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Different Kinds of Motivation in Learning | ||
Tags: Motivation | Learning Strategy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5274 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes  Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 33 28 June 2010 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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The issue of motivation for learning a particular language is something which seems to get touched upon quite a lot on various threads – and not surprisingly given the crucial importance of strong motivation in language learning. It seems to me that a motivation which truly enables a learner to ‘stay the course’ (i.e. to continue putting in the necessary effort over a period of months or years) is probably something quite personal - thus something which will vary from one person to the next. For some people, the mere existence of a language may genuinely be reason enough; for others (myself included) it would have to be something very much more substantial than that! Naturally everyone will have his or her own thoughts about this. But my own personal critique of the different kinds of language-motivation is as follows: Strong motivations for language learning 1. A utilitarian need for the language This is where the learner absolutely needs to know a particular language in order to do a particular job - even though he or she may feel no affinity for the language and culture in question. This is probably the most powerful motivation of all. To illustrate the point: I remember once hearing a BBC radio interview with a French pilot who was spending time in England to learn English. He spoke with some passion about how he disliked the English language and would prefer only speaking French! Yet there he was, working hard to learn English – and he had, indeed, already reached a level where he could do an interview in the language! Why was he doing this to himself? Quite simply because English is the language of international Air Traffic Control. So anyone who wants to be an airline pilot had better be able to speak fluent English! English is, I guess, the language which is most likely to be learned for purely utilitarian reasons, but there are other scenarios. For example, the US Military used to (and probably still does) train some personnel in various languages so that they can listen in to radio communications, etc. Obviously these guys are – in most cases – only learning in order to be able to do a particular job. 2. A cultural or academic interest in a particular language community This is the situation where a learner intends to use a language to pursue a wider cultural or academic interest; for example, as a means of accessing important documents in the originals, or as a means of enhanced enjoyment and understanding of cultural works (poetry, operas, etc..) In a way, this is a variation on the theme of “utilitarian need”. However in this case the language is not merely being used as a tool, but rather there is a bona fide interest in events and/or cultural works for which the language in question is a medium. Some examples would be: biblical Scholars learning Greek or Hebrew; historians of the French Revolution learning French; people passionate about Wagner Operas learning German; people who love Spanish cinema learning Spanish, etc… 3. A learner lives in a place where the language is widely spoken Again, one might think that this overlaps somewhat with “utilitarian need”. However for English speakers, it is quite possible to live and function in some parts of the world today without knowing one single word of the local language! Obviously, this does depend on where a person is, and the precise nature of a person’s circumstances, employment, etc. For some people living overseas there really is a purely utilitarian need to know the language. Nevertheless, even for those who do not have any actual need to learn, living in a place where a foreign language is widely used as a medium of communication must be (at least potentially) a very powerful motivation. Without knowing the language one is excluded from most of daily life and discourse going on all around. And one is, of course, continually reliant on the fact that people will be able and/or willing to speak English. (Some people – especially officials – often refuse to do so!) And of course, the fact of having the language ‘in the air’ around you all of the time affords continual opportunity to practice. 4. A learner has serious long term business interests in a country or region One sometimes hears about “business languages”, but in truth there is only one business language in the world today – English. Nevertheless, if a person has serious long term business interests in a particular country or region it may well be an advantage (as opposed to a necessity) to know the local language. It’s not difficult to imagine situations where it could be very useful to be able to understand documents, paperwork, etc quickly and without waiting (and paying through the nose!) for professional translations. Moreover knowing a language would generally lead to a deeper cultural understanding of the people with whom one is dealing, I think. The issue of using foreign languages for trade and business is something which Steve Kaufmann (who has considerable experience of the international lumber trade) talked about several months back on his YouTube channel. As I recollect, his conclusion was: “Do you need it? No. Does it help? Yes.” 5. Personal family heritage I have to confess, this is something which I personally don’t quite get. Nevertheless, I do know that there are people who genuinely feel extremely passionate about their family’s linguistic and cultural heritage. Maybe their grandparents were immigrants to the USA from Germany or Italy or Greece? And now these folks really feel that the language is part of their family history, part of who they are. Obviously if a person feels like this, then it must be very potent motivation to learn the language in question! In this category one could probably also include people such as Diaspora Jews who learn Hebrew, and Muslims who learn Arabic to read the Koran (although in these cases the motivation is arguably more to do with religion rather than family heritage per se.) Motivations which (for me personally) would have to be considered phoney 1. Popular or romantic notions about a language and/or its speakers What I’m referring to here are those cheesy and superficial notions that we can have about a particular language. For example “French is the language of romance”, or “Italian is the language of music”, or “German is the language of philosophy” or “Russian is the language of dissident intellectuals”, etc.. Sure, there may be an element of truth in all of the above. But in reality any language can be a language of love, philosophy, etc. If you learn German because it’s the language of philosophy, what happens if you then want to read Sartre or Derrida? (And in my opinion the notion of any language being inherently “romantic” , “sexy” , “macho”, etc is simply naïve.) 2. A learner is required to take a particular language at school/college This is probably the reason why very many people come into contact with a given language – because they have to! But can you really force students to learn a foreign language? And even if they pass all of the tests on paper, how likely is it that they are going to go the extra mile to achieve any real proficiency? In my opinion a teacher would need to have a very strong whip hand for this to be considered a genuine motivation! 3. Spontaneous attraction to the phonetic quality of a language This is a situation where a person has heard a particular language (maybe in a film) and thought it sounded exotic, chic, beautiful, etc. I guess it’s just possible this might be the beginning of an ongoing love affair with the language, but it’s more likely to be a passing whim which will quickly fade. 4. The existence of excellent learning resources for a language This is another one that I personally just don’t get! Yet there are apparently some people who find the existence of a good Assimil or Linguaphone course for a particular language grounds enough for embarking on the serious study of that language. This seems highly eccentric to me. 5. Short trips overseas This is quite often cited as a perfectly valid and serious reason for learning a foreign language, but it seems like a complete no-brainer to me! If a person were going to spend a week sitting on a beach in (let’s say) Greece, would that person really be sufficiently motivated to spend hundreds of hours reaching basic competence in Modern Greek!? For me there would have to be a somewhat more profound motivation than this! 6. Aesthetic attraction to the visual quality of a foreign script This is a trap that I myself have fallen into in the past. It’s easy to look at an exotic foreign script like Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Russian, etc and feel completely blown away. There is a feeling of: “wow, I’d just love to be able to read that!” This is however a complete fallacy, because there is no fundamental connection between a language and the script in which it is written - rather the script is merely a humdrum means of clerical notation. (In any case, a visual aesthetic attraction of this kind is likely to be superficial and to lose its allure when the learner has become boringly familiar with the script!) Well, those are my thoughts on this subject. I’d be very interested to hear what other people think about this. Edited by Romanist on 28 June 2010 at 2:35pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sydneycarton Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5500 days ago 23 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 2 of 33 28 June 2010 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I fell in love with a German girl. I decided to learn her language. That's the only reason I had. The girl's long gone but the desire to learn German and understand Germany's unique culture has happily remained. Edited by sydneycarton on 28 June 2010 at 2:25pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pobere Triglot Groupie Germany language-learning-lo Joined 5348 days ago 83 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Romanian*, German, English | Message 3 of 33 28 June 2010 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
Best reason I've ever heard. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6530 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 33 28 June 2010 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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In most cases, there isn't an obligation to learn a foreign language. I can only think of 3 kinds of obligations:
consent, reciprocity, and the communal. A consent-based obligation would follow someone who agreed to learn a language for some job(e.g. linguists in the government at a language institute, U.S. police in southwest). Reciprocity obligations would be strange in language learning...and the communal obligation in language learning would apply to the communitarians who who firmly believe that its citizens are obligated to know x amount of languages, which would also be strange. For the rest of us who don't have obligations in the enterprise of language learning, language learning is either a good or bad thing. Utilitarian reasoning for language learning is unhelpful because it reduces all pleasures on a single scale of pleasure over pain. Thus, if you are having a horrible time in language learning for a month or 2, then utilitarianism will have you spend your free time doing something that increases pleasure over pain. On the other hand, you could use the expected utility principle, choosing the action that has the greatest expected utility, but then this is hinting that being fluent in another language is better than not being fluent in another language. Utilitarianism can't, if using a single scale of pleasure over pain, say that fluency in a second language is better than possessing a repository of football stats in the mind of 40 different teams. The virtue of knowledge and wisdom in all areas of life, including language learning, is the only sustainable reasoning in deciding if language learning is worthwhile or not. But of course in our modern day society, saying that one thing is good and another bad is hopeless when it comes to spending your free time. Edited by Kugel on 28 June 2010 at 10:46pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5782 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 6 of 33 28 June 2010 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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5. Personal family heritage
I personally wish this would catch on. I had a Francophone grandparent, and she spoke French with all her siblings etc, but I grew up hundreds of miles away, speaking the same language and watching the same programs as everyone else. There's too much homogeneity. Down with McCulture and up with difference! 3. Spontaneous attraction to the phonetic quality of a language One reason for my serial language dating is the fact that all languages sound alluring. But I've learned to resist these manifold sirens in favor of depth. 4. The existence of excellent learning resources for a language I wouldn't try to learn a language without plenty of resources. 6. Aesthetic attraction to the visual quality of a foreign script GREEK! Some alphabets repeat the same shapes over and over, which looks rather dull. The Latin alphabet looks bureaucratic--the font of traffic signs. But Greek is a heterogenous line dance. I don't see why the aesthetic pleasures couldn't be a sufficient reason for study. One thing's for sure: being put off by the sound of your target language makes learning it more difficult. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| RedBeard Senior Member United States atariage.com Joined 6094 days ago 126 posts - 182 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* Studies: French, German | Message 7 of 33 29 June 2010 at 5:16am | IP Logged | ||
It's so funny you would mention this. I study German*, but I have found that I enjoy READING it much more than LISTENING to it. I don't dislike hearing it exactly, but I don't enjoy it either. I almost feel guilty about that. Very strange. * mostly reason 5 - family roots from Austria (my other reason: I lived in Germany as a young child) Edited by RedBeard on 29 June 2010 at 5:19am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5858 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 8 of 33 29 June 2010 at 3:38pm | IP Logged | ||
That is the reason I couldn't resist re-starting my endeavours in German. The Deutsche Welle website has such good material for learning German (mainly text news with parallel high-quality audio) that I couldn't resist. It comes from a built-in abhorrence of missing a good opportunity. It is the same reason that I collect tons of good Internet language learning material that I probably will never use. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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