It is hard to define the concept of Motivation in SLA, since its meaning could vary in different cultures and individuals. It is very difficult to rely on many different definitions without having a specific concept Motivation. However, one of the most concrete definiton it is Gardner’s who states that “A specific L2 learning motivation is the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language”(Gardner, 1994, p.361). Also, there is another definition by Harmer which says that “... Motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve something” (Harmer, 2004 p.51). Refering to these two different definitions that specify what the concept of motivation is, we can infer that motivation is some kind of force that leads the learner to accomplish a task in his/her life. Gardner also states that motivation consist of four aspects to follow, a goal, effortful behaviour, a desire to attain the goal and favourable attitudes toward the activity in question (Gardner, 1985, p.50).
THE MOTIVATED INDIVIDUAL:
A motivated individual is a person whose attitudes towards the target language are positive. This means when the learner of a second language expands effort to keep learning the language and has a consistant impulse of discovering and learning new material. Also, practicing and looking for ways where he/she will be able to make good use of the language. Another way of defining a motivated individual, is when the learner feels comfortable, enjoying the task of learning the target languange, the learner at a high level of motivation will probably feel satisfied about learning the language and expecting to have fun doing it.
The author of a study on successful language learning (Naiman et al, 1978) specifies that the effective L2 learner should have a positive task orientation, ego involvement, need for achievement, high aspirations, goal orientation, perseverance, tolerance and ambiguity.
TYPES OF MOTIVATION
As it is told before in this paper, there are different definitions for motivation in SLA, they practically refer to the same concept but in different words. There are also different types of factors which slightly differ depending on the perspectives of the authors. We will take for example two different types of motivation, which according to Gardner and Lambert (1972) is likely to be the two most important under the concept of motivation:
• Instrumental Motivation: Involves perception of purely practical value in learning the L2, such as increasing occupational or business opportunities, enhancing prestige and power, accessing scientific and technical information, or just passing a course in school (Introducing Second Language Acquisition).
Example: A professional designer in Chile who’s just finished university and is willing to find a good job. He would probably find different kinds of offerings to start working, but, there is one special for him, that will pay him very well and his/her economical situation will change enormously. However, there is one condition to be accepted on the job, the designer they were looking for, must have good English qualities. After analizing this example, we can consider that learning English (as L2 in this case), will be conducted by Instrumental Motivation, since the willing of having a good job and a good economical sitiuation will impluse the learner to acquire an L2.
• Integrative Motivation: Is based on interest in learning L2 because of a desire to learn about or associate with people who use it (e.g. romantic reasons), or because an intention to participate or integrate in the L2 using speech community; in any case, emotions or affective factors are dominant (Saville - Troike, 2005)
Example: On the other hand, we have Integrative Motivation, which is has nothing to do with learning a language for business, prestige, nor power. It has to do with learning a language to belong in a group or community, let’s take for example, the case of a foreign student at an early age (14) from Chile, who comes to live in the United States because his/her parents wanted to live there. The feeling of belonging to this new culture, and become part of this community, will motivate the student to learn English as a second language.
The concept also implies an internal level of motivation influenced many times by the educational context. Example: “Pedro is a great fan of Harry Potter movies. He likes that saga so much and has read the book in Spanish, now he wants to do the same but in English. In his school, he’s been congratulated many times for his excellent marks in the English subject. In time, he might have more attitudes towards learning and will become a higher level speaker with certain proficiency in the L2. The utilitarian used is given in the fact of trying to read a whole book from cover to cover in the English language.
Enrique and his friends love Play station 3 and every evening they meet to play action games in multiplayer mode, all the options are in English, so they are encouraged to look up some words in the dictionary to know what the options refer about. In time, they already know what the options and game features mean, so they just play and enjoy themselves. At school, the teacher achieved to teach them the present simple tense which the game characters constantly use in their dialogues.
INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION
If we see, both of these types of motivation have their own characteristics and patterns. It all depends on the different variables and situations learners go through in order to learn the second language. On the other hand, we have Integrative Motivation, which is has nothing to do with learning a language for business, prestige, nor power. It has to do with learning a language to belong in a group or community, let’s take for example, the case of a foreign student at an early age (14) from Chile, who comes to live in the United States because his/her parents wanted to live there. The feeling of belonging to this new culture, and become part of this community, will motivate the student to learn English as a second language.
Integrative Motivation in schools is very important, because children learning an L2 must become part of the school environment with the help of pedagogical practices. This type of motivaton can be developed or increased inside classrooms through different ways. First, teachers must motivate students into lessons by varying the activities, tasks, and materials that will make students have fun. Another way of increasing motivation is having students work with peers in groups inside the classroom in order to use co-operative rather than competitive goals. This will help students to increase their personality and their motivation as well.
Analyzing the global concept of education, Gardner states that the quality of the programs, the interest, the enthusiasm and the class atmosphere will much influence the level of student’s motivation in the language subject as explained above.
DETRACTORS TO THE RELEVANCE OF INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION
Even though the theory of an integrative motivation is said to be the most important factor in SLA, there have been some theorists such as “Lukmani who ,through several investigations,” concluded that among Indian women learning English in Bombay instrumental motivation was stronger driving force to master the language than integrative motivation” (Lukmani, 1972). In addition, Genesse (1978) in Quebec, Canada revealed that instrumentally oriented English school students that were learning French as a first language scored better than their integratively motivated classmates. In time, the relevance of Integrative motivation that Gardner so much defends in his studies has been questioned even more. Nikolov (1999, p 33) states that “It is important to find out if integrative motivation is limited to bilingual and bicultural contexts and what role instrumental motivation plays” This basically supposes that factors such as unfamiliarity with the culture, the country where the the language is spoken and also the impossibility to encounter native speakers to learn and get data from, could question the effectiveness of the integrative motivation in SLA. “Social, cultural and psychological distances are also involved” (Larisa Nikitina, p5) in the process of learning (or acquiring) a language.
If we set some examples in our Chilean context, a Chilean school boy (whose L1 is Spanish) has little or no possibilities to acquire a language with integrative motivation if the teacher is not fluent in the target language and just utter a couple of words in class. Maybe the student wants to imitate their peer’s mispronounced lyrics of an English song.Despite the fact that the student is integratively motivated by the social context, it’s very hard to assume and confirm that student will get far this way without authentic social contact which should be provided by a good teacher.
KRASHEN’S AFFECTIVE FILTER AND INTEGRATIVE MOTIVATION
Krashen claims that affective variables including motivation play a facilitating role in language acquisition. How can we get motivated according to this widely known linguist? What would be the consequences of a learning task without motivation?
According to Stephen Krashen, “a student becomes more motivated through free based learning; free web surfing and free book reading (Krashen 1987, 2001, 2007) for him, the process of learning should be given in a natural environment. This means that a student shouldn’t be pushed to speak, their silent period must be respected and the teacher must consider the effect of their fear, anxiety and the self confidence which they have at the time of daring to speak (among other feelings) When the affective filter is high, the student is more likely to become hesitated and afraid, therefore: their performance in the L2 could be impeded. On the other hand, when the affective filter is low, the student could do a very good job at performing the L2 language.
Contextualizing this hypothesis to our chilean reality and always considering our experiences at high school and VISE I & II, we could say that the affective filter hypothesis could be broken into three main parts which are:
Fear: A typical Chilean student may feel embarrassed when mispronouncing a word. For instance, a teacher could fail to try to teach this subject without understanding those students’ needs before the mere fact of them feeling sure. In many cases, their performance could be totally stopped by fear of their own peer’s laughter (rather than their teacher’s criticism) this explains the important of their peer’s acceptance at school. Thus, the integrative motivation is easily notorious.
As future teachers we think that avoiding fear is the first step to generate integrative motivation. How can we do this? By creating environment that favors easily language acquisition. This means: All the students should participate in the learning process, we mustn’t exclude the ones that don’t want to speak (In this case, we need to be conscious of the level of student’s proficiency before doing an exercise. We can’t make them have a fluent conversation if they barely know a couple of words.
Anxiety: Cambridge dictionary defines the concept as “an uncomfortable feeling of nervousness or worry about something that is happening or might happen in the future” (Cambridge dictionary, 2010). Integrative motivation is very necessary to establish an environment of total self-confidence in our students, so it’s probable that the student dare to speak the target language with their peers and teachers when they feel eager to do so and feel “understood” by the ones he’s speaking to. If a teacher is constantly identifying your mistakes and referring to them as if they were something negative, or maybe he doesn’t give motivational speech when necessary. They student will always fall into his fear and will feel very anxious given that he/she could be afraid to fail. In some cases, anxiety is almost unavoidable: however, as we’ve lived through that concept in our experiences as English pedagogy students, the more successful teachers are the ones who talk about one‘s skills, give appropriate motivational speech and correct one’s mistakes in a good way. Basically, the teacher should be supportive of a student. When we think the teacher is on one’s side, everything seems to be much better.
Krashen Claims that “students who are highly motivated, and are well-liked are more likely to have less levels of anxiety” (Krashen, 1987) Thus: their affective filter will be open to being interesting in finding new information, instead of being emotionally blocked which would avoid accepting input from the environment.
Self – confidence: The Cambridge university dictionary defines this concept as “the quality of being certain of your abilities (Cambridge dictionary, 2010). This is a building which a good teacher should build from its bases to its top. Every brick you put into this building should be carefully placed. In a Chilean 8th year grade, we could observe that the students that are most likely to perform well in the target language are the ones who enjoy English classes and have fun in a good way.
If a teacher encourages the student to feel motivated and create a collaborative student’s environment, the teacher makes the experience enjoyable and the integrative motivation emerges.
In Vygotsky’s view, the collaborative interaction as a part of a social system within the classroom takes place when the students that know more about the target language help their other peers to learn it.
Appealing to what we’ve learned, we know that everyone learns at their own rhythm and some people love a language because of the ones who speak it. Meeting friends, interesting people, artists, actors and writers means learning a language is strictly a social matter whose members should feel interested in approaching first, so that they can succeed in its L2 language learning. Concepts such as distance and interaction are very influential in the way that a learner acquire a language, yet integrative motivation, the innermost desire to be integrated into a human group and thus to be accepted, plays a fundamental role which is capable of taking down even the toughest boundary. However, integrative motivation could be generated or being deprived from the student if Krashen’s affective filter is high. The whole process of learning involves fear, anxiety and self –confidence. With an appropriate methodology, a teacher who has created a natural environment wherein the students participate, respect themselves and have a great time learning a language achieves his teaching goals with a greater probability to succeed.
We found it important to compare the information with the ones that other theories say about language learning. Some detractors pointed out through several investigations, that an effective learning of language with instrumental purposes can work, too. So it wouldn’t be a bad idea to combine both theories according to the context we’re involved with. Everyone is different, so learning skills and possibilities are “as deep as the sea”.
We found it important to compare the information with the ones that other theories say about language learning. Some detractors pointed out through several investigations, that an effective learning of language with instrumental purposes can work, too. So it wouldn’t be a bad idea to combine both theories according to the context we’re involved with. Everyone is different, so learning skills and possibilities are “as deep as the sea”.
It’s been very interesting to apply most of our examples to Chilean students of English. In our particular culture where students are so different from the American and European ones whose cultures permit a bicultural context, the differences in learning are quite noticeable in terms of accessing to language information, however; Chilean students like everyone on earth need social acceptance, respect, patience towards them and plenty of determination. That’s the key to acquiring a second language.
By Nicole Amigo Lagos y Juan Jara
REFERENCES
· Ami Brualdi, (n.d) Multi intelligence: Gardner’s theory.
· Robert C. Gardner, 2002, Integrative motivation and second language acquisition.
· Robert C. Gardner, 1988, Bilingualism, multiculturalism and second language learning-
· Tanja Lins, 2005, Motivation and second language learning (advanced seminar)
· Muriel Saville – Troike, (2005) Introducing Second Language Acquisition.
· Susan M. Gass and Larry Selinker, (.nd), Second Language Acquisition, an Introductory Course. Third Edition.
· A-M Masgoret and R.C Gardner (n.d), Attitudes, Motivation, and Second Language Learning: A Meta-analysis of Studies Conducted by Gardner and Associates.
· Maria Luisa Garcia Bermejo and Maria Guadalupe Villarroel Guevara, (n.d) Attitudes and motivation in SLA among Hispanics in New York city, Universidad complutense de Madrid and Instituto tecnológico de estudios superiores de Monterrey, Méjico.
· Qiu Fei , (n.d) Motivation: An influential factor in L2 acquisition? Extracted on July 11th, 2010from: http://zxyy.xhedu.sh.cn/cms/data/html/doc/2005-10/28/24697/index.html
· Wiser earth, (2010, January), Stephen Krashen. Extracted on July 11th, 2010 fromhttp://es.wiserearth.org/article/a89c0e105a87c6f7c2c6f8adec1c055b
· Nikitina, Larisa, and Furuoka, Fumitaka, (2005) Integrative Motivation in a Foreign Language Classroom: A Study on the Nature of Motivation of the Russian Language Learners in Universiti Malaysia Sabah.Jurnal Kinabalu, Jurnal Perniagaan & Sains Sosial, 11 . pp. 23-34. ISSN 1394-4517
· Lingtechlinguistics, (2009, February 15) Motivation and Learning theories for SLA through Chomsky, Bandura, Vygotsky, Krashen, and Gardner. Extracted on July 11th, 2010 from: http://lingtechguistics.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/motivation-and-learning-theories-for-sla-through-chomsky-bandura-vygotsky-krashen-and-gardner/
