This study investigates the relationship between multilingual awareness and language motivation, through the application of Dörnyei’s seven motivational constructs identified in a longitudinal study (Dörnyei et al., 2006) conducted from 1993 to 2004. These motivational components fall within the framework of the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) that was later developed to offer a more self-based understanding of language motivation. Building on prior research highlighting that metalinguistic and crosslinguistic awareness, as meta-emergent properties in multilingual individuals, expedite multiple language learning and use (Herdina & Jessner, 2002), this research aims to unravel Hungarian secondary school students’ use of their multilingual background to decode texts in an unfamiliar language. This study explores whether a heightened level of meta- and cross-linguistic awareness correlates with stronger motivation and decoding skills, and how this relationship manifests within Dörnyei’s motivational constructs. The study involves 134 Hungarian high school students, speakers of L2 English and L3 French, who are enrolled in a French bilingual program. Participants were administered the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q), a language motivation questionnaire, an English proficiency test, a French proficiency test, a reading comprehension test in Italian, which is an unfamiliar language to them, and a retrospective questionnaire. The results show a significant relationship between metalinguistic abilities and the ability to decode an unknown language. Students with heightened metalinguistic abilities show greater success in deciphering the Italian texts, as they reflected on similarities between their previously learnt languages and the Italian language at lexical, structural, and phonological levels.

Authors:
Rabeb Ghanmi, University of Pannonia, Hungary

About the Presenter(s)
Rabeb Ghanmi is a PhD candidate and an assistant professor at the University of Pannonia, Hungary. Ms Ghanmi is researching multilingual development, currently investigating the role of metalinguistic abilities in decoding unfamiliar languages.

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rabeb-Ghanmi

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