This article draws on a longitudinal study of a group of mainland Chinese students' English learning experiences in an English medium university in Hong Kong, and explores the dynamic nature of their language learning motivation prior to and after their arrival in Hong Kong. The study identified context-mediated and self-determined elements in the participants' learning motivational discourses. The context-mediated motivational discourses echoed the societal discourses of learning, and were shaped by the contextual conditions on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong, including the roles of English, academic competition and medium of instruction. Through an extended socialization process, mediated by various social agents, some of these context-mediated motivational discourses became internalized and transformed into self-determined ones among many participants in later stages of their learning. The article argues for an integrated perspective, viewing learner motivation as a dynamic construct emerging from learners' interaction with contextual conditions.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070802373107]

Students from a school in Hong Kong (n=199) responded to 22 items asking about their school motivation and aspirations in a survey. Structural equation models found four school motivation factors consistent with the task, effort, competition, and praise scales of the Inventory of School Motivation, one education aspiration factor, one career aspiration factor, and significant relations of the motivation factors with the aspiration factors. Task and effort orientations were found to be stronger than the other orientations and to have relatively stronger associations with education aspirations, whereas task and praise had stronger associations with career aspirations. In examining potential change in students' goal orientations and aspirations through high school years, analysis of variance found that 7th-graders had significantly higher scores in task and effort orientations and career aspirations than 9th-graders, and higher scores in praise orientation than 11th-graders. The apparent drop in motivation scores from Grade 7, especially in task and effort orientations, both pertaining to a mastery orientation dimension that has been assumed to be a major driving force for excellence, calls for urgent attention to student motivation in junior high school classes.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410500046804 ]