning culture is "extra" and as another noted, it can be learned "secondary to learning the language."

When students who had listed low expectations for meeting cultural goals were asked about their low ratings, many said they felt classroom instruction on culture would be biased:

With somebody teaching about cultural issues, they're going to filter it through their point of view so it's gonna be like a little biased on how they're presenting things.

You really have to be in the society in order to really get a good perspective of the whole culture..It could be in some way biased by the beliefs of that one person.

Students mentioned native Portuguese-speaking teachers as giving a "better cultural perspective" than non-native speakers. As one student put it, "You pick up a lot from observing a culture, but you know a lot more when you participate in it". Another student explained how it is more difficult for non-native speakers to teach about cultural perspectives since "you won't learn those things if you're not in direct contact with people of the actual culture".

Research Question 2: Student Attributions

Learners attribute success or failure to effort, ability, luck or task difficulty (Schunk, 1991). Open-ended survey and interview responses as to why students did or did not achieve their goals revealed a combination of these attributions at work. The following categories emerged as reasons students felt they attained their goals: ‘Self’ (including effort and attendance), ‘Teacher,’ ‘Class itself’ (the curriculum and the structure of the class), and ‘Peers’ (enthusiasm and participation of classmates). Students who met their objectives described themselves as self-motivated, felt they worked hard, and said they were constantly exposing themselves to the language.

As to attributions for failure, two categories emerged: ‘Class’ (not enough time in class to practice speaking/listening or to focus on culture or reading) and ‘Self’ (lack of motivation and work, lack of attendance). Over half of the attributions fell into the latter category with comments such as "I figured I would have more time, but it's turned out to be a really tough semester" or "I needed to put more time in it myself".

Interviewees often mentioned not being good at learning languages, but it was rarely blamed as the cause for not meeting their language goals. To further understand why it wasn’t considered a cause, twenty-nine of the thirty selected interviewees and four of the early drop students were asked, "Are some people inherently good at learning languages?" Four categories of students’ beliefs about language learning emerged, with some students falling in more than one category: ‘Natural ability,’ ‘Early exposure to the language’ (such as growing up with a parent who spoke a second language), ‘General exposure to other languages’ (learning a second language after childhood), and ‘Motivation.’

Twenty-two of the total thirty-three students asked this question in interviews felt that some learners were better due to natural ability. They made comments such as "The language side of the brain is where some are talented so it's inherent without a doubt", or "Some people just naturally pick it up faster for no other reason-- even if they study, some people can't pick it up as fast". Only six students were in the ‘Early exposure’ group. They felt that some learned languages better than others because they had exposure to a second language as a child. Ten felt ‘Motivation’ made some individuals better language learners than others because their mindset pushed them to succeed: "It's more of a psychological attitude.. all people can learn if they open their mind to it". and "It (natural ability) has a little to do with it- it’s how open-minded you are about learning and how much you think it'll benefit you later on."

If grouped along the lines drawn by goal theorists, ‘Motivation’ and ‘General exposure’ attributions are incrementally oriented, in that students feel they have some control over their learning. The ‘Natural ability’ and ‘Early exposure’ attributions display an entity or ‘learning-is-fixed’ view. Particularly interesting, however, was the crossover of students who felt both natural ability and motivation were at work. Two examples of mixed attributions responses are as follows:

There may be a genetic predisposition to learning languages but also there's differences in motivation.

I have a step brother who can be in any country and in two months pick up the language..it's a freak of nature, but for most people I know, the ability to learn the language is dependent on motivation and that's it..Interest determines aptitude in that aspect.

It appears these students have one set of beliefs about learning languages that is more entity-oriented-- believing that some people are born with a language learning "gene". They have another set of beliefs they hold for general learning that is more incrementally oriented- believing that success is still possible through hard work. Their motivation-is-key beliefs about general learning may to some degree temper their ‘fixed aptitude’ beliefs about language learning. This would explain why many students whose beliefs fell into the ‘Natural ability’ category still took the credit for their success and the blame for their failures.

To explore this possibility, interviewees were asked "How do you see yourself as a language learner?" Of the twenty-five students responding, sixteen felt they were "not good" or "average", two felt they were "somewhat good" but had to work very hard, while only seven felt they were good at learning languages. One student who felt he was "not good" at learning languages felt he had to "go through the motions, prodding ahead". Interestingly, he added, "While others have an inherent ability, I’m highly motivated so I overcome my lack of ability". Similarly, another student said he was "certainly not" good at languages, adding, "I'm inherently very interested, but not inherently talented. I have to work- it doesn't come naturally".

Research Question 3: Goal Attainment

Responses to survey items and to subsequent interview questions offered insight into whether or not students’ perceived goal attainment during the semester influenced their decision to continue or discontinue studying Portuguese. One might assume that students would continue or discontinue taking courses based on decisions made before the present course. In fact, according to first and second survey background questions about students’ intentions for subsequent semesters, 42% of students changed their minds about continuing or discontinuing over the course of the semester.

The ‘Continuance/Discontinuance’ section of the second survey asked students what factors affected their decisions to continue or discontinue taking Portuguese (Appendix C). Forty-five students completed the ‘Continuance Section’ of the second survey while 19 students completed the ‘Discontinuance Section.’ The rank order of the top 10 reasons students offered for continuing Portuguese are given in Table 16 below.

Table 16: Top 10 Reasons for Continuing (for full survey items, see Appendix B, Part III)

According to Likert scale items on progress and goal attainment, nearly half of the continuing students were continuing because of their low level of progress and just over a third noted that "goals not being attained" influenced their decision to continue. Interview follow-up questions concerning these counter-intuitive responses pointed out the importance of why students felt their goals were not met. Students whose surveys were coded as "low perceived goal attainment" were asked directly how they felt about not meeting those specific goals. Those who had decided to continue echoed comments like the following: "That (achieving objectives in Portuguese) is just gonna take a lot of time and whether they're met or not won't mean I'm frustrated because I know they're gonna take awhile and I would need to work on it." This student did not let his lack of goal attainment influence him to discontinue. Instead he was continuing because he credited that lack of success both to his own effort and to the difficulty of learning a language. Another student’s response to the same questions was as follows: "You can't give up so easily. Language is sometimes a question of practice. You have to keep trying." She attributed not meeting her speaking goal to not having sufficient time in a one-hour class to practice enough each day. Her later comment, "Yet, Joshua (Portuguese teacher) did a very good job," coupled with her assertion that language learning is a question of practice, showed that she attributed her lack of success to the very nature of learning a language.

Table 17 shows the rankings by descending means of the reasons students felt influenced their decisions to discontinue taking Portuguese.

Table 17: Top 10 Reasons for Discontinuing (for complete survey items, see Appendix B, Part IV)

The most mentioned reason, "Graduating", leaves little room for intervention. The second reason- "Language learned better in Portuguese-speaking country" - deserves further attention, however, and will be examined further in the Discussion section of this work. Over half of the discontinuers noted the influence of this belief in their decision to discontinue.

Another interesting item in the second survey’s top reasons for discontinuing Portuguese was "Goals attained". As one student put it, "A little more (in the area of writing skills) wouldn't hurt, but I feel like I have adequate knowledge to do what I want to do right now". His rationale is indicative of a general trend among students whose goals were met "to the extent" they felt they needed, so they were not continuing their studies. Some students who had already learned Spanish as a second language-- as opposed to those who acquired Spanish from childhood-- had the advantage of having already learned a language. They sometimes found that after one or two semesters, they could communicate enough to be understood and were satisfied with their level of proficiency. This reason for discontinuing may be shared by students of other disciplines (courses in computer skills or photography, for example) in which an introduction to the topic may be all students feel is necessary, since prior knowledge helps fill in the gaps.

Survey data indicated that a greater majority of students who decided to discontinue language study, however, were influenced by a more negative factor: not meeting their goals for reasons they felt were out of their control. For example, the survey reason "Level not fitting" had half its respondents ticking the "Level too high" option. The item, "Other students at a different level" had all its respondents ticking the "Other students at a higher level" option (See Appendix B Part IV numbers 7 and 15 for full survey items).

The textbook appeared to be a major reason why these students were not able to bridge the gap between their knowledge and other students’ knowledge. One student berated the texts’ lack of "communicative activities" and "non user-friendly" nature, while another said she had to "fumble through the homework" with no helpful explanations. A particularly frustrated student called it "a rotten book", and several others said they had to have the teacher’s help to grasp text material. One teacher described the text as "horrible" and the other three teachers expressed similar disappointment. It simply did not allow for self-help.

Another external attribution for failure emerging from the data was the ‘Dissatisfaction with the teacher,’ ranking as ninth out of twenty in importance in the surveys and mentioned at length in interviews. Interviewees said the dissatisfaction stemmed from not seeing the relevance of the activities teachers chose. Again, complaints about the Friday culture reports were mentioned. One of several students who complained said he skipped Fridays to avoid hearing other students’ "bad Portuguese". Another student hated that the teacher kept showing "cheesy telenovelas" that were too difficult to understand: "They're just annoying!"

Discussion and Recommendations

Many students in this study appeared to have two types of beliefs: one for general learning in which they felt their actions affected outcomes and another belief for language learning, in which people either have or don’t have a natural ability to learn languages. Some students demonstrated, however, a crossover of these beliefs. They felt that with hard work, lack of "natural ability" could be overcome. Similarly, Mori’s (1997) study with university students of Japanese found that in some cases "knowledge beliefs in general were transferred into the domain of language learning" (Mori, 1997, p. 14). However, general learning and language learning are "independent constructs, which indicates the existence of domain specific belief dimensions" (Mori, 1997, p. 14).

Interestingly, students in this study who felt they did not have the language learning "gift" did not let that lower their motivation-- quite the contrary. Students were perhaps demonstrating a strategy that Garcia (1995) describes as defensive pessimism, wherein students envision the worst case scenario- not attaining their goal of a higher grade for example, and use the anxiety the negative image evokes to fuel them to work harder. Instead of feeling empowered by a higher sense of self-efficacy, many of these students "gain some degree of control over the riskiness of evaluative situations" by becoming "emotionally prepared in the event they do actually do poorly (Garcia, 1995, p. 30). For students who attribute success not only to ability but also to motivation, this volitional strategy may buffer the blow of non-attainment of goals, diffusing frustrations that could have otherwise lead to decreased motivation. Kuhl (1986) explains this phenomenon by saying that volition is metamotivational, meaning that it deals with students' "wanting to want" to reach a goal and thereby helps students focus their energy on attaining goals they feel are difficult to reach (Kuhl, 1986 in Corno, 1993, p. 16). These forces would not be necessary if goals were easy to attain (Corno, 1993). Yet, students with lower self-efficacy, in noting their "deficiency in language learning", make goal attainment a carrot that is difficult to reach, thereby rallying their motivational forces to attain the goal.

As concerns student attributions for success and failure and continued motivation, over a third of continuing students said they decided to continue because they did not attain certain goals. They recognized their objectives were not accomplished because they failed to engage motivational strategies to get the work done. Therefore, they did not blame the teacher or the course for not attaining their goals. These students continued to have high expectations for meeting their goals, noting that if they tried harder in future courses, they could reach them.