Human resource policy makers’, teachers’, and adult learners’ views on the impact of context- and teacher-generated autonomy on adult learners’ L2 motivation: Interview studies in Hungarian corporate contexts

Abstract

Although the indisputable importance of autonomy, partly due to its motivating capacity, is firmly anchored both in the theory of second-language acquisition and adult education at large, the cross section of the two fields, that is the autonomy of adult language learners, has received little attention in the literature. If we focus on the autonomy of adult language learners in corporate contexts, empirical studies are practically non-existent. This paper fills this niche by synthesizing the findings of 4 interview studies conducted in 18 organizations in Hungary. In this study, 19 human resource policy makers, 18 second-language (L2) teachers, and 21 adult learners were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide to explore how corporate contexts and their language teachers fostered autonomous language learning and how it affected adult learners’ L2 motivation. Results show that while these contexts promote autonomy through their ongoing organic development, teachers foster it by being responsive to learners’ needs, and by providing choices to learners on the basis of which tailor-made teaching is made feasible.