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Part I
From research to implications
Motivation and the vision of knowing a second language
Language teachers frequently use the term ‘motivation’ when they describe successful or unsuccessful learners. This reflects our intuitive belief that during the lengthy and often tedious process of mastering a foreign/second language (L2), the learner’s enthusiasm, commitment and persistence are key determinants of success or failure. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases learners with sufficient motivation can achieve a working knowledge of an L2, regardless of their language aptitude, whereas without sufficient motivation even the brightest learners are unlikely to persist long enough to attain any really useful language.
If motivation is such a crucial feature of successful learning, teacher skills in motivating learners should be seen as central to teaching effectiveness. Indeed, research has shown that for many teachers problems about motivating pupils are the second most serious source of difficulty (after maintaining classroom discipline), preceding other obviously important issues such as the effective use of different teaching methods or a knowledge of the subject matter. If you have ever tried to teach a language class with reluctant, lethargic or uncooperative students, you will know from bitter personal experience that researchers got it right this time!
Since the mid-1990s there have been some publications specifically discussing various techniques and strategies to motivate language learners, and in 2001 Zoltán produced a summary of this practical knowledge in his book Motivational strategies in the language classroom. This collection showed that there is much more to motivational strategies than offering rewards and punishment (i.e. ‘carrot and stick’) and drew attention to a rather unexplored area of teacher development. In our book we present a new approach to conceptualising motivation – centred around the learner’s vision – that complements the techniques that were presented in the 2001 book. This approach originates in psychology, and has been adapted for use with language learners in Zoltán’s recent motivation theory, the ‘L2 Motivational Self System’ (Dörnyei, 2005, 2009). The material in this book is an attempt to put the theory to the test by putting it into practice! Drawing on Jill’s extensive experience in teacher education and materials writing, we have set out to develop classroom material that is practical and yet fully compatible with the latest theoretical insights. In the rest of this introduction we offer an outline of the L2 Motivational Self System with the aim of creating a context for the activities in the following chapters. More detailed explanations and illustrations of the various components will be offered in the later chapters, and in Part IV we also provide guidelines on how to undertake practice-based research in the classroom.
Motivation and the self
The L2 Motivational Self System is rooted in ‘self research’ in psychology. In 1986 Markus and Nurius published in the journal American Psychologist an important paper that was simply entitled ‘Possible selves’ (Markus and Nurius, 1986), and since then the concept of the possible selves has made a remarkable career. It refers to the future-oriented aspect of our self-concept, describing our visions of what we might become, what we would like to become, and what we are afraid of becoming. When we use the word ‘vision’, we use it literally: possible selves are more than mere long-term goals or future plans in that they involve tangible images and senses. If we have a well-developed possible future self, we can imagine this self in vivid, realistic situations. A good example of this imagery aspect is how athletes regularly imagine themselves completing races or stepping onto the winning podium in order to increase their motivation. That is, possible selves are a reality for the individual: people can ‘see’ and ‘hear’ a possible self.
Ideal selves, ought-to selves and the L2 Motivational Self System
From the point of view of education, one type of possible self, the ideal self, appears to be a particularly useful concept, referring to the characteristics that someone would ideally like to possess. It includes our hopes, aspirations and wishes – that is, our dreams.
It requires little justification that if someone has a powerful ideal self – for example a student envisions him/herself as a successful businessman or scholar – this self-image can have considerable motivational power, because we would like to bridge the gap between our actual and ideal selves. This is expressed in everyday speech when we talk about someone following or living up to his or her dreams.
A complementary self-guide that has educational relevance is the ought-to self, referring to the attributes that one believes one ought to possess. It is therefore linked to our sense of personal or social duties, obligations or responsibilities. This self-image is particularly salient in some Asian countries, for example, where students are often motivated to perform well to fulfil some family obligation or to bring honour to the family’s name.
These two future self-guides are highly useful for understanding the motivation to learn a foreign language, and therefore Zoltán has included them as two key components in his theory:
• Ideal L2 Self, which concerns the L2-specific facet of one’s ideal self: if the person we would like to become speaks an L2, we can speak about an ‘ideal L2 self’, which is a powerful motivator to reduce the language gap between our actual and ideal selves.
• Ought-to L2 Self, which concerns L2-related attributes that one believes one ought to possess to avoid possible negative outcomes (e.g. letting down parents or failing an exam), and which therefore may bear little resemblance to the person’s own desires or wishes.
Of course, in an ideal case the ideal and the ought-to L2 selves – that is, what we want to do and what we think we should do – coincide!
The L2 Motivational Self System also includes a third component, which is directly related not to future selves but rather to the influence of the students’ learning environment:
• L2 Learning Experience, which concerns situation-specific motives related to the immediate learning environment and experience (e.g. the positive impact of success or the enjoyable quality of a language course).
The inclusion of this third component was motivated by the recognition that the various facets of the classroom learning situation, such as the teacher, the curriculum and the learner group, also have a major motivational impact on the learners. Indeed, for some language learners the initial motivation to learn a language comes not from internally or externally generated self-images but rather from successful engagement with the actual language learning process, for example because they discover that they are good at it. As the saying goes, success breeds success!
Thus, to sum up, the L2 Motivational Self System suggests that there are three primary sources of the motivation to learn a foreign/second language: the learner’s vision of her/himself as an effective L2 speaker, the social pressure coming from the learner’s environment and positive learning experiences.
Conditions for the motivating capacity of vision
Past research has shown that the motivational capacity of one’s vision – that is, future self-guides – is not automatic; it becomes an effective motivator only if some conditions are in place:
• The learner does have a desired future self-image: not everyone is expected to possess a developed ideal or ought-to self-guide.
• The future self-image is elaborate and vivid: a possible self with insufficient specificity and detail may not be able to evoke the necessary motivation.
• The future self-image is perceived as plausible: possible selves need to be perceived as possible, otherwise they remain at the level of sheer fantasy. Yet, they cannot be perceived as comfortably certain either, or else the learner will not feel pressed to exert effort.
• The future self-image does not clash with the expectations of the learner’s family, peers and other elements of the social environment (cf. the detrimental group norm of ‘language learning is girly’).
• The future self-image is regularly activated in the learner’s working self-concept through various reminders.
• The future self-image is accompanied by relevant and effective procedural strategies that act as a roadmap towards the goal; even if an athlete manages to enthuse him/herself by envisaging success, he/she will need a training plan and a coach to channel the released energies onto a productive path.
• A desired future self-image is offset by a counteracting feared possible self in the same domain; that is, failing to reach the possible self has negative consequences.
Becoming aware of these conditions is of great significance, because we genuinely believe that, if these conditions are met, motivation arises automatically and powerfully. Therefore, the central idea in motivating language learners from a vision perspective is to create the above conditions. This book has been written to show you and your learners how.
A visionary motivational programme
Our specific motivational programme rests on the assumption that a particularly effective way of motivating learners is to enable them to create an attractive vision of their future language self. This motivational programme consists of six components:
• Creating the vision: The first step in a motivational intervention that follows the self approach is to encourage learners to construct their Ideal L2 Self – that is, to create an L2-related vision. The term ‘constructing’ the Ideal L2 Self is, in fact, not entirely accurate because it is highly unlikely that any motivational intervention will lead a student to generate an ideal self out of nothing; the realistic process is more likely to involve awareness raising about and guided selection from the multiple aspirations, dreams, desires, etc. that the student has already entertained in the past, while also presenting some powerful role models to illustrate potential future selves.
• Strengthening the vision: Methods of imagery enhancement have been explored in several areas of psychological, educational and sport research in the past, and the techniques of creative or guided imagery can be utilised to promote Ideal L2 Self images.
• Substantiating the vision: Effective visions share a mixture of imaginat i on and reality and therefore, in order to go beyond mere fantasising, learners need to anchor their future self-guides in a sense of realistic expectations. This substantiating process requires honest and down-to-earth reality checks as well as considering any potential obstacles and difficulties that might stand in the way of realising the vision.
• Operationalising the vision: Future self-guides need to come as part of a ‘package’ consisting of an imagery component and a repertoire of appropriate plans, scripts and specific learning strategies. This is clearly an area where L2 motivation research and language teaching methodology overlap.
• Keeping the vision alive: ‘Warmers’ and other classroom activities can all be turned into effective ways of reminding students of their vision and thus to keep the enthusiasts going and the less-than-enthusiasts thinking.
• Counterbalancing the vision: We do something because we want to do it and also because not doing it would lead to undesired results. Regular reminders of the limitations of not knowing foreign languages as well as highlighting the duties and obligations the learners have committed themselves to as part of their ought-to selves help to counterbalance the vision with a feared self.
How this book is structured
The central section of the book is Part II (From implications to application), as this contains a wide range of hands-on classroom activities with ongoing commentary that highlights the process of the journey from research to practice. This part is further divided into three chapters and several sections, following the main components of the L2 Motivational Self System set out in Part I.
Part III (From application to implementation) offers suggestions and discussion on integrating the activities into a language syllabus, on how to make the activities workable in different classrooms and contexts and on how to use the activity types as models to generate further activities.
Finally, Part IV (From implementation to research) is to encourage teachers to develop the ideas in the book in terms of research and teaching in the practice of their own classrooms. We offer there sources for further reading and ideas for exploring and extending the theme of motivation and the ideal self through conducting ‘action research’ in the language classroom. Have fun!
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Part II
From implications to application
Content selection
Part II, the central section of the book, contains a wide range of practical classroom activities directly derived from the theory of the L2 Mot...
