Language learning motivation and religious identity in Indonesian pesantren schools

Religion is recognised as a salient component of many people’s ‘core’ identity (Joseph, 2004), and some languages are inextricably linked to certain religions. Given that many recent studies (cf. Islam et al., 2013; Kormos and Kiddle, 2013; Lamb et al. 2020) have indicated the importance of self and identity in people’s motivation to learn languages, it could be expected that religion may also be a relevant factor for certain languages. Indeed, anecdotal evidence suggests that some students, in some of Indonesia’s Islamic boarding schools (pesantren), harbour negative attitudes towards English but very positive attitudes towards Arabic, prompting resistance to learning English at both individual and institutional levels. The study reported in this thesis adopted a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design to investigate this issue in three Indonesian pesantren. Employing Dörnyei’s (2005, 2009) L2 Motivational Self System (L2 Motivational Self System) as the main theoretical framework, a questionnaire consisting of well-established constructs adopted from previous studies and newly created context-specific constructs was designed to measure students’ motivation for learning English and Arabic (n = 376). Then, multiple regression analyses were performed to describe L2 motivation in the three institutions. In addition, qualitative data were generated through classroom observations and individual interviews to further explain issues that emerged from the quantitative data.
The findings suggest that learners from the most conservative context had the lowest motivation to learn English in all motivational dimensions, though their motivation to learn Arabic was the highest. Apart from the three aspects of L2 Motivational Self System, religious and institutional factors also did appear to influence motivation to learn English and Arabic, in that they partly predicted learners’ attitudes towards the languages and their reported learning efforts in certain contexts (p<.05). The learners’ positive attitude towards Arabic was heavily fuelled by their belief in the superiority of Arabic to other languages because it is the liturgical language of Islam. The qualitative data revealed that the cohort of students, especially from the most conservative context related their English learning motivation to their spiritual vision, i.e. using English mainly as a means of da’wah (Islamic propagation) and for communicating with other Muslims worldwide. However, this da’wah motive did not appear to generate much learning effort, and was possibly a way of overcoming the dissonance they feel in being forced to study the language of ‘non-believers’. The thesis concludes by emphasising the need for L2 researchers to further examine religious identity as a consequential socio-cultural aspect of learning certain foreign languages. It also offers pedagogical recommendations for religious schools in Indonesia, which may have relevance for educational institutions in other global contexts.