Introduction

In this introduction the editors suggest that the field of L2 motivation research has now achieved a degree of maturity, in terms of scale and diversity of scholarly output, that it warrants publication of a ‘state-of-the-art’ compendium. This in turn reflects the way that globalization, migration and other contemporary phenomena are encouraging or forcing people to learn language, and the challenges that they and their teachers face in sustaining the desire to learn over the long periods necessary to achieve communicative or academic success.