Learners’ Future Self Guides: A Multilingual Motivational Self System Perspective

While in recent L2 motivation literature, languages other than English (LOTEs) have garnered increasing attention, the case of simultaneous language learning remains largely neglected. Adopting a person-centred and multilingual perspective, this study drew on the multilingual motivational self system framework (Henry 2017) and used latent profile analysis to investigate simultaneous language learners' profiles of future self guides. Five hundred and twenty-three Chinese tertiary level students who were concurrently studying English and a language other than English (LOTE) participated in the research. Latent profile analysis identified four configurations of future self guides: Multilingual (18%), English Dominant (22%), Obligated (40%) and Unmotivated (19%). Comparing the four profiles (groups of learners) across various criterion variables ranging from affective and behavioural engagement to self-perceived competence, Multilingual was consistently the best performing group while Unmotivated was at the opposite end of the spectrum, with English Dominant and Obligated somewhere in between. Patterns of the profiles suggest that promotion-focused self guides (ideal selves) contributed more strongly to the quality of experience (i.e., positive emotion relative to negative emotion) while prevention-focused self guides (ought-to selves) contributed more to the quantity of experience (i.e., language use), with the best performing group characterised by a synergy among different self guides. Practical implications of the findings for school and university languages classrooms will be discussed at the end of the presentation.