This study focused on investigating students’ complex L2 motivational systems in an equally complex educational environment. It analyzed students’ motivation while learning Spanish in a Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) course taught in a student-centered technology-enhanced classroom at a university in the Midwest. The innovative curriculum for the course emphasized student interaction, and revolved around the development of a collaborative entrepreneurial wiki project. This study addressed the expanding call for considering motivation as multidimensional, changing and contextualized (Crookes & Schmidt, 2006; Dörnyei, MacIntyre, & Henry, 2015) by steering away from simplistic cause–effect quantitative paradigms. It addressed the topic through the lens of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) and utilized two contemporary L2 motivation frameworks for making sense of the data: the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009), and Directed Motivational Currents (DMCs) (Muir & Dörnyei, 2013; Dörnyei, Ibrahim, & Muir 2015). It adopted in-depth qualitative case study methodology to answer the following research questions: 1. How can students' L2 motivations be described while learning Business Spanish through an innovative curriculum? 2. What are the factors affecting students’ L2 motivations throughout the course? Four students enrolled in this class during the Fall 2015 were randomly selected as the participants for this study. Data were collected throughout the academic semester and included: 1) four in-depth interviews with each student; 2) the work students developed collaboratively on the wiki; 3) course evaluations submitted to the instructor of the course; 4) students’ academic records and 5) classroom observations of the times students worked on the wiki. Findings revealed that the self system interacted with the motivational system of students in this class, and was determinant in guiding their motivational trajectories throughout the semester. The self system was also instrumental in shaping experiences students had related to the elements of the immediate L2 learning context. Moreover, factors stemming from the immediate L2 context that fulfilled students’ self-concordant goals were also instrumental in keeping students engaged with the process of learning; and completing the wiki project became a shared goal for students in each group. These factors led students to experience a group motivational wave — with characteristics of group DMCs — as they became more and more involved with the wiki project for the course. In terms of the work completed, students’ motivations translated into detailed wiki projects that incorporated more content than specified by the project’s guidelines and requirements. Finally, the study also generated insights into areas in which the L2MSS and DMCs could be expanded or refined in order to better account for students’ complex motivational trajectories.

Since the 1990s, the number of courses of Spanish for Specific Purposes (SSP), especially Business Spanish, has increased rapidly in institutions of higher education in the U.S. Ideally, the design of these courses is based both on an analysis of the learners’ needs and on a specific business-related purpose. However, instructors of Business Spanish may not be specialists in this area and may lack the means or the time to perform a needs analysis (NA) to prepare the course syllabus and materials. Consequently, choosing the Business Spanish textbook ends up being the first step in designing the course, and for the reasons stated above, this choice tends to be based on the instructor’s needs rather than those of the learners. In this dissertation, I subjected four Business Spanish textbooks to an in-depth analysis (Littlejohn, 1998) in three stages. This analysis includes their approach to specificity (from narrow to wide), and how the business-related learners’ needs (language- and skill-based) are addressed. Results from these four analyses reveal that the authors adapted four different language teaching approaches and methods. Their wide-angled approach to specificity and different viewpoints of the target learners’ business-related needs are based on (1) their beliefs on the nature of language and language teaching, (2) the position of the course in the macro curriculum (macro-specific purpose), and (3) their respective target audiences. A two-step evaluation of Business Spanish textbooks is recommended to instructors based on the macro-specific purpose of their courses and the micro-specific purposes of communicative activities.