ABSTRACT
The effectiveness of Vietnamese rural English language education is limited by low teaching quality, poor facilities, and learners’ low language proficiency. Drawing on the person-in-context relational view of L2 motivation and the construct of agentive appraisal, this chapter explores the motivational affordances available for two Vietnamese students learning English in a rural high school in Southern Vietnam within and across settings and relationships, and their transitions from high school to university. Analysing interview data and observations in schools and the participants’ homes, together with their accounts of private tuition, this chapter presents two case studies of participants adapting their language learning through the mediation of personal and contextual affordances to mediate the constraints and challenges in their contexts. Different environmental elements contributed to shaping and reshaping their motivation to learn English. Their accounts mark out the ways in which students from rural areas, with their motivational idiosyncrasies and agentive appraisals of social support and affordances, can develop strong trajectories as language learners. The chapter concludes with implications for language teachers and policy makers, particularly in terms of transition to higher education.
