MOTIVATION

WHAT IS MOTIVATION?

     Motivation is the thoughts and feelings which make us want to and continue to want to do something and which turn our wishes into action. 

Motivation influences:

● why people decide to do something 

● how long they keep wanting to do it

● how they work to achieve it.

Motivation is very important in language learning. It is one of the key factors that helps make language learning successful. 

WHY YOU SHOULD BE MOTIVATED TO LEARN ENGLISH?

     □There are several different factors (things that influence) which can influence motivation. The usefulness to us of knowing the language well. Many people want to learn a language because it can help them achieve practical things such as finding a (better) job, getting onto a course of study, getting good marks from the teacher, or booking hotel rooms. 

     

     □Our interest in the target language culture (the culture of the language we are learning). We might want to get really good at Russian, for example, so that we can read books by famous Russian authors, or understand the world which produced their great artists and composers. This is learning a language because of interest in culture with a capital C, i.e. high culture. Many people are also interested in culture with a small c. They want to learn Japanese, for example, so they can understand Manga comics better, or learn English to read about their favorite celebrities. We may also be interested in aspects of the country's customs and lifestyle, and see the target language as a key to understanding and becoming part of that culture. 

     □Feeling good about learning the language. If we are successful at something, that success makes us want to continue doing it and achieve greater things. Managing to communicate in a foreign language can make us want to communicate more and better. Confidence (feeling that we can do things successfully), learner independence (feeling responsible for and in control of our own learning) and a sense of achievement (being successful at something we have worked at) are all part of feeling good about learning a language. If we think we are good at something, we want to do it. 

     □Encouragement and support from others. We may live in a country or family or go to school where learning a foreign language is highly valued and much encouraged. This helps us to realize the importance of the foreign language and gives us emotional support as we  learn. People who live in a country where people can't see the point of  learning a foreign language may have little motivation to learn a foreign language. 

     □Wishing to communicate fully with people who matter to you. People may have friends, boy or girlfriends, business partners, etc, who speak another language. They want to develop their relationship with them. This is a strong motivation to learn a language. 

     □Our interest in the learning process. Sometimes we want to learn a foreign language simply because we enjoy our language class; we like the teacher, how he/she teaches, the classroom activities, the course book or may be the topics the class deals with. All these are factors related to learning itself, which come from the classroom. 

     We can see that there are different kinds of motivation. Some come from inside the learner and some come from the learner's environment. 

     Learners may differ in their motivations; some may have strong motivation of one kind but little of another, other learners' motivation may be a mixture of kinds. There are Al's learners, of course, who are unmotivated, i.e. who have no motivation or are demotivated, i.e. they have lost their motivation. And motivation can change, too. A learner may, for example, be quite uninterested in learning a particular language, then meet a teacher who helps them love learning the language. Motivation can change with age, too, with some factors becoming more or less important as learners get older.