Motivation and Foreign Language Learning

Damián Francis

 In this day and age, many experts in foreign language teaching say that in order to be successful in learning a foreign language, three aspects have to be taken into account: the first one is motivation, the second exposure and the last one is practice. But what is motivation, and how does it help during the learning process? According to Spratt, Pulverness, and Williams (2008), “motivation is the thoughts and feelings we have which make us want to do something, continue to want to do it and turn our wishes into action.” So it means that motivation is what inspires people to do something in order to accomplish a goal.

There are theories of motivation, some of the most known are the behavioral, the cognitive, and the constructivist. According to the behavioral point of view, motivation is the anticipation of a reward in which individuals are inspired to get positive reinforcement. Brown (2007),  says that behaviorists see motivation subordinated to external influences, such as ”parents, teachers, peers, educational requirements, job specifications, and so forth

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The cognitive standpoint says that what motivates people comes from deep inside them. According to  Brown (2007), motivation could come from the need of exploring the unknown, manipulating something, doing some physical or mental activity, the need for stimulation, the need for knowledge, or the need for being accepted by others.

And finally, the last theory is the constructivist point of view. According to it, motivation comes from the individual’s own conception, but it is also influenced by cultural and social aspects because the individuals’ decisions are stimulated by the dynamics of life around them.  

People could be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. A person is intrinsically motivated when the inspiration comes from an internal desire, in this case, to learn a language. For example, it could be for an integrative purpose (the desire to integrate into the target language culture) or just because the person enjoys learning languages. An individual is extrinsically motivated when the inspiration is external, it means when there is an external reward, such as money, acknowledgment, prizes, grades at school, a promotion at work, etc. for example: some people get motivated to study English to get a better position in the company they work for.  

I made a questionnaire for my English as foreign language students of level 6 and level 7 in which they had to answer the following question: What motivates you to learn English?

The result was the following: the amount of students was twenty, sixteen said that their motivation was to be  promoted at work or to get a better-paid job, so it means that the motivator or inspiration was an extrinsic one, we could say that it is money; two students said they like languages, so these ones are inspired by an intrinsic motivator, one student said that he frequently travels to the United States and he needs to speak the language, and one answered that she is on the process of getting a green card for living in the United States.  These two are examples of extrinsic motivation, too.

We can conclude that 80% of my students in this trimester are extrinsically motivated to study English and the motivator is money; 10% is extrinsically motivated by necessity and only 10% is intrinsically motivated.

Language teachers need to be aware of the importance of motivation in language learning, so when they plan their lessons they have to think about activities and strategies that motivate learners and make them enjoy the learning language process. Educators also have to encourage students to be autonomous. To do this they need to be good motivators, this is really good, especially, for those students who need extrinsic motivation.

Teachers can motivate their students by telling them the importance of learning the target language in the context they are learning. For example in the Dominican Republic Context, where the unemployment rate among young population is high, public school english teachers motivate their students by telling them the wage people get in call centers for speaking english, only.