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Studying ‘Interest’: Approaches and Methodological Issues

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Stimulating Student Interest in Language Learning
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Abstract

Interest has been widely investigated through questionnaire surveys in traditional psychology. A scrutiny of the language used in interest questionnaires shows differences in terms of language used. Despite claiming to investigate ‘interest’, what is being measured through questionnaire surveys may not always be the same construct. Dissatisfaction with such traditional psychological approaches has given rise to alternative methods: a discursive psychological and a dynamic system approach. Interest is not only a psychological phenomenon but also a social, discursive construct, which meaning is co-constructed through our conversations with others about interest. Interest as a dynamic system has a reciprocal relation with other dynamic systems and thus should.

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Tin, T.B. (2016). Studying ‘Interest’: Approaches and Methodological Issues. In: Stimulating Student Interest in Language Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-34042-9_4

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