MOTIVATION AT UNIVERSITY: A MAPPING OF MOTIVATIONAL LEVELS OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

Attention has been drawn to motivation in educational contexts, specially in higher education. According to Bzuneck (2009, p. 11), student motivation has an influence in their own learning process and the lack of motivation may hinder the quality of this process, just as their social and academic development. Based on the Self-Determination Theory developed by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci in 1981, this article raised some numerical data using the Scale for Learning of University Students (EMA-U), developed and previously tested by Evely Boruchovich, in 2008, aimed at the investigation of motivation levels of the students of the undergraduate course in Japanese Language and Literature at the University of Brasília. The data was analyzed through two perspectives 1) enrollment year and 2) enrolled subject, in the semester the test was applied. The analyses by 1) enrollment year showed that among students that have enrolled between 2012 and 2017, there is a weak correlation between enrollment year and intrinsic motivation, while there is a moderate correlation between enrollment year and extrinsic motivation. Once students enrolled in 2012 are excluded, that is, between students enrolled between 2013 and 2017, there is a strong correlation between enrollment year and intrinsic motivation and a weak correlation between enrollment year and extrinsic motivation. In the analyses by 2) enrolled subject during the application of the survey, which stretches from Japanese 1 (1st semester in the flow) to Supervised Japanese Language Traineeship (9th semester in the flow), there were no considerable correlation values between enrolled course and either motivation. Limiting the sample between those who were enrolled in Japanese 1 (1st semester in the flow) to Japanese 7 (7th semester in the flow), both motivations displayed moderate correlation levels depending on where the students were in the flow. The obtained results did not validate the hypothesis that the intrinsic motivation shows higher levels that decrease throughout the course and that the extrinsic motivation displays lower levels in the initial stages and higher ones in the end.