Some Kinds Of ...

Motivation refers to “why” – why you are studying a language in the first place, why you like reading better than listening (if you do), why you study rather than party or vice versa. When you come right down to it, motivation is behind all the choices you make and everything you do. Here we focus on motivation in language learning. There are different approaches to general motivation and at how people can lose their motivation (demotivation).

v Some kinds of motivation

v Motivation and choices

v Losing motivation (demotivation)

The two best-known ways of looking at motivation are called intrinsic–extrinsic and integrative instrumental. There is some overlap between the two approaches. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have to do with whether the motivator is more inside you or outside of you. Intrinsic motivation is about doing something because it makes you feel happy, more whole, or because it fits in some way with something important to who you are. Extrinsic motivation has to do with doing something for such ‘outside’ reasons as money, job requirements, or passing a test. The two kinds of motivation probably overlap to some degree when the job or test, for example, are part of a career that you care a lot about, or are part of a degree program in a subject you really like. Then your work for the test or assignment may be extrinsically motivated, but the program of which it is a part brings about intrinsic motivation, too. Within the language learning field, the classic model is the distinction between instrumental and integrative motivation. If you are learning a language primarily for a purpose like getting a job or fulfilling an academic requirement you are affected by instrumental motivation. Integrative motivation has to do with wanting to be accepted by another community. Extrinsic and instrumental motivation are similar but not exactly alike – extrinsic focuses on the fact that the reason is outside of you, whereas instrumental is about the purpose of your learning. Intrinsic and integrative motivations are even more different: intrinsic motivation has to do with what makes you feel good or whole, whereas integrative motivation is about acceptance and some form of membership in a language community. Motivation applies not only to why you are learning a language, but also to why you make the choices you do while learning. Factors that influence that motivation and hence the choices include learning style and personality, anxiety, self-efficacy, and personal history, among other things. For example, you might have taken a trip to Thailand recently and now want to learn Thai (personal history, intrinsic), be enrolled in a program in international relations (extrinsic and indirectly intrinsic if you really like the subject), enjoy learning by talking to others rather than in a classroom and thus seek to participate in immersion learning (learning style and personality). It is possible to lack or lose motivation. Some experiences can be demotivating for you, for example a classroom in which you cannot make the most of your learning style. If you are an inductive learner, for instance, and everything is pointed out by the teacher, you may feel frustration at not being able to make your own discoveries. On the other hand, this might be a more comfortable situation if you are a deductive learner, who would rather apply what is learned than discover it. Another demotivating situation, depending on your personality, may be feeling rejected by a speaker of the language. Anxiety can be highly demotivating. After all, who wants to face constant threats and stress? You may be tempted to cope with your anxiety by avoiding the situation that makes you anxious and justify it to yourself as something you didn’t want to do anyway. Avoiding learning and deciding you don’t want it after all because it makes you anxious is unlikely to lead to success. You can really get discouraged when you do poorly in an examination or feel that you are not as good as others in the class. Sometimes you may have to learn the language because it is required. Some of you may find it hard to get motivated to work if you do not see any practical reason for learning the language. In this case you may need to find things that catch your interest, or better yet, make some friends from the country where the language is spoken. So what can you do if you are not feeling motivated to learn the language, do your homework, or speak with others in the language? There are some suggestions:

   Review your goals.

   Have some fun with or through the language.

   Manage your feelings.

   Interact with other people.

You can review for yourself why you are learning the language. You may be able to get back to what got you into it in the first place. Find something you like related to the language and let it be your focus. For instance, you might get engaged by the culture of the people who speak the language, by the music, or by sports played by members of the culture. Then you can put some energy into learning words related to your topic of interest and into learning how to talk about it in the language. If you enjoy languages for their own sake, you might find that some of the concepts used in the language. You might like creating something new with the language such as a story or simple poem. Manage your feelings and put failures in their place. Mistakes are not statements about you and your overall competence or value. They are only obstacles for you to overcome and from which you can learn. Instead of avoiding necessary learning situations that make you anxious or using the “sour grapes” strategy find things you enjoy doing, or find new ways to achieve the same result. For example, if you don’t like memorizing verb forms, try reading texts in the language that use different tenses and aspects. Notice the verbs and their forms. Blank out the verbs, and then go through and try to fill them in right. This way you get exposure and a way to test yourself without having to use brute memorization, and you get a sense of gradual mastery as well. Relationships with other people can make a wonderful motivator. After all, language is communication, and communication is with other people. Sometimes we learn not only for our own purposes but because it will please someone else, such as a parent, teacher, or friend. Perhaps the best way to build such relationships is to make friends who speak the language. It would be ideal to use the language with them to practice conversation, but even if you cannot for some reason, you will pick up a lot about the language and culture from them, and your friendship with them will support your motivation to keep working on learning their language. A variation on this approach is to work out an exchange with them, where you spend some of the time with their language and some of the time with yours so that you both learn. Knowing what self-efficacy is can help you reach your goals successfully in many endeavors, not just in foreign language. To improve your sense of self-efficacy,  there are some useful  pieces of information:

v a definition of self-efficacy;

v a description of the factors that affect self-efficacy.

Feelings of self-efficacy have to do with one’s feeling that one can accomplish a task or project, such as learning a foreign language. It is not quite the same thing as self-confidence, which is more general. You may be generally self-confident in most settings, but you may or may not have a sense of self efficacy as a language learner, on the playing field, or at cocktail parties, just to take a few examples. Self-efficacy is a close partner with motivation: if you think you can accomplish something, you are likely to want to try it. If you think you are likely to fail or not be very good at something, your motivation may suffer. Needless to say, lack of self-efficacy is likely to involve some anxiety, so the two concepts are related, and so are the ways to cope. Not only does self-efficacy vary by domain of activity (such as sports, political debate, or language learning), it also is influenced by what you are like (your personality and learning style), and by other people. Some important factors include:

ü personality

ü learning style

ü relationships

Some personality characteristics increase or decrease feelings of self-efficacy, depending on the specific situation. One example is extraversion (tendency to seek stimulation from outside yourself, especially with other people), which is likely to promote a sense of self-efficacy in situations where you need to talk to a lot of people in the foreign language. Your learning style is likely to play a major role in your sense of self-efficacy in specific situations. Those learners who like dealing with the unpredictable, for example, may enter an unstructured learning situation like an immersion learning program with confidence or even pleasurable anticipation. Learners who prefer overt structure might feel at a loss without it. If being liked is important to you, your self-efficacy will probably be increased if you feel that the people you are talking with are “on your side” and are laughing with you when you make errors rather than at you. Good relationships can help. One of the authors has found that even when she is at the early language learning stages, one way to build successful relationships is to let native speakers become her teachers. Building and maintaining self-efficacy may depend on the following factors:

Ø imaging;

Ø making friends;

Ø being realistic;

Ø checking your progress;

Ø improving your weak areas gradually;

Ø using positive self-talk; and

Ø chunking.

The first step toward building self-confidence is self-awareness. If you know what your learning style and personality preferences are, you will have a better idea of the situations that enhance your self-efficacy and those which will detract from it. Imaging, or imagining yourself in a situation, is not only a good technique for managing anxiety and enhancing motivation, it can help you with self-efficacy as well. Making friends who encourage you and help you see your uppermost potential and who “hold your hand” when you are feeling down can boost your feelings of self-efficacy. These friends can be speakers of your own language, but it is even better if they can come from the culture and country whose language you are learning. Be realistic, neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic. Everyone has limitations. However, instead of focusing on the limitations, spend your efforts focusing on how you can overcome (and are overcoming) those limitations every day. If you are feeling some discouragement, take a look at material you learned earlier in your course and see how far you’ve come. For example, if you do well with making yourself understood despite your limitations, find opportunities to do that, and let yourself feel good about your successes at it. While emphasizing your strengths, do not neglect the things you do not like as well or are not very good at doing. Get into these things gradually, and try to be sure that you do them in small enough steps that you build in more success than failure.

Don’t forget! Please! Give yourself a pep talk from time to time, saying such things as “I am a good learner. Sometimes I run into things that are hard, and then I find strategies to help myself. I’m smart about learning strategically.” If you catch yourself saying things like “I’m no good at language learning,” stop yourself as fast as you can. It may be a natural defense against the feeling of failure, but it is also likely to engender more failure that you can avoid. Each step of the language learning is important, do the kind of chunking where you break a large task into smaller ones is a good example of this.

Bibliography:

1.            Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,

2.            S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,

3.            Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP

4.            B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

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