Academics’ Motivation to Learn Foreign Languages: The Case of English

Teaching and research are central aspects of university scholars’ work. To provide a high quality of teaching and research, scholars are required to continually learn and develop professionally. Only recently have some empirical studies that focused on academics’ motivations and emotions attempted to explain key outcomes related to their research, teaching, and professional development. This study adopted a self-determination lens to explore academics’ motivation to learn foreign languages, an area that has hardly been scrutinized due to an assumption that academics are highly motivated. The sample consisted of 593 academics (330 women) from nine public and one non-public higher education institutions in Krakow, Poland. The participants also self-rated their level of proficiency in English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian. The results from the Polish version of the Language Learning Orientations Scale—intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, amotivation (LLOS-IEA) (Noels et al., 2000) showed that these university academics were characterized by both intrinsic motivation and the most internalized form of extrinsic motivation (identified regulation). These have been considered to be optimal forms of motivation with positive outcomes. Statistically significant differences were found between scholars’ motivation to learn languages and age, gender, and job seniority. The analysis performed for English indicated that scholars rated themselves as having a proficient level (C1) in reading and an independent level (B2) in writing skills.