ABSTRACT
The British Council has unambiguously identified Chinese as one of the top five languages that the UK will need the most in the next 20 years. This conclusion was based on a range of economic and non-economic factors, including the current language deficit in the country. Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert, both Canadian social psychologists, published their seminal work in 1972, through which they established language learning motivation as a research area. This chapter takes a data-driven approach that uses open-ended questionnaires and interviews to explore why Chinese-heritage undergraduates decide to pursue a degree in Chinese, and what specific challenges they face during their course of study. The majority of the participants reported feeling extra academic pressure as compared with non-heritage learners. The second major challenge that emerged from the findings was that others took the success of the Chinese-heritage language (CHL) students for granted.
