A comparative study on the L2 motivations and desired L2 identities of university students of English, Italian and German studies

Abstract

Despite the remarkable level of research activity in the field of L2 motivation in the past decades, most studies have focussed on learners of global English, who generally pursue the language as part of an educational or professional requirement, to gain membership into a global community and to obtain utilitarian advantages. This literature has not only disregarded more “traditional” learners of English, such as learners of English studies, who study the language as a key area of their degree alongside cultural and literary aspects of specific English-speaking countries, but also LOTE learners, thus leading to the establishment of a “global English bias” in theoretical and empirical advanc..