Second Language Attrition: The Role of Motivation and Use

Abstract

This study investigated the nature of second language (French) skills lost by grade 12 students over the course of the summer vacation, and the role played by attitudes and motivation in promoting language achievement and language maintenance. The results demonstrated that students rated many of their skills somewhat weaker after the summer vacation, but these effects were more general for items dealing with understanding skills than for speaking skills, and somewhat intermediate for reading and writing skills. Comparisons on objective assessments appeared to indicate improvement over the summer months on some skills, except for grammatical accuracy, that decreased, but these were interpreted as quite probably reflecting measurement artifacts. Although the attitude and motivation measures correlated quite meaningfully with the various measures of French proficiency, they did not correlate with loss of skill as indexed by simple change scores. A causal modelling analysis indicated nonetheless that attitudes and motivation were implicated in second language acquisition and retention, the latter primarily because motivational variables determine the extent to which individuals will make use of the second language during the summer period.