LESSON 8: WHAT MOTIVATES STUDENTS?

WHAT IS MOTIVATION?

The importance that motivation can have in every kind of learning and overall in a language learning is shown in Corder’s sentence: “If there is motivation, everyone can learn a language”.

It is well known that affective variables are very involved in the learning situation. In fact, as Stern (1983) states, “the affective component contributes at least as much and even more to language learning than cognitive skills.

So, there is no doubt that learner’s motivation is one of the most important variables influencing the learning process. But how can we define motivation? Many definitions have been produced, but most of them share that motivation is the motive power to act. Following Harmer (1991) we can say that this term refers to “some kind of internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action”.

MOTIVATION CAN BE:

• Instrumental: wanting to learn a language for the purpose of obtaining some concrete goals such as job, graduation, or the ability to read academic materials.

• Integrative: when students want to learn a language to become part of a speech community (integrate).

• Extrinsic: refers to behaviour that is driven by external rewards such as money, fame, grades and praise.

• Intrinsic: refers to behaviour that is deriven by infernal rewards. In other words, the motivation to engage in a behaviour arises from within the individual because it is intrinsically rewarding.

The next question we should make about motivation is: 

how can we motivate our students?

According to this question, it is worthwhile mentioning that Hutchinson (1991) finds that motivation is improved by three factors:

 1. If the activities are relevant for the students, and connected with their lives, they will be more motivated. For example, we can ask them to search information about their favourite sport, or to read a text about their favourite film. We can also use ICT resources in order to look for information, to play interactive games, etc., which always are more attractive for students than textbooks.

  2.   Learning through doing: For example, we can ask them to follow some instructions in order to cook a recipe or to create a video clip.

  3.   The students’ sense of achievement is very important. They must feel that they are producing worthwhile products and that these products are the result of their learning process.

     Ways of arousing interest

• Clear goals.
• Varied topics and tasks.
• Visuals.
• Tension and challenge: games.
• Entertainment (jokes, stories, songs, documentaries, video clips…)
• Play-acting.
• Information gap.
• Personalization.
• Open-ended cues.

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