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EXTRAMURAL ENGLISH ACTIVITIES AND INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES
life, too. Ihis increased importance ultimately leads both to a shift from a
foreign language status of English to a second language status (Graddol 2006)
and to English becoming a global lingua franca. As a conseguence, with the
emergence of English as a global lingua franca around the millennium, a
number of researchers (Coetzee-Van Rooy 2006, Dörnyei et al. 2006, Irie 2003,
Lamb 2004, Ushioda 2006, Warden-Lin 2000, Yashima 2000) started to gues¬
tion Gardners original theory and claimed that it may be applicable to a
specific context (e.g., Canada), but it cannot necessarily be universally trans¬
ferred to other contexts. This is particularly true for the English language,
which, as a global lingua franca, has no specific language community into
which a learner could integrate.
As a response to this, Dörnyei (2005) developed his L2 Motivational Self
System, which draws on Markus and Nurius’ (1986) Possible Selves Theory and
Higgins’ (1996) Self-discrepancy Theory. Dérnyei’s (2005) theory is centered
on students’ learning behavior and how this behavior is affected by three di¬
mensions, namely the Ideal L2 Self, the Ought-to L2 Self, and the L2 Learning
Experience. The next sections, therefore, introduce the three dimensions of
the theory.
2.3.1.1 The Ideal L2 Self
Dörnyei (2005: 106) defines the Ideal L2 Self as “the L2-specific aspect of one’s
ideal self”, which refers to the ideal future image of the learner about them¬
selves. Papi (2010) points out that if someone wishes to be a competent and
fluent L2 user who is able to hold a conversation with their friends in the
particular L2, this person creates this image in themselves. This self-perceived
image could serve as a strong motivator to achieve their goals, which is to
“reduce the discrepancy between the here-and-now or actual self and this
ideal image” (Papi 2010: 468-469), i.e., since the learner is not yet as competent
a speaker as they wish to be, the desire to close that gap can drive their SLA
motivation. With an EE example, if a video game player wants to converse with
their international friends using the English language, and as they are not
necessarily proficient enough to do this, they are more likely to be motivated
to put more effort into learning English.
The Ideal L2 Self is based on the Gardnerian (1985) concept of integrative¬
ness, and even though empirical research conducted by Taguchi et al. (2009)
and Ryan (2009) found that this dimension of the Motivational Self System
may be interpreted as the integrativeness put forth by Gardner (1985); in the
case of English, however, which has become a global lingua franca, there is no
point talking about a specific language community. This is because there are
several countries with native English speakers (USA, UK, Australia, etc.) and
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