ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Chuck Sandy

Curtis Kelly

Panelists: Chuck | Marc | Peter | Curtis
Date: January 2003

Topic: "How can we empower and motivate students?"

Curtis Kelly

"Empower and motivate." I'm not really sure what the first word means and I know a lot, or a little, or nothing, about the latter. While on sabbatical a couple years ago, I read everything I could on motivation. Unfortunately, the experience was, if I may say, rather demotivating. Despite poring over dozens of models and plowing through a ream of books and articles, the secret golden kernel of how to motivate my students did not appear. A few interesting points did stick in my mind though, which might be of value to you.

“Our students, at that tender age when belonging is so important, seem be more motivated by peers than by anyone else.”

First of all, research on motivation has gone a lot further than the old days. For years, any discussion on motivation in language teaching was pretty much nailed down to arguing over Gardner and Lambert's theory, whether students studied because of integrative motivation (wanting to live abroad), or instrumental motivation (wanting a raise). In the nineties, researchers started to realize that learners might want both and looked elsewhere for models.

Psychology, especially social and constructivist psychology, proved to be the source. Motivation began to be seen in a constructivist framework, as a group phenomenon, related to learning styles, indicative of autonomy, and bound to self-image. Williams and Burden's "Psychology for Language Teachers" has a nice little chapter on the subject (that had I found earlier, world have saved me that sabbatical), but here are a few observations I have made, tongue in cheek, on the theories:

(1) Maslow rises again
Motivation is motion towards a goal. In the same way recent theories of language acquisition identify language needs as a factor of acquisition (if your brain somehow figures out you need certain words to live, you'll learn them, which is why hardly anyone English in Japan, Korea, or Saudi Arabia can), life needs are a factor of motivation. We are motivated to satisfy needs.

Maslow identified four levels of needs, physical needs at the bottom, then safety needs, social needs, and self-actualization needs (to better oneself) at the top. McCloskey threw need for autonomy in there too, just above social needs, probably because he had a couple of teenagers. Anyway, we can only address one need at a time, and the lower the need, the more powerful it is. So guess where English is? Right up at the top.

Therefore, if any of your students are hungry (physical need), scared you'll call on them (safety need), wanting a friend (social need), or pissed off at being told what to do all the time (autonomous need), they are not likely to be motivated to study (self-actualization need). Of course, if you start hitting them, thereby moving their primary need down to the physical level, they'll at least pretend to study.

(2) Intrinsic arm-wrestles Extrinsic
Self-efficacy, the perception of one's own competence, is now seen as the big dude of motivation. But does that mean you should grandma them with praise, or be-in-your-face, get-them-by-the-balls-and-their-hearts-and-minds­will-follow, drill sergeant them in order to motivate? It depends (and on more than just gender or what school system you were ejected from).

Recent research suggests that high achievers, those with high self-efficacy, are usually driven by a strong inner desire to learn and tend to succeed in any environment. It is the low achievers we have to coddle. They tend to be much more sensitive to variables in their learning environment, such as teacher attitude, materials, means of assessment, and, da da da dum, their peers.

(3) Motivation as a group phenomenon
In Science Speak, motivation is usually framed as an individual phenomenon or at least a teacher-student thing. As we know, it is not. Our students, at that tender age when belonging is so important, seem be more motivated by peers than by anyone else. This seems especially true with relational learners (as opposed to analytical), who tend to learn better in pairs, and are more motivated by teacher-student and student-student relationships. Unless you are at a top university, most of your students are probably relational learners, which is why pair-work, community language learning, and personalization (i.e., self-disclosure) work so well.

Another interesting finding, and one I have noticed in my own classes, is that students who know each other are more likely to be motivated. That fits the Maslow thing, because they are less worried about being accepted or rejected (social need). That is why I like to take my students out to a restaurant within the first few weeks, to build camaraderie and remove classmate anxiety.

In fact, all three of the points above might explain why I like humanistic methods so well. Humanism, often maligned by those who have analytical high achievers, performing in the self-actualization mode, means basically, making the learners feel good about themselves. Humanism may or may not motivate your students to learn more English, but I guarantee it will motivate all of you to be better human beings.

Panelists: Chuck | Marc | Peter | Curtis

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Curtis Kelly, Heian Jogakuin University

Author of Writing from Within

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