Probing Students’ Future Possible Self as a Motivator for Learning

Abstract

The aim of the undertaken qualitative study is to investigate students’ future possible selves. The research involves semi-structured interviews with ten first year English Foreign Language (EFL) students from the English Department at Souk-Ahras University in Algeria to gain more understanding of key issues from their perceptions. The main results uncover that the participants underline the importance of their future projected selves in terms of the language study. Additionally, they underscore the salient role of their Ideal L2 possible self in boosting their future academic success and later professional achievements. Significantly enough, a number of students desire to identify themselves among the world wide populations who speak the English language to communicate with other FL/L2 speakers in the future, and yet providing validity to Dörnyei’s tripartite construct of the L2 motivational self system and its applicability across different linguistic and cultural contexts