On Learning Motivation in English

    Teaching

    Abstract: Learning Motivation is one of the most dynamic factors which have great effect on language learning. This paper discusses it in five parts.

    Part one discusses the definition of Motivation. Motivation is a process that a person gets an idea or thought and pushes and maintains the cognitive and behavior of one‟s goal.

    Part two introduces the perspectives of Learning Motivation from behaviorism, humanism and cognition theory. On the one hand, Behaviorism emphasizes the reward systems as the most effective way of motivation. Thus, the significance of behavior theory about motivation is that the teacher enhances the students‟ motivation

    to adopt the way of rewarding or punishing. Obviously, behaviorism studies people‟s

    extrinsic motivation. On the other hand, Humanistic Views of motivation is in terms of meeting basic needs and cognitive perspective is that motivation is concerned with issues as the reason why the students succeed or fail. Humanists and cognition theory study people‟s intrinsic motivation.

    Part three introduces the three types of English Learning Motivation from different points.

    Part four illustrates the relation between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. They pay a part to each other.

    Part five deals with the cultivation of Learning Motivation of the students. The language teacher should have a good influence on students to pursue and give the feedback to reinforce their inner drive and confidence. Thus, students will become major conductors, making use of their potentials and enhance their study results.

    Key words: motivation; feeling; subject of teaching; feedback; goal setting

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    摘要(学习动机是影响语言学习最具能动性的因素之一。本文将分五个部分进行讨论。

    第一部分讨论动机的定义。动机是一个产生念头，并推动和维持某一目标前进的认知和行为的过程。

    第二部介绍行为主义、人本主义、认知主义关于动机的三种观点，一方面行为主义强调鼓励机制是激发动机的最有效的方法，因此行为主义关于动机和理论的意义就在于教师采取奖励或惩罚的方法，增强学生的学习动机。很明显，行为主义研究的是人的外部动机；另一方面，人本主义心理研究的满足个人的基本需要的观点与认知论中归因论即为学生的成功与失败寻求原因，是从不同角度研究人的内在动机。

    第三部分介绍英语学习动机的三种类型。

    第四部分阐述内部动机与外部动机的关系，他们相互作用。

    第五部分论述学习动机的培养。教师应建立恰当的学习目标运用反馈，以增强学生的内部动力和自信心，认清学生是学习的主体地位，充分利用学生自信的潜能，增强学习效果。

    关键词(动机；情感；教学主体；反馈；目标的设定

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    Contents

    Abstract……………………………………………………………….? 摘要……………………………………………………………………..? Contents………………………………………………………………? Introduction………………………………………………………..…..1 1. Definition of Motivation…………………………………………....1 2. Motivation in educational psychology…………………………...…3 2.1 Behaviorism (motivation as reinforcement)…………………….….3 2.2 Humanistic views of motivation…………………………………….5 2.3 Cognitive theory ………………………………………………..…..7 3. The types of English Learning Motivation………………………….8 3.1 Integrative motivation and instrument motivation………………….8 3.2 Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation……………………....9 3.3 Achievement motivation………………………………………...10 4. The relation between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation ….11 5. Cultivation of Learning Motivation of the students...…………..13 5.1Noticing the emotional factors in teaching…………………………14 5.2 Recognizing the students as subject in class……..………………..16

     5.3 Supplying information feedback to enhance motivation…………18 5.4 Setting up goals for enhancing Learning motivation…………18 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….19 Bibliography……………………………………………………………21 Acknowledgement……………………………………………………22

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Introduction

     Motivation is a psychological orientation that people get the itch for knowledge and get to understand the world. It stimulates student to take part in the activities and maintain this state and toward a special goal. Learning motivation is a crucial aspect in foreign language learning. As early as 1790s, researchers have found that motivation is very strongly related to achievement in language learning.

     In English teaching, we often notice such a fact that at the very beginning, a great number of people are actively involved in learning a foreign language, but as times goes on, their enthusiasm is diminishing and the number of the learners is decreasing. This kind of phenomenon is a common case. It is a difficult task for the teacher to change this fact. It is believed that the key to improve is to create and foster the students‟

    interest in language learning and to maintain their motivation

     During teaching, we also find that many learners have succeeded in language learning, without much contact with motive speakers or without any experience abroad. Why can they learn it so well? As for this kind of questions, it is necessary for us to make preliminary research into motivation in language learning in the following.

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1. Definition of Motivation

    What is motivation? Various studies show that motivation is rather difficult to define. Motivation (Brown, 1987) is commonly thought of as an inner drive, impulse, emotion, or desire that moves one to a particular

    [1] action.More specifically, human beings universally have needs or drives that are more or less innate, yet their intensity is environmentally conditioned.

     Linguistic psychologists interpret motivation from different aspects. David Ausubel(1964)has identified the six desires or needs of human organism which under-gird the construct of motivation, (1)The need for exploration, for seeing “the other side of the mountain”, for probing the

    unknown, (2) The need for manipulation, for operating-to use Skinner‟s

    term on the environment and causing change, (3)the need for activity, for movement and exercise, both physical and mental, (4)The need for stimulation, the need to be process and internalize the results of exploration, manipulation, activity, and stimulation, to resolve contradiction, to quest for solution to problems and for self-consistent systems of knowledge, (6) finally, the need for ego enhancement, for the

    [2]self to be known and to be accepted and approached of by others.

     While all this kinds of need related to the goal there appears motivation .When learning motivation formed, students have a thirst for achieving the goals .But it does say that there are goal there is motivation. In fact motivation is a process that people get a idea or

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thought and push and maintain the cognitive and behavior of one‟s goal.

    It includes learner‟s psychological factors and also includes learner's efforts (It is a positive attitude) that have been taken to achieve this goal. Goals and aspirations can only be called motivation tendency. Without a positive attitude it is not a complete motivation. When motivation tendency formed, it will trigger the individual‟s acts. It surely includes

    learn‟s positive attitude. Individual produce a positive emotional response to the initiative. A powerful impact will mobilize individual's intellectual factors. Individual will do an effective behavior towards the goals.

2. Motivation in educational psychology

     From the development of individual, children pay more attention to teacher‟s reward. In the early period, extrinsic motivation has important effect on learning. Then, intrinsic motivation is growing. In the psychology extrinsic motivation is field of behaviorism study, while intrinsic motivation is humanistic views and cognitive theory. As follows there are three views about motivation.

    2.1 Behaviorism (motivation as reinforcement)

     The study of motivation begins with the behaviorism‟s animals behavior. Psychologist tried to explain motivation in terms of how animals behaved in order to meet their basic biological needs, how this behavior was reinforced when those needs were met and how this

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    reinforcement spread to other events and activities that occurred at the same time. Thus, a hungry dog that hears the sound of food would be motivated to seek food when hearing a bell on subsequent occasions. In this way, human motivation to learn any particular thing was accounted for in terms of what biological needs were being met during the early learning years and what kind of reward or reinforcement was provided for early attempts to learn.

     It is easy to see how this kind of approach gave rise to modern behaviorism with its emphasis upon the nature and scheduling of reward systems as the most effective way of motivating desired behavior. Thus, a behaviorist would tend to consider motivation largely in terms of external forces. The 1990s have, therefore, seen a welcome rekindling of interest in motivation in foreign and second language learning with many writers seeking alternative ways of conceptualizing motivation and setting new research agendas. In one recent attempt to make sense of the different components involved in second language motivation, Dornyei (1994a) proposes a three-level categorization. In Dornyei‟s model, the language

    level encompasses various orientations and motives related to aspects of the second language, such as the culture and the community, and the usefulness of the language. These will influence the goals learners set and choices they make. Dornyei‟s learning level involves individual

    characteristics that the learner brings to the learning task. Key features of this level are need for achievement and self-confidence. Finally, the

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    situation level includes components related to the course, the teacher and the group dynamics. Dornyei‟s formulation is helpful as it highlights a

    point that motivation is a multifaceted construct which will be affected by

    [3] situational factors. Teacher‟s behavior, personality, teaching ways and

    relationship between the teacher and students are directly contract with the results of the teaching cooperation and competition between the students that are all concerned about the realization of the teaching goals. It is the psychological basis of Computer Assisted Instruction to emphasize the extrinsic motivation, that is, the computer judge whether what the students so is right or wrong in order to reinforce the students learning motivation. The significance of behavior theory about motivation is that the teacher enhances the students‟ learning motivation

    to adopt the way of rewarding or punishing. Of course the teacher may pay too much attention to the students‟ extrinsic drive and ignoring

    students‟ inner driver. In additions, too much reward or punishment

    would make bad effects for the students growing.

    2.2Humanistic views of motivation

    Humanistic approaches emphasize the importance of the inner world of the learner and place the individual‟s thoughts, feelings and emotions

    at the forefront of all human development. There are aspects of the learning process that are often unjustly neglected, yet they are vitally important if we are to understand human learning in its totality. We will therefore begin by considering some major aspects of humanism, before

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linking such a view with social interactions.

     Human behavior has been explained by some psychologists in terms of meeting basic needs. We experience certain drives to meet these needs, and we are driven to act in particular ways in order to reduce these drives .Perhaps the best known exponent of this idea was Abraham Maslow.

     Maslow argued for two distinct categories of needs, deficiency (or maintenance) needs, and beings (growth) needs. The first four layers represent deficiency needs. These are directly related to a person's psychological or biological balance, and include such physiological requirements ad food, water, sleep and the absence of pain; they also include the needs for security, belonging, and self-esteem. Maslow considered that if these needs neither were nor met, or their fulfillment was disrupted in some way, then it would become difficult, or even impossible for a person to fulfill needs further up the hierarchy. Thus children who are hungry or in pain (the basic psychological needs) will find their lives dominated by this and will be unable to concentrate on, say, meeting their aesthetic needs. Similarly, children who feel insecure, or who have low self-esteem, are unlikely to be able to give their full attention to learning in class.

    Being needs are represented by the top three levels in Maslow‟s

    system. These are related to the fulfillment of individual potential; in terms of cognitive and aesthetic development and the attainment of

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    self-actualization (realizing one‟s full potential). Few people ever realize their full potential or achieve „self-actualization‟, the highest point in the

    needs hierarchy, because their lower order needs tend to remain unsatisfied. Moreover, being needs is considered to require a particular kind of nurturing environment in which people can express themselves and explore. There is also an apparent contradiction between the two sets of needs. Whereas deficiency needs require safe, secure environment which is aimed at producing a state of equilibrium, being needs can drive the individual into potentially dangerous territory, where a degree of

    [3] tension and stress can be most productive.

    2.3 Cognitive theory

     From a cognitive perspective, the factor that is of central importance is the choice, that is, people have choice over the way in which they behave and, therefore, have control over their actions. This is in marked contrast to a behaviorist view which sees our actions as at the mercy of external forces such as rewards. To make an informed choice we need to be aware of the probable outcomes of what we decide to do. This enables us to set goals for ourselves, and we then decide to act in certain ways in order to achieve these goals. Thus from a cognitive perspective, motivation is concerned with such issues as why people decide to act in certain ways and what factors influence the choice they make. It also involves decisions as to the amount of effort people are prepared to expend in attempting to achieve their goals. The role of the teacher thus becomes

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