Pre-Reading: Chapter 7 Motivation

Chapter 7 discusses about the motivation as the influence on foreign language learning. The author defines motivation as “the desire to initiate L2 learning and the effort employed to sustain it” (p.1).

Key Words
There are many different types of motivation mentioned in the chapter.

• Integrativeness—“a genuine interest in learning the second language in order to come closer to the other language community” (p .2 cited from Gardner, 2001, p. 5)
• Orientations—“reasons for learning the L2” (p. 3)
• Attitudes—“both towards the L2 community and its speakers and towards teachers and curriculum in the instructional setting” (p.3)

In the mid 1990s, the new way of looking at the motivation occurred by focusing on quality rather than quantity on motivation.

• Intrinsically motivated—motivation that is self-initiated by choice and for their own sake (e.g. hobby—I want to learn English because I want to listen to American songs.)
• Extrinsically motivated—not chosen or caused by individuals (e.g. exam, rewards, punishment—I want to learn English because I want to pass a university entrance exam.)
• Introjected regulation—pressure developed by feelings of guilt or shame (e.g. I would feel ashamed if I couldn’t speak English.)
• Identified regulation—similar to the intrinsic motivation, individuals accept the external values and adopt to their own sake (e.g. I want to be like a person who can speak more than one language.)
• Amotivation—Individuals suffer from this because they do not see the exact reasons why they are studying the language in compulsory language courses (e.g. I don’t know why I am studying English because I live in Japan.)

There are some newer perspectives to look at the motivation.

• Dynamic
  o Time—motivation changes over time
  o Context—group dynamics
  o Behavior—language choice and intended learning effort

Reflections
There are numbers of empirical studies mentioned in this chapter in order to support the concept of motivation. I especially found interest in the section 7.5: motivation from a distance, which discusses about the motivation of the learners in the FL setting. It makes sense that because of its fewer contacts with L2 speakers in FL settings, learners in FL settings may have less integrativeness, but instrumental type of orientation (e.g. good grades) and class room attitudes (e.g. to the teacher, materials) may strongly influence their learning especially at the beginning level. That means the instruction style of the classroom teacher could easily change the learners’ motivation toward learning the target language.

It reminds me the time when I started to take English at my junior high school. When we started to take English, everyone loved to study English because a) it was the easiest class “at the beginning” since we were learning the basic, b) nearly most of my classmates got good grades on exam because of its easiness, and c) English teachers were promoting the importance of learning English in order to succeed in our academic life and professional career in the future (English as an international language). However, as we took tests and tests over times, sentence structures got complicated and many classmates started to receive unsatisfactory grades. As a result, there were two-way directions in my class: highly motivated learners and less motivated learners. Furthermore, many of my classmates suffered from amotivation because they didn’t see any reasons to study English at all.

In FL settings, learners can easily lose their interest. Teachers who teach Japanese at the adult school once mentioned to me that it is hard to keep students because they easily stop coming to the class if they lost their interest in learning Japanese. I wonder what kinds of motivation will work well in FL settings and how we (as teachers) can promote the motivation in order to keep our learners stay in interest to learn the target language.

I personally think that the group dynamics can be great motivation for the FL setting. If teachers could establish positive relationship among learners, learners enjoy coming to class and can learn from each other. It reminds me about Near Peer Role Models discussed in Murphey (1998). Near Peer Role Models (NPRMs) are peers who are close to the learners’ social, professional, and/or age level and whom the learners may respect and admire. Students can look up to and model NPRM’s positive behaviors. While we may be hard to create integrativeness toward native speakers/cultures of the target language, we may be easy to establish the positive attitudes toward peers who are learning the same target language and learners can model their behaviors.

Look forward to discussing the topic in class!!