Motivation among University Students Learning Japanese in Ukraine

Abstract

This study aims to reveal the motivation of Japanese language students in Ukraine. Although Ukraine is an environment that has very little cultural or economic exchange with Japan, Japanese language is quite popular as a college major. Motivation (i.e. will) to learn is considered to significantly affect the success or failure of L2 learning. Motivation will be shaped by the influence of social context. Learners of Japanese in Ukraine have notably high goals (for example, to study in Japan or to find employment with Japanese companies) at the beginning of their studies, but many of them are unable to maintain this motivation until graduation.

While the environments of Japanese language learning tend to be very different from those used in Gardner and Lambert (1972), most previous studies on Japanese language learning were based on variations of Gardner and Lambert's scale. The originality of the present study is that its scale is based on free descriptions from Ukrainian students. The scale includes eleven new items that were not used in any previous studies.

The purpose of this study is to investigate motivation among Japanese language students. This research examined 180 students from five universities in Ukraine. The results of the factor analysis show that students in higher academic years have different motivations than first- or second-year students.

In numerous works, instrumental motivation and integrative motivation are thought to be conflicting factors, and possession of one factor is often considered to be sufficient. However, this research shows that the correlation between first- and second-year students' work-based motivation and culture-based motivation is positive; in fact, that possession of one factor is often connected to possession of the other.