Surviving in the System: Tales of Personal English Learning Motivation in Contemporary Taiwan

Using a case-study, ethnographic approach, the research provides portrayals of four highly motivated English learners who have managed to learn the language while they struggle to survive within Taiwan?s highly competitive education system. In Taiwan, English language learning is subsumed under a Chinese Imperative (Chen, Warden and Chang, 2005), by which the masses of students grind through a testing gauntlet that leaves many students ?numb? and exhausted. Unlike average students, the purposively-sampled participants, including two undergraduates and two graduates, show fortitude and flexibility as they succeed in conquering the enormous tasks of learning English. This study suggests that motivation studies, which tend to place an emphasis on the western-based dichotomy of internal and external motivations, result in an over-simplified model of motivation. These case studies reveal a complex array of motivations for mastering English.