MOTIVATION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING.doc

MOTIVATION IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING It is often said by people involved in language teaching that a student with strong motivation will succeed whatever the circumstances are under which he studies. This fact leads us to think about the situation of foreign language learning in our schools nowadays. We face at least forty or fifty students and teach them English every day. Years later, we find it quite disappointed that only a small part of them succeed in their study, many of them fail, and foreign language learning becomes a waste of time. Why does this occur? It has something to do with motivation. Its time for us to think about and discuss it. Motivation is some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action. It seems to be the case that if we perceive a goal(that is something we wish to achieve) and if that goal is sufficiently attractive, we will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to reach that goal. However, there is some slight difference between goal and motivation. Goal is the certain result which the student wants to reach, while the motivation is a kind of factor to explain why the student wants to reach that goal. There are two kinds of motivation: extrinsic motivation, which is concerned with facts outside the classroom, and intrinsic motivation which is concerned with that takes place in the classroom. And extrinsic motivation can be further divided into: instrumental motivation and integrative motivation. When anyone learns a foreign language instrumentally, he needs it for operational purposes-to be able to read books in the new language, to be able to communicate with other speakers of that language. The tourist, the salesman, the science student are clearly motivated to learn English instrumentally. When anyone learns a foreign language for integrate purposes, he is trying to identify much more closely with a speech community which uses that language variety; he wants to feel at home in it, he tries to understand the attitudes and the world view of that community. As to the intrinsic motivation, there are also some typical factors which directly affect the intrinsic motivation. The commonly mentioned factors are physical conditions, teaching approaches and methods, the sense of achievement, the teacher, the students and the student attitudes towards the teacher. Firstly, lets think about the main facts outside the classroom, which really play great part in the students motivation of foreign language learning. Some talented students who are attracted by the culture of the target language community, and in the strong form of integrative motivation wishes to integrate themselves into that language. A weak form of such motivation would be the students desire to know as much as possible about the culture of the target language community. In my opinion, there are only a few students having this kind of motivation. It is because that English is not a second language, but a foreign language in China. That is to say, it is taught in schools, often widely, but it does not play an essential role in national or social life. In an extreme EFL(English as a Foreign Language) situation, English may be so foreign to the learners that it is merely a subject on the school timetable which they study for three or four periods a week, never using it otherwise. As the result of this, hundreds of thousands of learners of English tend to have an instrumental motivation for learning a foreign language. For some examples, students may find themselves living either temporarily or permanently in the target language community. These students will have to speak the target language to survive in that community. The term English for Special Purpose (ESP) has been applied to situations where a student has some specific reason for wanting to learn the language. It is subdivided into EOP (English for Occupational Purpose), EPA(English for Academic Purpose), and EST(English for Science and Technology). Some people want to study English because they think it offers, in some general way, a chance for advancement in their daily lives. It is possible that a good knowledge of a foreign language will help them to get better jobs than if they only know their native language. There are a number of other reasons for learning languages which are possibly less important than those above. We could mention the student who goes to English classes just for fun, for something to do, for liking a particular person in the class, for the atmosphere of the class, ect. Certainly a student who has strong integrative motivation will succeed, but the same is also true to the student who has instrumental motivation. Secondly, lets come to the intrinsic motivation. What happens in the classroom will have an important effect on students who are already in some way extrinsically motivated. It is clearly the case that physical conditions have a great effect on learning and can alter a students motivation either positively or negatively. Classrooms that are badly lit and overcrowded can be excessively de-motivating, but unfortunately many of them exist in schools. Vitally important will be the blackboard: is it easily visible? Is the surface in good condition? etc. In general, teachers should presumably try to make their classrooms as pleasant as possible. We can say, then, that the atmosphere in which a language is learnt is vitally important. To my disappointed, this is quite often ignored by most of the schoolmasters and teachers. The method by which students are taught must also have some effect on their motivation. If they find it deadly boring they will probably become de-motivated, whereas if they have confidence in the method they will find it motivating. Whether the students like the teacher or not may be very significant. What can be said, though, is that two teachers using the same method can have vastly different results. Teachers many have little things to do with the students extrinsic motivation because the students are from all sorts of families, and they live in different environments, and their purposes of learning a foreign language are not the same. However, we can do our best to sustain the students motivation in classroom teaching. A thousand children between the ages of twelve and seventeen were asked to put a list of teachers qualities in order to preference. The children showed what their learning priorities were by putting these qualities in the following order: 1=most important, 10=least important. Interestingly, the main point of the study-to see if the audio-lingual method was popular only come tenth. Students were concerned that classes should be interesting and put it first. Mr. H.E.Palmer, an educationist of English, made interest as one major principle of the direct method. It suggests that teacher: 1. make students feel that they are in progress all the time; 2. make students not look upon foreign language learning as a hard job, nor a kind of suffering; 3. make students do their exercises as games. Mr. M.West, famous English educationist, insisted that texts must be interesting, attractive and suitable for the students age. In 1950s American psychologist J.S.Bruner proposed the Discovery Learning method which stressed the function to stimulate the interest of learning and the strong motivation of learning. We can conclude from the above that many of the approaches of language teaching, such as Direct Method, Cognitive Approach, Audio-lingual Approach, Functional Approach as well as ESP regard the interest as one of the most important principles in foreign language teaching. Of course, students may be positively motivated, or neutral or negatively motivated. Motivation Neg Neut Pos Instrumental -1 0 +1 Integrative -1 0 +1 If your students score less than +1 by this rough-and-ready measurement you will have to create motivation by providing interest, fun and a sense of achievement. Success or lack of it also plays a vital part in the motivational drive of a student. Both complete failure and complete success may be de-motivating. It will be the teachers job to set goals and tasks at which most of his or her students can be successful - or rather tasks which he or she could realistically expect the students to be able to achieve. So too high or too low challenge in language learning may have a negative effect on motivation. Many students study a foreign language because they have to! The foreign language is often just one part of a compulsory curriculum because a decision has been taken by someone in authority that it should be. This means that none of the students has actually chosen to learn the foreign language, and it is perhaps the case that few of them would have chosen if they had been given the choice. This can mean that the majority of a class may have little intrinsic interest in foreign language learning. When a class consists of voluntary learners, a certain degree of self-motivation can be taken for granted and exploited, but when students are not volunteers, the teacher must himself stimulate and sustain motivation. The methodological implications of this are considerable, since for many students some methods and techniques will be much more readily motivating than others. The benefits of language learning may need to be kept continually self-evident and there may need to be a strong element of play, humor and entertainment. Lack of motivation goes hand-in-hand with hostile attitudes towards the teacher of a foreign language. Here I would like to list some students comments on a qualified language teacher. 1. He makes his course interesting. 2. He speaks good pronunciation. 3. He explains clearly. 4. He speaks good English. 5. He shows the same interest in all his students. 6. He makes all the students participate. 7. He shows great patience. 8. He insists on the spoken language. 9. He makes his pupil work. 10. He uses an audio-lingual method. In sum, we can conclude the characters of an excellent language teacher as the following: 1. Feeling figures: work enthusiastically and efficiently; encourage students and love teaching job; be humorous, wit and full of vigor. 2. Teaching technique: be creative; kindle thinking. 3. Class arrangement: be skilled and fluent; be equal to everyone 4. Knowledge of special field: have a good command of grammar and others concerned. We have seen, then, that there are many different reasons for learning a foreign language, and we have included both those students who have themselves made the decision and also those for them the study of a language is a compulsory part of their education. We have suggested many different factors that may affect a students motivation stressing that a strongly motivated student is in a far better position as a learner than a student who is not motivated. Most importantly we have said that both positively motivated students and those who do not have this motivation can be strongly affected by what happened in the classroom. We have seen that the teacher must strive to make his classes interesting and treat the target language, and that he