In promoting practitioner action research as a means to foster new understandings and action, McNiff and Whitehead (2011) argue passionately that

The previous chapter began to bring together implications for such new practices through discussing understandings of classroom foreign language learning motivation theory emergent from the study. Given my perceptions of low levels of engagement and motivation for EFL learning of the non-English major students in this context at the commencement of the study, a further aim of the study was to explore how the introduction of change-action in parallel with regular classroom English lessons might affect learners' motivation. This chapter therefore commences with a discussion of two pedagogical implications that emerge from the study. Following, I reflect on the methodological limitations and strengths of the research process, further discussing implications for future language learning motivation research.

What Do Students Gain from EFL Lessons?

As reflected in the previous chapter, the classroom context had a crucial impact on the self ideas and motivation of the students. Besides the ideal and ought-to L2 selves, Dörnyei's (2009a) tripartite L2 Motivational Self System includes the emergent context in which people undertake their studies as the learning experience. Drawing on the L2 Motivational Self System to study the motivation of adolescent learners in Indonesia, Lamb (2012) found that it was this situation-specific learning experience that played the key role in motivation. While his analysis revealed that students understood the utility of English, were interested in other countries and cultures and wanted to see themselves as users of English in the future, he concluded that ‘what makes them more likely to invest effort in learning is whether they feel positive about the process of learning’ (Lamb, 2012: 1014).