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33 Motivation in Second Language Learning ZOLTAN DORNYEI

KEY QUESTIONS ›- What does it mean when we say that a learner is motivated? )0- What is the role of motivation in language learning, especially in classroom contexts? >- How can language teachers actively promote their students' motivation?

EXPERIENCE When enthusiastic novice teacher Erin Gruwell started her teaching career in a high school in Long Beach, California, she soon realized that she had been assigned the lowest-performing stu- dents in the school, with all the students in her class labeled at-risk inner-city youths, also known as "unteachables." Cliques formed among the stu- dents according to their ethnic backgrounds, fights broke out, and the drop-out rate was high. Not only did school management not help in this situation of violence, racial tension, and underachievement, but the head of her department even refused to let her use actual books in class in case they got damaged or lost. To make a long story short, it is difficult to imagine a more desperate situation for a beginner teacher, yet Erin Gruwell not only survived the first year but became so successful that all 150 of her "unteachable" students graduated from high school and many went on to college. As a result, her inspirational story was turned into a Hollywood film in 2007, Freedom Writers, starring Oscar-winner Hilary Swank. After leaving her high school job, Erin Gruwell became a distinguished teacher in residence at California State University, Long Beach; published several teacher-training books based on her experience (e.g., Gruwell, 2007a, 2007h); and started the Freedom Writers Foundation, which aspires to spread the Freedom

Writers method across the country_ How did Erin Gruwell achieve the almost

unachievable? Of course, she had to have a natural

gift for teaching with a uniquely compassionate and, at the same time, stubborn personality, but that would not have been enough to beat such impossible odds. As becomes clear from her writ- ings and from the well-scripted film, with no available resources and support all she had at her disposal was a range of creative educational strategies to raise the students' motivation and promote group dynamics in her classes—and she used these to great effect. The ultimate lesson from Erin Gruwell's story is that motivational and group-building strategies can work even in such a tough environment, and therefore an understand- ing of the motivational dimension of classrooms can offer teachers very powerful tools to combat a range of possible problems, from student lethargy to an unproductive classroom climate.

WHAT IS MOTIVATION? Motivation is a word that both teachers and learners use widely when they speak about language learn- ing success or failure, and normally it is taken for granted that we understand what the term cov- ers. This seemingly unambiguous understanding, however, contrasts starkly with the perception of motivation as a technical term in the psycho- logical and applied linguistics literature. Although it is used frequently, the meaning of the concept can- span—such- a- wide- -spectrum- that sometimes we wonder whether people are talking about the same thing at all. In fact, there have been serious

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do ubts as to whether motivation is more than a rather obsolete umbrella term for a wide range of variables that have little to do with each other. Indeed, motivation has been considered as both affect (emotion) and cognition; it has been used as both a stable variable of individual difference (i.e., a trait) and a transient-state attribute; and it has even been characterized as a process that is in constant flux, going through ebbs and flows. Furthermore, motivation has been considered as both a factor internal to the learner (e.g., individual curiosity or interest) and a factor externally deter- mined by the sociopolitical setup of the learner's environment (e.g., language attitudes influenced by the relationships within language communities).

Perhaps the only thing about motivation that most researchers would agree on is that it, by definition, concerns the fundamental question of why people behave as they do. Accordingly, moti- vation determines the direction and magnitude of human behavior or, in other words, the choice of a particular action, the persistence with it, and the effort expended on it. This seems to be fairly straightforward: Motivation is responsible for why people decide to do something, how long they are willing to sustain the activity, and how hard they are going to pursue it. So, what is the problem?

The complex relationship of motivation, cognition, and emotion The basic problem with conceptualizing motiva- tion as the foundation of human behavior lies with the fact that human behavior can be influenced and shaped in a wide variety of ways, ranging from external motives, such as rewards and incentives, to diverse types of pressure, threats, and punish- ments. From an internal point of view, there is also a broad spectrum of reasons for doing things: we can be motivated by the love of money or power, the love of people and the world around us, or the love of peace and freedom. Our principal motiva- tion can also be centered around our faith, our family, our profession, or our car. To make things even more complex, several of these motives can affect us simultaneously, interacting with each other on a temporary or on a permanent basis.

There is, however, some good news amid all this perplexing complexity. In spite of what lies behind our motivation, the actual state of

being motivated is clearly discernible from a phenomenological (i.e., experiential) perspec- tive; we simply know and feel when we are moti- vated and when we are not, and we can even grade this distinct experience of wanting (e.g., "It wouldn't be bad" versus "I really-really-really want it!"). Further good news is that people typi- cally have no problem distinguishing this moti- vational experience from emotional experiences such as feeling happy, sad, or angry, even though those experiences are also gradable (i.e., you can be a bit sad or really angry). Finally, both motiva- tional and emotional states can be relatively easily separated from thoughts, which are not gradable in terms of their intensity either in a positive or negative direction and have therefore sometimes been referred to as the "cold intellect." Thus, it has long been established—ever since Plato, in fact—that phenomenologically we can separate three areas of mental functioning: cognition, motivation, and affect (or emotions). This war- rants their use as primary organizing principles of learner characteristics.

So, we can safely conclude that motivation does exist but that, in accordance with the hardware of our human mind being a highly integrated neural network, motivation constantly interacts with cogni- tive and emotional issues and that complex motiva- tion constructs usually include cognitive and affective components. For example, classic expectancy-value theories of motivation hold that individuals are moti- vated to do a task if they expect to do well on it and if they value the task outcome (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). In this case, a key component is our appraisal of the task and its consequences, which is a primary cognitive function; for such reasons, most modern motivational theories have been largely cognitive in nature (for a review, see Dornyei & Ushioda, 2011). In addition to the motivation-cognition link, motiva- tion is closely related to affect; we do not need much justification to assert that emotions such as joy, hap- piness, fear, anger, and shame profoundly shape our behavior. And, of course, to close the circle, emo- tions also have a cognitive dimension, which can be clearly seen when we become angry, for example, after we have cognitively appraised a situation and come to the rational conclusion that some major injustice has been done. Indeed, R. Buck (2005) is clearly right_ when __he -concludes, "In their fully articulated forms, emotions imply cognitions imply motives imply emotions, and so on" (p. 198).

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Motivational conglomerates So, even if motivation is recognized as a valid cat- egory, it always manifests itself in a dynamic inter- play with cognitive and emotional factors. I have suggested (Dornyei, 2009b) that a particularly fruit- ful approach to conceptualizing motivation, rather than trying to identify individual motives in isola- tion (as has been the typical practice in motivation research in the past), is to focus on motivational conglomerates of motivational, cognitive, and emo- tional variables that form coherent patterns or amalgams that act as wholes. While this may sound very abstract, well-known concrete examples of conglomerates, such as interest, indicate that such patterns/amalgams do exist and have tradition- ally been seen as significant motivational factors. Interest, for example, is clearly a motivational con- cept and, accordingly, has been included as a key component in various mainstream theories (e.g., expectancy-value theories or self-determination theory), yet it also involves a salient cognitive aspect (curiosity about and the engagement with a specific domain) as well as a prominent affective dimen- sion (the joy associated with this engagement). Therefore, when people say in everyday parlance that someone is "interested" in doing something, they actually are referring to this complex meaning using a single term as a shortcut because they intui- tively know that the constituents of the concept hang together in a way that forms a whole. The vali- dation of this assumption is that the interlocutors have no problem understanding what is meant. In the next section, I describe a new motivation theory for learning foreign or second languages that is based on a motivational conglomerate of this sort: the learners' visions of their future self-image.

CONCEPTUAL UNDERPINNINGS OF LANGUAGE LEARNING MOTIVATION In a long-term learning process such as the mas- tery of a second language, the learner's ultimate success always depends on the level of motivation; therefore, the concept of second language (L2) learning motivation (L2 motivation) has been the target of intensive research in second language_ acquisition (SLA) for over five decades. During this period, several approaches have been pursued.

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The first famous theory was R. C. Gardner's (1985) social psychological paradigm, in which attitudes toward the speakers of the target language com- munity were seen to play a key role in determining the learner's integrative motivation (i.e., the desire to learn an L2 of a valued community to communicate with members of the community and sometimes even to become like them). In the subsequent cog nitive period, the best-known theory was Noels's (2001) adaptation of self-determination theory to language learning contexts, highlighting two moti- vational dimensions: intrinsic motivation, perform- ing a behavior for its own sake (e.g., to experience pleasure or to satisfy one's curiosity), and extrinsic motivation, pursuing something as a means to an end (e.g., to receive some extrinsic reward such as good grades or to avoid punishment). In the late 1990s, there was a growing interest in looking at motivation as a dynamic concept that is in constant change and displays ongoing ebbs and flows, the process-oriented approach (see Dornyei, 2005); this has culminated in contemporary attempts to adopt a dynamic systems perspective in motivation research that integrates the various factors related to the learner, the learning task, and the learning environment into one complex system (for a review, see Dornyei & Ushioda, 2011). Because motivation theories intend to answer the ultimate question of why people behave and think as they do, it is not at all surprising to find such a richness of approaches. In this chapter, however, I focus on one recent theory in particular, the L2 motivational self system (Dornyei, 2005, 2009a). This is partly because this theory offers a comprehensive perspective that builds on several previous constructs and is compat- ible with the emphasis on motivational, cognitive, and emotional conglomerates discussed earlier and partly because the framework it provides is practical and lends itself to classroom application.

Possible selves and the L2 motivational self system In 2005, I proposed a new approach to the understanding of L2 motivation (Dornyei, 2005) , conceived within an L2 motivational self system, which attempts to integrate a number of influentiaLSLA theories with-the-findin-gs- of self research in psychology. The new initiative was rooted in the important psychological concept

o f possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986), which represents people's ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming. Thus, pos- sible selves involve people's vision of their likely or hoped-for (or even dreaded) selves in future states, not unlike an athlete envisaging himself or herself stepping onto the Olympic podium one day in the future. In this sense, possible selves are more than mere long-term goals or future plans in that they involve tangible images and senses; if we have a well-developed possible future self, we can imagine this self within vivid and realistic future scenarios.

From the point of view of learning and teaching, one type of possible self, the ideal self is of particularly relevance because it involves the characteristics that someone would ideally like to possess (i.e., it concerns hopes, aspirations, and wishes). If a person has a well-established and vivid ideal self—for example, a student envisions him- self or herself as a successful business person—this self-image can act as a potent future self-guide with considerable motivational power. This is expressed in everyday speech when we talk about people following or living up to their dreams. A complementary self-guide that has educational relevance is the ought-to self, which involves the attributes that someone believes he or she ought to possess (i.e., it concerns personal or social duties, obligations, and responsibilities). This self-image is particularly salient in some Asian contexts where students are often motivated to perform well to fulfill some family obligation or to bring honor to the family's name (see Magid, 2012). These two self-guides form the basis of the proposed L2 motivational self system, but to make the theory comprehensive, a third dimension has been added, representing the motivational influence of the students' learning environment (i.e., the motivational impact of various facets of the classroom situation, such as the teacher, the curriculum, and the learner group). This is justi- fied by the observation that for some language learners the motivation to learn a language does not come from internally or externally generated future self-images but from successful learning experiences—after all, nothing succeeds like suc- cess, as the saying goes.

Accordingly, the proposed L2 motivational self system consists of the following three main

constituents (for a more detailed discussion, see Dornyei, 2009a):

I. Ideal L2 self which concerns the L2-specific facet of the learner's ideal self. If the person the learner would like to become speaks an L2 (e.g., the person is associated with traveling or doing business internationally), the ideal L2 self is a powerful motivator for the learner to succeed in learning the L2 because he or she would like to reduce the discrepancy between the actual and ideal selves.

2. Ought-to L2 self, which concerns the attributes that the learner believes he or she ought to possess to avoid possible negative outcomes and that, therefore, may bear little resem- blance to his or her own desires or wishes.

3. L2 learning experience, which concerns the learn- er's situation-specific motives related to the immediate learning environment and experi- ence (e.g., the positive impact of success or the enjoyable quality of a language course).

Theoretical and research support Over the past five years, several studies have employed and tested the L2 motivational self sys- tem in a variety of learning environments (e.g., see the selection of papers in Dornyei & Ushioda, 2009) and the emerging picture consistently sup- ports the validity of the theoretical construct. In studies that specifically compared R. C. Gardner's traditional concept of integrativeness with the ideal L2 self, the latter was found to explain the criterion measures better (typically explaining more than 40% of the variance, which is an excep- tionally high figure in motivation studies), and the construct seems to work equally well for different age groups, from secondary school pupils through university students to adult language learners. This is good news, but we need to ask a further theoreti- cal question: Is the proposed system compatible with the dynamic and complex nature of motiva- tion discussed earlier?

Although so far we have looked only at the motivational capacity of future self-guides and images, the possible selves present broad over- arching constellations that blend together moti- vational, fOgrti-tine, and affective areas. Previously, the originator of the concept, Markus (2006), has pointed out that the possible self-structure could be

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seen as a "dynamic interpretive matrix fOr thought, feeling and action" (p. xi), and indeed, MacIntyre, MacKinnon, and Clement (2009) have under- scored the emotional aspect of possible selves: "When emotion is a prominent feature of a possible self, including a strong sense of fear, hope, or even obligation, a clear path exists by which to influence motivation and action" (p. 47). Furthermore, as we see in the next section, the effective functioning of these self-guides is dependent. on several cogni- tive components, most notably on the learners' appraisal of their own capabilities and their per- sonal circumstances to anchor their vision in a sense of realistic expectations. Last but not least, learners also need a good repertoire of task-related strategies that can he activated by the ideal lan- guage self—after all, even Olympic athletes need coaches and training plans in addition to their vivid vision of achieving excellence. All this points to the conclusion that effective future self-guides conic in a package with a vision component that activates appropriate emotions and a variety of task- specific cognitive plans, scripts, and self-regulatory strategies. As such, future vision can he seen as the ultimate motivational conglomerate.

Conditions for the motivational power of vision It has been widely observed that, although vision- ary future self-guides have the capacity to motivate action, this does not always happen automatically but depends on a number of conditions. The fol- lowing list contains some of' the most important prerequisites; this list is highly relevant when we consider ways of generating an 1.2 vision in the learners because vision-enhancing strategies are geared at ensuring that these conditions are met.

The learner has a desired e self-image. People differ in how easily they can generate a suc- cessful possible self, and therefore not every- one is expected to possess a developed ideal or ought-to self-guide. The learner's future se f is .sufficiently different from the retreat self If there is no observable gap between current and future selves, no increased effort is felt to be necessary and no motivation emerges. The learner's future self-image is – elaborate and vivid. People vary in the vividness of their

mental imagery, and a possible self with instil .- licitly_ specificity and detail may not evoke the necessary motivational response. The learner's future selfimage is perceived as plau- sible. Possible selves are effective only to the extent that the individual does indeed per-

'e them as possible, that is, to he realistic within the person's individual circumstances. Thus, a sense of controllability (i.e., the belief that his or her action can make a difference) is an essential prerequisite. The learner's future .self image is not perceived as being comfortably certain to be reached, that is, to be within his or her grasp. The learner must believe that the possible self will not happen automatically, without a marked increase in expended effort. The learner's future .velpimage is in harmony (or at least does not clash) with the expectations of his or her family, peers, and other elements of the social environment. Perceived social expecta- tions or group norms that are incongruent with the self-image (e.g., language learning is for girls) are obviously counterproductive, as are ideal and ought-to self-images that are in conflict with each other. The learner's future self-image is regularly acti- vated in his or her working self-concept. Possible selves become relevant for behavior only when they are primed by frequent and varied reminders. The learner's future .self image is accompanied by relevant and effective procedural strategies that act as a road map toward the goal. Once the learner's vision generates energy, he or she needs pro- ductive tasks into which to channel this energy. A learner's desired future self-image is offset by a counteracting feared possible self in the .same domain. Maximal motivational effectiveness is achieved if the learner also has a vivid image about the negative consequences of failing to achieve the desired end state.

CLASSROOM APPLICATIONS Luckily, most teachers do not have to face teaching situations as adverse as Erin Gruwell did at the beginning of her career; nevertheless, research has shown that many teachers find that problems with motivating pupils are the second most

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serious source of difficulty (the first is maintaining classroom discipline), outranking other, obviously important issues such as the effective use of differ- ent teaching methods, a knowledge of the subject matter, and the competent use of textbooks and curriculum guides (Veenman, 1984). If you have ever tried to teach a language class with reluctant, lethargic, or uncooperative students, you know that the results of these surveys of the impedi- ments to learning are quite accurate. This being the case, teacher skills in motivating learners need to he seen as central to teaching effectiveness. The key question is this: Can motivational skills he consciously developed, or is the motivational and inspirational capacity of a teacher solely the consequence of a natural talent that the person has been born with? My past research and expe- rience suggests that, while having a natural flair always helps, there is no doubt that motivational skills can be developed in teachers as part of pur- poseful training. Furthermore, there is a growing body of research that shows that, once such skills are in place, they have a significant impact on stu- dent motivation (e.g., see Guilloteaux & Dornyei, 2008; Papi & Abdollahzadeh, 2012). Let us start the exploration with several key motivational prin- ciples.

Three fundamental motivational principles

Principle I: There is much more to motiva- tional strategies than offering rewards and punishments. Although rewards and punish- ments are often seen as the only tools in the moti- vational arsenal of teachers, a closer look at the spectrum of other, potentially more effective moti- vational strategies reveals that we have an array of varied techniques at our disposal to increase our learners' enthusiasm for L2 learning. In fact, most educational psychologists would consider rewards and punishments too simplistic and rather unde- sirable tools. The "carrot and stick" approach may work in the short run, but rarely does it lead to real long-term commitment. For example, books have been written about the potential damage of grades, which are by far the most often used forms of _rewards and punishments; _ getting- rewards and good grades in particular—can become more important than learning, and students can easily

become grade-driven. Therefore, I encourage teachers to start experimenting with other moti- vational techniques, such as making the learning process more engaging or promoting the learn- ers' language-related vision. The variety of ways by which human learning can he promoted is so rich that teachers should be able to find something that works in most learning situations.

Principle 2: Generating student motivation is not enough in itself—it also has to be maintained and protected. In everyday parlance, motivating someone equals generating the initial motivation in the person. In educational contexts, however, this is not the whole picture. Although generating motivation is a crucial aspect of any motivational teaching practice, unless motivation is actively maintained and protected during the lengthy pro- cess of L2 learning, the natural human tendency to lose sight of the goal, get tired or bored with an activity, and give way to attractive distractions will result in the initial motivation gradually petering out. Thus, motivation needs to be actively nur- tured, which means that any motivational practice needs to be an ongoing activity.

Principle 3: It is the quality (not the quantity) of the motivational strategies that we use that counts. One of the challenges of looking at the richness of the motivational strategies in the literature is that we become aware of the great number of useful techniques available that we are not applying consistently in our own teaching practice. Is this a problem? Not necessarily. There is so much that requires our constant attention in the L2 classroom that we simply cannot afford to continuously strive to achieve super-motivator sta- tus; if we try to do so, we will end up being burned out. I have come to believe that what we need is quality rather than quantity. A few well-chosen strategies that suit both teachers and their learners may be sufficient to create a positive motivational climate in the classroom. Indeed, some of the most motivating teachers rely on only a handful of techniques.

The range of motivational strategies As noted previously, there is a wealth-of potential motivational techniques available to teachers for use in the language classroom; Figure 1 presents 20 motivational facets of motivational teaching

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Generating initial motivation

Enhancing the learners' L2- related values and attitudes Increasing the learners' expectancy of success Increasing the learners' goal- orientedness Making the teaching materials relevant for the learners Creating realistic learner beliefs

• Making learning stimulating and enjoyable

• Presenting tasks in a motivating way

• Setting specific learner goals • Protecting the learners' self-

esteem and increasing their self- confidence

• Allowing learners to maintain a positive social image

• Creating learner autonomy • Promoting self-motivating

strategies • Promoting cooperation among

the learners

Maintaining and protecting motivation

Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation

• Promoting motivational attributions

• Providing motivational feedback

• Increasing learner satisfaction • Offering rewards and grades in

a motivating manner

Creating the basic motivational conditions

• Appropriate teacher behaviors • A pleasant and supportive

atmosphere in the classroom • A cohesive learner group with

appropriate group norms

Motivational

teaching

practice

Figure I. The main components of DOrnyers (2001) framework of motivational teaching practice in the L2 classroom.

practice, grouped into four broad, successive stages (Dornyei, 2001):

1. Creating the basic motivational conditions. Motivational strategies cannot be employed suc- cessfully in a motivational vacuum; certain pre- conditions must be in place before any further attempts to generate motivation can be effective.

2. Generating initial motivation. Unless we are sin- gularly fortunate with the composition of our classes, student motivation will not be automatic for everybody, and we need to actively generate positive student attitudes toward L2 learning.

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3. Maintaining and protecting motivation. We can initially whet the students' appetites with appropriate motivational techniques, but unless motivation is actively maintained and protected, it is likely to decrease in strength over time and can even disappear altogether (see Principle 2).

4. Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation. A large body of research has shown that the way learners feel about their past accom- plishments significantly determines how they— approach subsequent learning tasks. Strangely enough, the students' appraisal of their past

performance does not depend only on the absolute, objective level of the success they have achieved but also on how they subjectively interpret their achievement. Using appropri- ate strategies, teachers can help learners to evaluate their past performance in a more positive light, take more satisfaction in their successes and progress, and explain their past failures in a constructive way.

The introduction of the L2 motivational self system has further broadened the motivational rep- ertoire at the disposal of language teachers because it highlights the significance of the learners' lan- guage learning vision. The possibility of harnessing the powerful motivational capacity of vision opens up a whole new avenue for promoting student motivation by means of increasing the elaborate- ness and vividness of self-relevant imagery in the students. The reality of such an approach has been evidenced in the field of sports psychology, where vision and imagery are generally seen as highly effective performance-enhancement techniques. Thus, language teachers interested in promoting their students' motivation can now choose from a variety of techniques based on their personal preferences as well as the needs and characteristics of their learners. The L2 motivational self system suggests that these motivational strategies can be divided into two main groups: (1) strategies focusing on the learners' vision of their ideal and the ought-to L2 selves; and (2) strategies that con- cern the improvement of the learning experience. Furthermore, it makes sense to subdivide Group 2 into two 'levels, the first associated with the individ- ual learner and the second related to the learner group as a social unit. Let us take a closer look at these three clusters (vision, individual learner experience, and learner group experience).

Motivational strategies focusing on the learner's future vision. While virtually every successful athlete in

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