Understanding Reading Motivation From EAP Students’ Categorical Work in a Focus Group

This article uses insights and methods from ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) to explore reading motivation as a topic (Burch, 2016). With the results of CA and MCA of the participants’ categorical work in their interactions in a focus group setting, this study outlines how enthusiastic readers talk about their experience with and opinions about extensive reading (ER) and how they use their talk for interactive purposes in the focus group. The author shows how participants developed different positioned categories of a particular kind of reader while displaying their own stances toward the ER experience and reading behaviors. The author also shows how they changed their stances toward voluntary reading and how they assigned different propositions to their experience with ER while accomplishing agreement on two points: that voluntary reading is enjoyable but subject to time constraints. This study portrays a complex picture of reading motivation as related to different kinds of identity work and the moral responsibilities associated with certain identities. Post-analytically, the author suggests pedagogical implications of what the participants’ categories say about issues related to the ER teaching principles in an English for academic purposes context.