98 1 ‘CHAPTERS So which sometimes makes English language learning material appear condescending and “Imost childish, We must do our best to avoid this, matching topes to the lev complex issues for more advanced classes. |, and reserving, Motivation itis accepted for most fields of earning that motivation is essential to success: that we have'® want to do something to succeed at it. Without such motivation we will almost certainly fail to make the necessary effort. We need, therefore, to develop our understanding of motivation — what it means, where it comes from and how it can be sustained, Defining motivation ‘At its most basic level, motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone f© do things in order to achieve something. In his discussion of motivation, Douglas Brown includes the need for ego enhancement as a prime motivator. This is the need ‘for the sel tobe known and to be approved of by others’ (Brown 2007: 169). This, presumably, is what causes people to spend hours in the gym! Such a view of motivation also accounts for our need for exploration (‘the other side of the mountain’). Marion Williams and Robert Burden suggest that motivation is a'‘state of cognitive arousal’ which provokes a ‘decision to act, as a result of which there is ‘sustained intellectual andl ‘or physical effort’ so that the person can achieve some ‘previously set goal’ (Williams Burden 1997: 120). They go on to point out thatthe strength of that motivation will depend con how much value the individual places on the outcome he or she wishes to achieve. Adults ‘may have clearly defined or vague goals. Children’s goals, on the other hand, are often amorphous and less easy to describe, but they can stil be very powerful. In discussions of motivation an accepted distinction is made between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, that is motivation which comes from ‘outside’ and from inside. Extrinsic motivation isthe result of any number of outside factors, for example the need to pass an exam, the hope of financial reward or the possibility of future travel. Intrinsic motivation, by contrast, comes from within the individual. Thus a person might be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel bettet- Most researchers and methodologists have come to the view that intrinsic motivation produces better results than its extrinsic counterpart (but see page 104). Even where the ori ee as {aking up a language cours, for example is extrinsie, the chances 0 3 will be greatly enhanced if the students come to love the learning process. and more External sources of motivation TI ‘he motivation that brings students to the task of learning English can be affected and influenced by the attitude of a number tof i consi tha ese they fom prof renee a — 1m which the student engages with the © The goal: i eee ee Outside sources of motivation is the goal which students and inthis respect iti learning for. Frequently this is provided by a forthcoming exam™ }© surprise to note that teachers often find their exam classes morecommitted than other groups who do not have something definite to work towards, However, students may have other less well-defined goals, too, such as.a general desire to be able to converse in English, to be able to use English to get a better job or to understand English-language websites, ete. Some students, of course, may not have any real English-learning goals at all. This is especially true for younger learners. In such situations they may acquire their attitude to (and motivation for) learning English from other sources. © The society we live in: outside any classroom there are attitudes to language learning and the English language in particular. How important is the learning of English considered to be in the society the student lives in? In a school situation, for example, is the language learning part of the curriculum of high or low status? If school students were offered the choice of two languages to learn, which one would they choose and why? Are the cultural images associated with English positive or negative? ‘Allthese views of language learning will affect the student’sattitude to the language being studied, and the nature and strength of this attitude will, in its turn, havea profound effect, on the degree of motivation the student brings to class and whether or not that motivation continues, Even where adult students have made their own decision to come to a class to study English, they will bring with them attitudes from the society they live in, developed over years, whether these attitudes are thoroughly positive or somewhat negative. © Thepeoplearound ustin addition to the culture of the world around them, students’ attitudes to language learning will be greatly influenced by the people who are close to them. The attitude of parents and older siblings will be crucial. Do they approve of language learning, for example, or do they think that maths and reading are what count, and clearly show that they are more concerned with those subjects than with the students success in English? ‘The attitude of a student's peers is also crucial: if they are critical of the subject or activitysa student may well lose any enthusiasm they once had for learning English. If peers are enthusiastic about learning English, however, there is a much greater chance that the same student may feel more motivated to learn the subject. © Curiosity: we should not underestimate a student's natural curiosity. At the beginning of a term or semester, most students have at least a mild interest in who their new teacher is and what it will be like to be in his or her lessons. When students start English for the first time, most are interested (to some extent) to see what itis like. This initial motivation is precious. Without it, getting a class off the ground and building rapport will be that much more difficult. Even when teachers find themselves facing a class of motivated students, they cannot relax. For it is what happens next that really counts. Sustaining students’ motivation is one area where we can make a real difference - and for that we need a motivation angel D3. The motivation angel In the north-east of England, outside the city of Gateshead, stands a remarkable statue by ‘Antony Gormley, the 20-metre-high Ange ofthe North, Itcan be seen from the motorway, from the nearby train ine and for miles around. Itis,by common consent, a work of uplifting beauty 99100 cuarrers and inspies almost all who see it, whatever thei religion or even if they have none at all, ‘The Angel of the North provides us with a satisfying metaphor to deal with the greatest difficulty teachers face in terms of motivation. For as Alan Rodgers wrote many years ago... we forget that initial motivation to learn may be weak and die; alternatively it can be increased and directed into new channels’ (Rogers 1996: 61). In other words, we can have a powerful effect on how ot even whether students remain motivated after whatever initial enthusiasm they brought to the course has dissipated. We have the ability, as wel, to gradually create motivation in students ‘where, initially, there is none. This is not to say that itis a teacher's sole responsibility to build and nurture motivation. On the contrary, students need to play their part, too. But insofar a8 we can have a positive effect, we need to be able to build our own ‘motivation angel’ to keep students engaged and involved as lesson succeeds lesson, as week succeeds week. The angel needs to be built on the solid base of the extrinsic motivation which the students bring with them to class (see Figure 10). And on this base we will build our statue in five distinct stages. EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION FicuRE 10: The motivation base © Affect: affect, as we said on Page 58, is concerned with students’ feelings, and here We as teachers can have a dramatic effect. In the words of some eleven-year-old students 1 interviewed, ‘a good teacher is someone who asks the people who don't always put theit hands up’and’a good teacher is someone who knows our names’ (Harmer 2007:26).In other words, students are far more likely to stay motivated over a period of time if they think that the teacher cares about them. This can be done by building good teacher-student rappot (see Chapter 6C), which in turn is dependent on listening to students’ views and attempts with respect, and intervening (i.e, for correction) in an appropriate and constructive Way: When students feel that the teacher has little interest in them (or is unprepared 10 ‘make the effort to treat them with consideration), they will have little incentive to remait’ motivated. When the teacher is caring and helpful, however, they are much more likelY to retain an interest in what is going on, ; nn an and as a result, their self important ingredient in succes) is likely to be nurtured, inenineigure n: Affect Achievement: nothing motivates like success. Nothing demotivates like continual failure. Itis part of the teacher's art, therefore, to try to ensure that students are successful, because the longer their success continues, the more likely they are to stay motivated to learn. However, success without effort does not seem to be that motivating. If everything is just 100 easy, students are likely to lose their respect for the task of learning, The same is true if, success is too difficult to attain, What students need to feel is a real sense of achievement, which has cost them something to acquire but has not bankrupted them in the process. Part of a teacher’sjob, therefore, is to set an appropriate level of challenge for the students, This means setting tests that are not too difficult or too easy, and involving students in learning tasks they can succeed in. It also means being able to guide students towards success by showing them how to get things right next time. ACHIEVEMENT riguRE 12: Achievement Attitude: however nice teachers are, students are unlikely to follow them willingly (and do what is asked of them) unless they have confidence in their professional abilities. Students need to believe that we know what we are doing. This confidence in a teacher may start the moment we walk into the classroom for the first time — because of the students’ perception of our attitude to the job (see Figure 13). Aspects such as the way we dress, where we stand and the way we talk to the class all have a bearing here. Students also need to fee that we know about the subject we are teaching. Consciously or unconsciously they need to feel that we are prepared to teach English in general and that we are prepared to teach this lesson in particular. As we shall see, one 101102 re HAPTER S — of the chief reasons (but not the only one, of course) why classes ove asionally become “indisciplined is because teachers do not have enough forthe students to do ~ or seem not tobe quite sure what to do next. ‘When students have confidence in the teacher, they are likely to remain engaged with wat is going on. If they lose that confidence it becomes difficult for them to sustai0 the motivation they might have started with. iGure 13: (Perceived) attitude (of the teacher) Atv os rate etn is far more likely to remain healthy if they are doing them to do He oe re oo see the point of. Our choice of what we \carsing process , therefore, in their continuing engagement with the Se suegested that students only enjoy activities which involve ee ee tasks, However, this is not necessarily the veckrenees Wile somn acura earlier in this chapter, have different styles and ‘We need to try to match th mguage study and poring over reading texts. students we are teaching, a en (see Figure 14) we take into lessons with the respond well to and what th way of doing this is to keep a constant eye on what they what they feel les engaged with. Only then can we be sure that the activities we take into class have at i a atleast a chance of helping to keep students engaged withigure 14: Activities “Agency: agency isa term borrowed from social sciences (see for example Taylor 1977, Frankfurt 1988, Belz 2002). Here itis appropriated to mean something similar to the agent of a passive sentence, that is, in the words of some grammarians, the person or thing ‘that does. Alot of the time, in some classes, students have things done fo them and, asa result, risk being passive recipients of whatever is being handed down, We should be equally interested, however, in things done by the students. When students have agency (see Figure 15), they get to make some of the decisions about what is going on, and, as a consequence, they take some responsibility for their learning, For example, we might allow students to tell us when and if they want to be corrected in a fluency activity (Rinvolucri 1998) rather than always deciding ourselves when correction is appropriate and when it isnot, We might have students tell us what words they find difficult to pronounce rather than assuming they all have the same difficulties. J} Wilson suggests that wherever possible students should be allowed to make decisions. He wants to give students ownership of class materials, letting them write on the board oF control the CD player, for example (Wilson 2005). For Jenny de Sonneville, while the teacher may decide on broad learning outcomes, he or she should design tasks ‘in which the students are empowered to take a more active role in the course design’ (2005211). For Lesley Painter it was allowing students to choose what homework they wanted and needed todo that was the key to motivating her students to do the tasks that were set (Painter 1999). Real agency occurs, finally, when students take responsibilty for their own learning, and we can provoke them to do this in the various ways we will discuss in Chapter 234. A student we have trained to use dictionaries effectively has the potential for agency which a student who cannot access the wealth of information in a dictionary (especially a monolingual dictionary) is cut off from. No one is suggesting that students should have complete control of what happens in lessons, But the more we empower them and give them agency, the more likely they are to stay motivated over a long period. 103104 ‘CHAPTERS oC AGENCY igure 15: The motivation angel ‘ption i Ds Before we leave the subject of motivation (and indeed of learner description in genera we need to remember that motivation (where it comes from and what teachers an to sustain it) may not be the same forall students and in all cultures. Judy cnn avetiat colleagues (based on their study of more than 160 students in Taiwan and China) ewe an assumption that motivation for Chinese students isthe same as for EFL. students Ut USA, s‘apt tobe off the mark, a is any assumption thatthe components of motivation universal’ (Chen et al 2005: 624). What their study clearly shows is that throughout oe China there are numerous learning strategies based entirely on memorisation (2005: 625)» a that the greatest motivator is success in exams based on how mach students can remem" In such situations (and until and unless the exams change so that they prioritise spoken a" written communication rather than memorised vocabulary and grammar), perhaps a8ene) ‘may not be important in the way we have described it; nor isthe need for activity variety Pronounced if all students are fixated on this kind of achievement. Indeed in Taiwan many successful ex-students, Chen and her colleagues report, promote an ever-popular ‘memorize a dictionary’ strategy, and some students get an idiom a day sent to their mobile phones: We have already discussed the need for context-sensitive methodology (see Chapter 43)- ‘The study which Judy Chen and her colleagues have undertaken reminds us again that i? — ts discussions of teaching and learning strategies we need to look carefully at who the studen' are, where they are learning and what their aspirations are.