Language Learning and Teaching

  With four two-dimensional categories, sixteen personality profiles, or combinations, are possible. Disciples of the Myers-Briggs research (Keirsey & Bates 1984, for example) describe the implications of being an "ENFJ" or an "ISTP," and all the fourteen other combinations of types. Managers are aided in their understanding of employees by understanding their character type. ISTJs, for example, make better behind-the-scenes workers on jobs that require meticulous precision, while ENFPs might be better at dealing with the public. Young people seeking a career can understand better how certain occupations might be more or less suited to them by knowing their own character type. Lawrence (1984) stressed the importance of a teacher's understanding the individual differences of learners in a classroom: Es will excel in group work; Is will prefer individual work; SJs are "linear learners with a strong need for structure" (p. 52); NTs are good at paper-and-pencil tests. The generalizations are many.

     What might all this have to do with the second language learner? A few studies (Carrell, Prince, & Astika 1996; Ehrman 1989, 1990; Ehrman & Oxford 1989, 1990, 1995; Moody 1988; Oxford & Ehrman 1988) have sought to discover a link between Myers-Briggs types and second language learning. Notable among these is Ehrman and Oxford's (1990) study of seventy-nine foreign language learners at the Foreign Service Institute. They found that their subjects exhibited some differences in strategy use, depending on their Myers-Briggs type. For example, extroverts (E) used social strategies consistently and easily, while introverts (I) rejected them.

Table 6.1. Myers-Briggs character types

  Sensing (S) students displayed a strong liking for memory strategies; intuitives (N) were better at compensation strategies. The T/F distinction yielded the most dramatic contrast: thinkers (T) commonly used metacognitive strategies and analysis, while feelers (F) rejected such strategies; and feelers used social strategies while thinkers did not. And judgers 0) rarely used the affective strategies that the perceivers (P) found so useful. These findings notwithstanding, we should not be too quick to conclude that psychological type can predict successful and unsuccessful learning, as the authors readily admit. In another study, Ehrman (1989) outlined both the assets and the liabilities of each side of the Myers-Briggs continuum (see Table 6.2).

  Table 6.2. Assets and liabilities of Myers-Briggs Types (Ehrman 1989) 

     It would appear that success in a second language depends on the "mobilization of (a) the strategies associated with one's native learning style preferences (indicated by the four MBTI letters) and (b) the strategies associated with the less preferred functions that are the opposites of the four letters of a person's type" (Ehrman & Oxford 1990: 323). In other words, successful learners know their preferences, their strengths, and their weaknesses, and effectively utilize strengths and compensate for weaknesses regardless of their "natural" preferences.

MOTIVATION

     Motivation is probably the most frequently used catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of virtually any complex task. It is easy to assume that success in any task is due simply to the fact that someone is "motivated." It is easy in second language learning to claim that a learner will be successful with the proper motivation. Such claims are of course not erroneous, for countless studies and experiments in human learning have shown that motivation is a key to learning (see Dornyei 1998). But these claims gloss over a detailed understanding of exactly what motivation is and what the subcomponents of motivation are. What does it mean to say that someone is motivated? How do you create, foster, and maintain motivation?

     Various definitions of motivation have been proposed over the tours; of decades of research. Following the historical schools of thought described in Chapter 1, three different perspectives emerge:

1. From a behavioristic perspective, motivation is seen in very matter of fact terms. It is quite simply the anticipation of reward. Driven to acquire positive reinforcement, and driven by previous experiences of reward for behavior, we act accordingly to achieve further reinforcement. In this view, our acts are likely to be at the mercy of external forces.
2. In cognitive terms, motivation places much more emphasis on the individual's decisions, "the choices people make as to what experiences or goals they will approach or avoid, and the degree of effort they will exert in that respect" (Keller 1983:389). Some cognitive psychologists see underlying needs or drives as the compelling force behind our decisions. Ausubel (1968:368-379) for example, identified six needs undergirding 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 stimulated by the environment, by other people, or by ideas, thoughts, and feelings;
5. the need for knowledge, the need to process and internalize the results of exploration, manipulation, activity, and stimulation, to resolve contra dictions, to quest for solutions to problems and for self-consistent systems of knowledge;
6. finally, the need for ego enhancement, for the self to be known and to be accepted and approved of by others.
3. A constructivist view of motivation places even further emphasis on social context as well as individual personal choices (Williams & Burden 1997:120). Each person is motivated differently, and will therefore act on his or her environment in ways that are unique. But these unique acts are always carried out within a cultural and social milieu and cannot be completely separated from that context. Several decades ago, Abraham Maslow (1970) viewed motivation as a construct in which ultimate attainment of goals was possible only by passing through a hierarchy of needs, three of which were solidly grounded in community, belonging, and social status. Maslow saw motivation as dependent on the satisfaction first of fundamental physical necessities (air, water, food), then of community, security, identity, and self-esteem, the fulfillment of which finally leads to self-actualization.

  The "needs" concept of motivation in some ways belongs to all three schools of thought: the fulfillment of needs is rewarding, requires choices, and in many cases must be interpreted in a social context. Consider children who are motivated to learn to read. They are motivated because they perceive the value (reward) of reading, they meet the needs of exploration, stimulation, knowledge, self-esteem, and autonomy, and they do so in widely varying ways and schedules and in the context of a society that values literacy. On the other hand, you may be unmotivated to learn a foreign language because you fail to see the rewards, connect the learning only to superficial needs (e.g., fulfilling a requirement), and see no possibility of a social context in which this skill is useful. (See Table 6.3 for a schematic representation of views of motivation.)

Table 6.3. Three views of motivation

     Motivation is something that can, like self-esteem, be global, situational, or task-oriented. Learning a foreign language requires some of all three levels of motivation. For example, a learner may possess high “global” motivation but low "task" motivation to perform well on, say, the written mode of the language. Motivation is also typically examined in terms of the intrinsic and extrinsic motives of the learner. Those who learn for their own self-perceived needs and goals are intrinsically motivated, and (in who pursue a goal only to receive an external reward from someone else are extrinsically motivated. (We will return to this extremely important concept.) Finally, studies of motivation in second language acquisition often refer to the distinction between integrative and instrumental orientations of the learner, which we now consider in the next section.

Instrumental and Integrative Orientations

One of the best-known and historically significant studies of motivation  in second language learning was carried out by Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert (1972). Over a period of twelve years they extensively studied foreign language learners in Canada, several parts of the United States, and the  Philippines in an effort to determine how attitudinal and motivational factors affected language learning success. Motivation was examined as a factor of a number of different kinds of attitudes. Two different clustered attitudes divided two basic types of what Gardner and Lambert at that time identified as "instrumental" and "integrative" motivation. The instrumental side of the dichotomy referred to acquiring a language as a means for attaining instrumental goals: furthering a career, reading technical materials, translation, and so forth. The integrative side described learners who wished to integrate themselves into the culture of the second language group and become involved in social interchange in that group.

  It is important to digress here for a moment to note that in 1972, instrumentality and integrativeness were referred to as types of motivation. A number of years later, Gardner and Maclntyre (1991) more appropriately referred to the dichotomy as a case of orientation. That is depending on whether a learner's context or orientation was (a) academic or career-related (instrumental), or (b) socially or culturally oriented (integrative), different needs might be fulfilled in learning a foreign language. The importance of distinguishing orientation from motivation is that within either orientation, one can have either high or low motivation. One learner may be only mildly motivated to learn within, say, a career context, while another learner with the same orientation may be highly driven to succeed.

  Gardner and Lambert (1972) and Spolsky (1969) found that integrativeness generally accompanied higher scores on proficiency tests in a foreign language. The conclusion from these studies was that integrativeness was indeed an important requirement for successful language learning. But evidence quickly began to accumulate that challenged such a claim. Yasmeen Lukmani (1972) demonstrated that among Marathi-speaking Indian students learning English in India, those with instrumental orientations scored higher in tests of English proficiency. Braj Kachru (1977, 1992) noted that Indian English is but one example of a variety of Englishes, which, especially in countries where English has become an international language, can be acquired very successfully for instrumental purposes alone.

  In the face of claims and counter-claims about integrative and instrumental orientations, Au (1988) reviewed twenty-seven different studies of the integrative-instrumental construct and concluded that both its theoretical underpinnings and the instruments used to measure motivation were suspect. Because the dichotomy was based on notions about cultural beliefs, numerous ambiguities had crept into the construct, making it difficult to attribute foreign language success to certain presumably integrative or instrumental causes. Gardner and Maclntyre (1993) disputed Au's claims with strong empirical support for the validity of their measures. Nevertheless, to further muddy the waters, even Gardner found that certain contexts point toward instrumental orientation as an effective context for language success (Gardner & Maclntyre 1991), and that others favor an integrative orientation (Gardner, Day, & Maclntyre 1992).

  Such variable findings in empirical investigations do not necessarily invalidate the integrative-instrumental construct. They point out once again that there is no single means of learning a second language: some learners in some contexts are more successful in learning a language if they are integratively oriented, and others in different contexts benefit from an instrumental orientation. The findings also suggest that the two orientations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Second language learning is rarely taken up in contexts that are exclusively instrumental or exclusively integrative. Most situations involve a mixture of each orientation. For example, international students learning English in the United States for academic purposes may be relatively balanced in their desire to learn English both for academic (instrumental) purposes and to understand and become somewhat integrated with the culture and people of the United States.

  A further perspective on the integrative-instrumental construct may be gained by regarding the two orientations simply as two out of a number of possible orientations. Graham (1984) claimed that integrativeness та too broadly defined and suggested that some integrative orientations may be simply a moderate desire to socialize with or find out about speakers of the target language, while deeper, assimilative orientations may describe a more profound need to identify almost exclusively with the target language culture, possibly over a long-term period. Likewise, instrumentality might describe an academic orientation, on the one hand, and a career or business orientation, on the other. Motivational intensity, then, can have varying degrees within any one of these four orientations or contexts, and possibly more.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Yet another, but arguably the most powerful, dimension of the whole motivation construct in general is the degree to which learners are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to succeed in a task. Edward Deci (1975: 23) defined intrinsic motivation:

Intrinsically motivated activities are ones for which there is no apparent reward except the activity itself. People seem to engage in the activities for their own sake and not because they lead to an extrinsic reward. . . . Intrinsically motivated behaviors are aimed at bringing about certain internally rewarding consequences, namely, feelings of competence and self-determination,

     Extrinsically motivated behaviors, on the other hand, are carried outs anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self. Typical extrinsic rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even certain types of positive fed back. Behaviors initiated solely to avoid punishment are also extrinsically motivated, even though numerous intrinsic benefits can ultimately accrue to those who, instead, view punishment avoidance as a challenge that can build their sense of competence and self-determination.

     Which form of motivation is more powerful? Our growing stockpiled research on motivation (see Dornyei 1998; Dornyei & Csizer 1998; Crookes & Schmidt 1991; Brown 1990) strongly favors intrinsic orientations, especially for long-term retention. Jean Piaget (1972) and others pointed out that human beings universally view incongruity, uncertainty, and “disequilibrium" as motivating. In other words, we seek out a reasonable challenge.