A Critique of Tin’s (2013) “Exploring the Development of ‘Interest’ in Learning English as a Foreign/Second Language”

Abstract

This paper critiques the research article “Exploring the Development of ‘Interest’ in Learning English as a Foreign/Second Language” written by Tan Bee Tin (2013) and mainly analyzes its strengths and weaknesses. Tin (2013) argued that the previous notions for motivation in foreign/ second language learning were considered as inadequate and claimed a new concept from a cognitive perspective. This review paper recognizes the problems Tin (2013) put forward in previous studies on learning interests, but points out that the solutions she described in her research article cannot well fill the gap.