Humanising Language Teaching
Year 6; Issue 1; January 2004

The Learning School

MOTIVATION I: TOWARDS A METHODOLOGY OF MOTIVATION

Ian Tudor. Universite Libre, Brussels, Belgium

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The key role of motivation
Motivation and classroom dynamics
Motivation as connection
Rationale for a methodology of motivation
Motivation as a learner-centred phenomenon

( editorial note: this is a two part article and Part II will go up in the March 2004 issue of HLT. )

This is the first of a two part article on motivation. This article looks at the role of motivation in language teaching and suggests that motivation is perhaps the single most important factor in the practical realisation of language teaching in the classroom. It then suggests a view of motivation as “connection”. From this perspective, motivation involves students finding a sense of personal meaningfulness in their language learning. It is also suggested that motivation should receive stronger and more explicit acknowledgement in goal setting and course design. This would involve the development of what is referred to as a “methodology of motivation”. The second article proposes a number motivationally oriented activity types which are designed to help learners connect with various aspects of the language or the learning process.

I.1. The key role of motivation

If there is one thing that most language teachers would agree upon, it is that motivation plays an important and perhaps even a crucial role in language learning and teaching. If students are motivated, there is a good chance that they will learn the language they are studying and which we are attempting to teach them. It is also likely that we will walk to the classroom with a light step and leave it feeling that our preparation time has been well spent and that, in fact, teaching is not such a bad job after all. The contrary is also true. If students are not motivated, learning and teaching will be an uphill struggle and the results are likely to be disappointing, for our students, and for us as teachers, too. For this reason, the question of how to motivate one's students is probably one of the most recurrent and fundamental concerns of the classroom teacher.

This having been said, it is not always easy to pin down what motivation actually is. Dörnyei (2001: 7) pertinently quotes Martin Covington on this point: “Motivation, like the concept of gravity, is easier to describe (in terms of its outward, observable effects) than it is to define.” With this in mind, before looking a little more into the nature of motivation, it may be helpful to look at how different levels of motivation manifest themselves in the classroom.

2. Motivation and classroom dynamics

The signs of positive motivation are many and varied, but it is fairly easy to recognise when a group of students is well motivated. For example:

• They participate actively and willingly with one another in learning activities.
• They are attentive to what the teacher and other students say and the questions they ask.
• They do their homework regularly and prepare the next day's activities.
• They find input material interesting.
• They are willing to cooperate with one another or with the teacher when practical difficulties arise.
• They come to class with well-organised notes.
• They are willing to “have a go” even if they find an activity difficult or unfamiliar.

The signs of poor motivation are equally varied and are, to a large degree, the mirror image of those mentioned above. They include the following:

• Students tend not to arrive on time for class or enter the classroom with evident reluctance.
• They are listless during and become restless towards the end of the lesson. (They can't wait to get away.)
• They are unwilling to cooperate with one another on learning activities.
• They find study materials and learning activities boring or complain about them not being useful.
• Disagreements or tensions arise among group members for no apparent reason and are difficult to resolve.
• Students are unwilling to depart from habitual routines or familiar activities, even if the teacher explains their relevance in learning terms.
• They seem not to retain what they have done in previous lessons.

Students' level of motivation thus exerts a significant influence on classroom dynamics, and thereby on what can be achieved in the classroom. Motivated students get involved more fully in learning activities, and therefore have a better chance of deriving benefit from them; they are also more likely to do extra work outside of the classroom by reading books or newspapers in the target language (TL), listening to the radio, making personal notes on interesting aspects of the language, visiting the TL country, and so on. Thus, within the framework of a given course, motivation influences the effectiveness of learning and teaching to a significant degree. This is what we could describe as the visible benefits of motivation.

In addition, there are what could be described as the invisible benefits of motivation. Students who have felt motivated for one course are more likely to take their knowledge of the language further, either by following another course or by means of personal study. They are also more likely to initiate the study of another language (“Learning English was fun, so I think I'll try some German.”). In our increasingly international world, where language skills are becoming more and more important, positive attitudes of this nature contribute greatly to increased language learning, with all the human, social and practical benefits which this entails.

In other words, motivation pays. It pays in the short term, within the framework of a given course or study programme; it also pays in the longer term with respect to the number of people who initiate or pursue language learning. Motivation is therefore a concern both for practising language teachers and also for the many educational and political bodies which are concerned with promoting the learning of languages.

3. Motivation as connection

As Covington, quoted earlier in this article, rightly suggests, it is much easier to identify the external signs of motivation than to say what exactly motivation is. One of the reasons for this is that motivation can arise out of a variety of different sources. Indeed, Dörnyei (2001: 1) suggests that motivation is:

“ an abstract concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they do. It is obvious that in this sense the term subsumes a whole range of motives – from financial incentives such as a raise in salary to idealistic beliefs such as the desire for freedom – that have very little in common except that they influence behaviour. Thus, 'motivation' is best seen as a broad umbrella term that covers a variety of meanings.”

I would, however, suggest that there is one notion which lies at the heart of the complex but fundamental phenomenon of motivation, that of “connection”. “Connection”, as I understand it in the language teaching context, involves students discovering a sense of personal meaningfulness in their language learning in one way or another.

Clearly, some students enter the classroom with an already strong sense of connection with the language. This may be because they feel spontaneously drawn to the TL as a result of positive affective associations with the TL country itself (having friends or a partner from the country in question, for example). A similar level of connection can arise out of a strongly felt pragmatic motivation to learn the language. A given student may thus be strongly motivated to learn a language because s/he wishes to live or study in the TL country. Yet another may simply enjoy learning languages as an activity in its own right. In each of these cases, then, the students bring with them to the language classroom a certain spontaneous connection with the TL or with aspects of the learning process which offer the teacher a starting point in helping them to engage meaningfully in the learning process.

Not all students, of course, will enter the language classroom with a spontaneous feeling of connection with the TL, with the learning process, with the goals they are required to pursue, or even with the fact that they are required to learn a given language. Given that a large percentage of those who are learning languages world-wide are doing so within the context of formal education, where decisions on content and goals are made by actors other than the students themselves, this should not be seen as surprising. In situations of this nature, however, one of the teacher's most fundamental tasks is to help her / his students to connect with the learning process in one way or another. It is here that the ability to motivate students becomes a crucial pedagogical challenge for the teacher, for as long as students remain unconnected from language study, the process is likely to be an uphill struggle for them and also for the teacher.

4. Rationale for a methodology of motivation

Given the evident role which motivation plays in the practical realisation of language teaching, it may seem rather surprising that the term itself does not appear more often in official language teaching documents such as syllabus outlines or course objectives.

More often than not, the goals of language teaching programmes are defined in terms of certain products – what students should know or be able to do by the end of the programme in question. In certain cases, there is a clear rationale for defining objectives and intended learning outcomes in this manner. If a student needs to use the telephone every day at work, to take orders from customers in a restaurant, or to present their research in the TL, it is only reasonable to gear their learning programme around the achievement of these goals. In other learning situations, however, it may be extremely difficult to identify the specific uses to which students will need to put the language, even if there is a good chance that learning a language will be useful to them at some stage in the future. In such contexts, learning goals are often defined in terms of a general communicative ability or with respect to aspects of the linguistic system of the TL itself.

These are valid choices, especially when language teaching has to be organised at national or institutional level. However, the degree to which the product agenda as defined in terms of specific learning outcomes will be achieved, depends on how far students will be able to relate to it in a personally meaningful manner. This, however, depends on the other agenda which is at play in the classroom, namely the process agenda, relating to students' subjective interaction with the language and thus with the learning process itself.

Of course, when students have clear pragmatic needs in the TL in at least a fairly proximate future, there is every reason for defining learning goals around these needs. Furthermore, when students do have such needs, they are generally well motivated to achieve them. In this way the product agenda (in terms of specific learning outcomes) is likely to coincide with the process agenda (in terms of students' motivation to learn and interaction with the learning process).

As already pointed out, however, in very many learning situations world-wide language learning programmes are not preparing students for any clearly identifiable uses of the language. Their goal is rather to prepare a potential for and openness to subsequent learning. In such situations, it may be questioned what is more important, the specific competences or knowledge that students acquire, or their ability to connect with the language and the learning process. If they are able to connect with a given language or with aspects of language learning, there is a good chance that they will be ready to undertake subsequent and possibly more focused learning fairly willingly as and when this becomes necessary. (These are what were described in section I.2 as the invisible benefits of motivation.)

In essence, I am suggesting that we should be willing to re-assess the relative importance of positive attitudes and an openness to language learning as opposed to more easily quantifiable outcomes as measured in terms of specific competences and knowledge. This would involve re-evaluating the balance between the pursuit of specific learning products, on the one hand, and the quality of student interaction in the learning process, on the other.

Allocating a more central role to the quality of students' interaction with their language learning, and in particular to their motivation, would call for a change in the way in which we define course goals. Specifically, it would involve defining course objectives on two levels. One would relate to products, or intended learning outcomes in terms of knowledge and competences; the other would be in process terms, with respect to motivational factors, and in particular students' connection with language learning. Doing this would call for a fairly substantial change in the way in which we go about defining course objectives. It would, however, have the great advantage of bringing the official discourse of language teaching closer to the reality of language teaching as lived out in classrooms. Few teachers believe that they can “simply teach the programme” according to the instruction manual or official goals, and one of their most enduring concerns is to help students connect with the programme goals in question in one way or another. Allocating a more explicit place to motivation in course design would thus acknowledge more honestly the real work of language teachers and, even more importantly, the real nature of student learning.

5. Motivation as a learner-centred phenomenon

So far in this article I have underlined the importance of motivation in language learning, and have suggested that the role of motivation be acknowledged more fully in goal setting and course design. In this respect, it needs to be borne in mind that motivation is a very learner-centred phenomenon. Our students are first and foremost people, each with their own personality and hence with the normal dose of human diversity. They bring this diversity with them to the language classroom, and this influences how they perceive and interact with what takes place within it, including of course the materials and activities which we as teachers propose to them. For this reason helping students to connect with language learning involves exploring what they di on fact bring with them to the learning experience. A wide range of factors merit consideration in this respect, including:

• Students' personality, both as individuals and as members of a certain sociocultural or peer group.
• Their interests, hobbies, concerns, aspirations and dreams.
• Their goals and ambitions, and how the TL fits in with these.
• Their attitudes to the TL, to TL speakers, and to the TL community.
• Their attitudes to and beliefs about language learning.
• Their attitudes to the institutional and interpersonal setting in which learning is taking place.

These factors influence what language learning means to students and therefore offer teachers clues as to how they may go about helping their students to connect with language learning. Certain students may do this most easily if they can use the TL to explore their personal interests and share these interests with others. Others may most enjoy cracking the mysterious code which is the TL. Yet others will connect most easily with language learning by developing practical skills they will be able to use in their professional life, which will allow them to speak the language of their favourite holiday destination, and so on. Language itself is a very rich phenomenon. Language learning, too, is a rich and multifaceted experience, and one which can be mean very different things to different people. For this reason, motivation can assume many different forms.

For this reason, a coherent strategy of motivation needs to be varied and flexible, and thus capable of offering points of connection to a wide range of different students. Part II of this article will propose a number of perspectives on motivation which teachers may find helpful as starting points for organising learning activities from an explicitly motivational angle.

References

Covington, M. 1998. The Will to Learn: A Guide for Motivating Young People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dörnyei, Z. 2001. Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PART II OF THIS ARTICLE – MOTIVATION II: PATHS TO MOTIVATION – WILL APPEAR IN THE MARCH ISSUE OF HUMANISING LANGUAGE TEACHING