Motivation of Individual Learners
Historically, we have thought of motivation as being primarily a factor that comes from within the language learner. As early as 1985, Gardner identified two kinds of
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motivation: (1) instrumental, e.g., learning a language to get a better job or to fulfill an academic requirement; and (2) integrative, e.g., learning a language to fit in with people who speak the language natively. According to Gardner (2001), the focus on creating “real bonds of communication with another people” is what sets integrative motivation apart from other motivational factors (as cited in MacIntyre, 2007, p. 566). In his summary of motivational research, MacIntyre asserts that “the major motivation to learn another language is to develop a communicative relationship with people from another cultural group” (p. 566). The research points to the likelihood that instrumen- tal and integrative motivation are interrelated; that is, that they may operate in concert or that one may lead to the other (Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993). Shaaban and Ghaith (2000) found that integratively motivated students work harder if they have a posi- tive attitude about language outcomes in EFL. A study on integrative motivation at the post-secondary level revealed that students with higher integrative motivation tended to receive higher oral proficiency ratings and expressed a greater desire to continue their study of Spanish (Hernandez, 2006). The author suggested that language teachers can enhance the integrative motivation of their students by providing opportunities for interaction with authentic materials (including multimedia) and with members of the TL community (Hernandez).
Gardner’s paradigm was expanded through the years by a wealth of other studies that acknowledged the role of other motivational factors such as relevance of course goals to the learner, personal beliefs about success or failure, the ability of the learner to provide self-reward and self-evaluation, the nature of the teacher’s feedback and assis- tance to the learner, and instructional features of the course (Crookes & Schmidt, 1991; Oxford & Shearin, 1994; Tremblay & Gardner, 1995). Language learners may be moti- vated by the classroom experience itself: (1) course-specific factors, such as the degree to which the teaching method, materials, and learning tasks are interesting and engaging; (2) teacher-specific factors, such as the teacher’s personality, teaching style, and relation- ship to students; and (3) group-specific factors, such as the dynamics of the learning group (Dörnyei, 1994, p. 277). Other studies have found that motivation is affected posi- tively if students perceive that the teacher provides informative feedback (Noels, 2001) and conducts classroom activities that involve communication and active participation using authentic materials (Ibarraran, Lasagabaster, & Sierra, 2007).
Some research examining the nature of motivation has confirmed that Gardner’s original concept of integrativeness is a key factor in L2 motivation and, further, equates it with the “Ideal L2 Self,” that is, the attributes that the learner would like to possess as an L2 speaker (Csizér & Dörnyei, 2005). According to this way of thinking, “. . . if the person that we would like to become is proficient in the L2, we can be described as having an integrative disposition” because we desire to interact or even fit in with native speakers of the TL (Csizér & Dörnyei, p. 29). This might help explain why a learner possesses inte- grative motivation even in cases when the educational setting offers little to no contact with L2 speakers to foster motivation (Csizér & Dörnyei).