English Learning and Learners' Motivation in the Japanese Setting : English Learning Motivation in Japan

This paper deals with three major aspects of English learners' motivation in the Japanese setting. 1) Whether the learners like English "as a school subject" or "as a language". This question was posed in order to clarify in what sense the learners commit themselves into English study. 2) Considering the Japanese setting as a foreign language environment, a new division of language learning into the categories of "communicative" and "instrumental" motivation were introduced. These differ from the traditional categories of "integrative" and "instrumental" which have been proposed by Gardner and Lambert. 3) The third question was whether "the learning process" or "the communication process" was more appealing to the learners. Two subject groups, one with specialized instruction at the beginning level and the other instructed in the traditional grammar-translation method were investigated, and their responses to these three factors were compared.