How motivation and enjoyment spread their wings during English Foreign Language learning: A pseudo-longitudinal investigation into Moroccan learners

The current study uses a pseudo-longitudinal design to investigate the trajectory of three lower-order dimensions of Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE): FLE Teacher, FLE Personal and FLE Social (Botes et al., 2021) as well as 11 items/scales reflecting attitudes and motivation in the mini- Attitudes/Motivation Test Battery (Tennant & Gardner, 2004) of 85 Beginner, 322 Intermediate and 95 Advanced Moroccan English Foreign Language learners. Data were collected through an online questionnaire. One-way ANOVAs revealed a significant but non-linear increase for the values of three FLE dimensions across skill levels. Further one-way ANOVAs showed that the values of seven positively oriented motivation scales increased significantly and that the two anxiety scales decreased significantly across skill levels (very small effect sizes). Scheffé post-hoc tests confirmed that the strongest increase happened between Beginner and Intermediate levels for the FLE dimensions before levelling off at an Advanced level. This non-linear pattern was less clear-cut for the motivation scales. Correlation analyses revealed stronger relationships between the FLE dimensions and motivation scales at higher skill levels. We argue that FLE and motivation gradually reinforce each other at high skill levels. Some pedagogical implications are formulated.