Re-examining the profile and motivation of German studies students in Australian universities

Abstract

The last comprehensive data on the profile and motivation of German Studies students in Australian universities was collected in the late 1980s and hence does not reflect changes to the Australian higher education sector introduced in the late 1990s. This lack of current data constrains German Studies programs in their options to prepare for the future. The main objective of this thesis is not only to fill the gap of recent data but at the same time to analyse the new data in the context of relevant theories of language learning motivation. The analysis establishes a theoretically informed and data-based platform for future course design which will assist German Studies programs in designing their courses. The thesis begins with a review and critique of former research on German Studies students in Australian universities as well as pertinent models of language learning motivation. It will be argued that previous studies related their findings to Gardner's dichotomy of integrative and instrumental motivation without testing whether their data matched Gardner's model. The thesis' centrepiece is the analysis and discussion of new data collected for this thesis. The data focuses on students' demographic backgrounds, their motivation to learn German, and on their expectations towards course content. Where possible, the new data is compared with data from former studies in order to investigate what changes have occurred over the last two decades. In this context, it will be shown that these changes are primarily a reflection of changes to higher education policies. The data-based analysis of student motivation will reveal that students' reasons for choosing German as part of their degree are more complex than Gardner's dichotomy of integrative and instrumental motivation. Show more