This study, which involved 130 US fourth to ninth graders enrolled in Chinese as a foreign language classrooms,intended to test Dörnyei’s L2 Motivation Self System and the seven motivational constructs identified in hisprevious study, and investigate whether the constructs found in this study differ based on the following differences:(a) gender, (b) grade level, and (c) starting age of learning a foreign language. This study found four motivationalconstructs: instrumentality-dominant, attitudes toward the L2 speaker/community-dominant, learners’ perceptionof their parents’ proficiency in Chinese, and milieu. In addition, this study found a significant interactive effectbetween grade level and starting age of learning a foreign language. The younger learners in the foreign languagelate starter group perceived their parents as having higher proficiency in Chinese than how the older learners inthe late starter group perceived their parents.