Changes, interactions, and relationships: an examination of language learning motivational system of Chinese multilingual learners.

Motivation is of great significance in understanding multilingual development. This study closely examined the motivational system of Chinese university students in the process of multilingual learning. A retrospective questionnaire survey was conducted with 97 English majors, among whom 17 were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that Japanese temporarily surpassed English in motivational intensity. This was attributed to a sense of novelty arising from learning a new additional language in tandem with a feeling of fatigue due to a perceived discrepancy between 'should-be L2 learner' and 'actual L2 learner'. Later, English learning motivation reasserted its dominance in an intricate interplay among identity, value, and motivation. This is indicative of an identity-motivation nexus and a structurally conditioned motivational system. Moreover, a tension between subjective metacognitive framing and the lived experiences was found. While learners described their English and Japanese motivational systems as separate and in parallel, their accounts simultaneously revealed instances of motivational interactions. This points to a divergence between perceived and enacted motivational dynamics. This article concludes with some pedagogical implications for language learning and teaching.