More or less choice? The influence of choice on task motivation and task engagement

The present article reports on two studies which investigated how and to what extent students' intrinsic motivation and task engagement were affected by manipulating autonomy, in the form of task choice. A total of 120 learners of L2 Russian at a German university worked in pairs to complete a task that focused on making a written presentation about a famous contemporary person from Russia. Two types of choice were manipulated: choice on the content of the task and procedural choice. Four different outcomes of students' performances were examined: (a) responses to a questionnaire tapping their subjective experiences regarding task motivation, (b) time-on-task in minutes, (c) total word length of their written presentations, and (d) quality of task performance. Results suggest that different combinations of choice produce different effects on students' behavior. Contrary to the assumptions of self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985), the conditions with less choice proved to be more beneficial for students' task engagement and task motivation. The findings offer a complex picture regarding the application of self-determination theory in understanding learner motivation during task-based language teaching.