Most students take language courses at university, but only a fraction go beyond the introductory and intermediate levels despite the fact that continued study is likely necessary to achieve full communicative competence in the target language. By shedding light on the motivational pathways that predict language learning effort, persistence, and achievement, motivation research can provide actionable data that can guide strategies to help students generate and maintain motivation, leading to better learning outcomes and a stronger and healthier language program for educators and administrators. This survey‐based study applied Expectancy Value Theory to understand links between motivation, persistence, and achievement in a fourth‐semester Spanish course, a critical transition point in the language curriculum. Expectancy Value Theory subcomponents showed differential relationships to willingness to communicate, enrollment choices, and final course grade. Based on this data, suggestions are offered for supporting university students' language learning interest and achievement.

One of the basic goals of second language (L2) speech research is to understand the perception-production link, or the relationship between L2 speech perception and L2 speech production. Although many studies have examined the link, they have done so with strikingly different conceptual foci and methods. Even studies that appear to use similar perception and production tasks often present nontrivial differences in task characteristics and implementation. This conceptual and methodological variation makes meaningful synthesis of perception-production findings difficult, and it also complicates the process of developing new perception-production models that specifically address how the link changes throughout L2 learning. In this study, we scrutinize theoretical and methodological issues in perception-production research and offer recommendations for advancing theory and practice in this domain. We focus on L2 sound learning because most work in the area has focused on segmental contrasts.

Recent longitudinal approaches to second language (L2) pronunciation development have prioritized developmental trajectories, highlighting individual variation in phonetic learning over time. Aligning with this research paradigm, the present study examined voice onset time (VOT) production in Spanish/b/and/p/ over two semesters of elementary language instruction. Twenty-six native speakers of English who were novice learners of Spanish completed two L2 production tasks five times and an English production task once, designed to ascertain the frequency with which they prevoiced English voiced stops. Growth curve modeling revealed that linear and quadratic functions most accurately captured participants’ L2 VOT development insofar as more gains occurred during the first half of the study. Speakers’ propensity to prevoice in the native language also predicted prevoicing in L2 Spanish/b/. However, individual results varied, including near-native learners and asymmetrical developers, individuals who improved their production of /p/but not/b/. These results are interpreted within the frameworks of the Speech Learning Model and L2 Perceptual Assimilation Model.