Motivation to Learn the Russian Language in International Learners: Experience of Qualitative Analysis - the Cases of Thailand and Myanmar

Motivation to learn a foreign language (including Russian as such) is one of the important psychological factors of its successful acquisition. The theoretical approaches to the analysis of motivation to learn a foreign language considered in this article are usually implemented within the explanatory paradigm using quantitative methods that cannot describe the manifestations of motivation in their fullness and qualitative originality. For this reason, based on the Self-Determination Theory, the authors attempted to qualitatively analyze the motivation to learn Russian in a sample of learners from Thailand and Myanmar. The sample consisted of 18 people in Thailand (6 men and 12 women) and 14 people in Myanmar (2 men and 12 women) selected from among the learners of Russian language courses based on Centers for Open Education in Russian and Russian Language Teaching at Prince of Songkla University (Thailand) and Mandalay University of Foreign Languages (Myanmar). The authors conducted a thematic semi-structured interview focused on the topic of motivation to learn Russian, the results of which were subjected to qualitative content analysis. The categories for the analysis were formed in accordance with the types of motivational regulation described by the selfdetermination theory; the subcategories were formulated taking into account theoretical concepts and the content of the interviews. The results showed that in the conditions of shortterm free courses, the learners from Thailand and Myanmar demonstrated exclusively autonomous motivation to learn Russian, which ensured the greatest productivity of educational activities. The most typical manifestations of autonomous motivation among the students of such courses included interest in languages in general and in the Russian language in particular, in Russia and its culture, as well as an understanding of the importance of the Russian language for their work and professional growth.