Sustaining a Language Other Than English Under English Demands: A Mixed‐Methods Test of the Metamotivation‐Embedded Model of Directed Motivational Currents

Directed motivational currents (DMCs) are intense, enduring episodes of language‐learning engagement, often understood as partly sustained by facilitative structure and quasi‐automatic momentum. In ecologies where English carries greater institutional weight, currents for languages other than English (LOTE) face recurrent competition for time and energy. Building on earlier observations of regulation, a key task is to specify and test how regulatory processes work together to sustain and repair these currents. The metamotivation‐embedded model of DMCs (Gu, 2026) addresses this problem by embedding a regulatory cycle within the current: knowledge of which motivational strategies fit the task, monitoring of one's motivational state, and control through deliberate strategy use. This cycle operates within an ecology shaped by the ideal multilingual self as an orienting force and perceived resource competition as a constraint. This study reports the first preregistered mixed‐methods test of the model. Ninety English‐major undergraduates from five Chinese universities specialising in foreign languages completed a 28‐day, nine‐wave diary; eight completed an exploratory stimulated‐recall extension. The test returned a split verdict: monitoring was positively associated with concurrent reported strategy breadth, but strategy breadth neither consistently predicted the trajectory nor buffered competition, whereas resource competition was associated with maintenance, disruption, and repair. Qualitative analysis identified institutional anchoring as a candidate boundary condition, suggesting that metamotivational regulation may depend on whether conditions permit its deployment.