The Language Teacher
November 2001
Affect Change in University EFL Students
John Thurman
Kochi Women's University
What are the dynamics of motivation and affect in the English as a foreign language classroom? Much has been written about the motivation, attitudes, and anxiety held by those who are learning a foreign language. For example, motivation consists of, amongst many other orientations, the orientations of integrative motivation and instrumental motivation. It would not be unusual that due to certain circumstances or experiences, a single student's motivation for learning will move from where there is more intensity in, for example, integrative motivation, to where there is now more intensity in instrumental motivation. These changes can mean a great deal as to how the teacher will plan future lessons.
Researchers recently have begun to see motivation in less static terms and to see it as an ongoing process that goes through stages. One of these is Dörnyei, who, along with Otto in 1998 wrote a very informative paper dealing with the second language learning motivational process. According to these researchers, motivation can be considered a process through which a student goes through various phases of motivation when a person learns a foreign language. There is a "pre-actional phase" and an "actional phase" (with an "instigation force" in-between), ending up with a "post-actional phase. In the section of the actional phase, there is an aspect of the action sequence called "Appraisal," where fluctuations in the motivation of the motivational construct can occur, and in the words of Dörnyei and Otto:
Students constantly evaluate how well they are doing in terms of approaching the desired outcome, and if they feel that their action is conducive to reaching that outcome they experience a feeling of success, which then provides further motivation. (1998, p. 58)
In his famous 1985 book, Social Psychology and Second Language Learning: The Role of Attitudes and Motivation, Gardner reported research done by him and Desrochers where an excursion was planned for Canadian-English students to help them interact with French Canadians and found that positive attitude change occurred not from the amount of contact but from the experiences themselves (Gardner, 1985, pp. 86-87). Gardner also mentioned earlier studies where there was a reported deterioration of attitudes towards second language learning as a result of continued study (p. 89) and in a study for publication in that book, found that there was a decrease in attitudes from the first to second year (p. 97) and postulates that this may be due to the effect of the course, the effect of increased age, education and experience, "or the effect of taking the test twice" (p. 97).
In 1999, Kang published a study he had conducted in Korea in 1995. This study surveyed 40 male and 40 female randomly selected high school students who were taught English as a required subject at two Korean high schools, one an urban high school and the other more rural. The survey instrument was an open-ended questionnaire with four questions, of which the third dealt with motivational change:
"How different are your current motivation (orientations) from the past or the future?"
Kang was able to isolate four major reasons a student's motivation changes and the focus of the proceeding paragraph will concentrate on the third of these questions with some examples from Kang's results.
The first is that there was a shift from a more intrinsic orientation/motivation to a more instrumental one. This mostly was due to the fact that students were initially excited to study English but then they needed to study English to enter the university. The second reason was due to a shift from "intrinsic and extrinsic orientation/motivation during the middle school years to a loss of interest because of external causes, such as task difficulty" (p. 17). A student reported, "At first, English was so easy and interesting that I was interested in studying English during middle school years, but it was getting so more difficult that I lost interest" (p. 17). This is also common in Japan where during the second year of middle school, the students encounter a difficult grammatical item and many second-year junior high school students lose much of the enthusiasm they had during the first year (K. Becchaku, personal communication, June, 1999). The third reason for motivational shifts in Kang's subjects was due to "attributions of success or failure to internal or controllable aspects of attributions," as in a loss of interest. (p. 18). Lastly, the fourth reason for a shift in motivation was due to "motivational and cognitive-informational aspects of intrinsic/extrinsic orientations" (p. 19): "I became interested in studying English, because I got an excellent grade during the middle school years. But I lost interest since I got a bad grade during the high school years" (p. 19-20). Kang explained this as the student had a more intrinsic orientation/motivation because of her interests, but at the same time, there was a "cognitive-informational extrinsic" orientation in the grade and that it was an external criteria for success or failure and this external criteria could influence the student positively or negatively. Kang claims that from his results there were two sub-categories to this reason that the subjects answered as to predictions for the future: movement from an instrumental orientation (enter a university) to an integrative one (once entered, to write letters to foreign pen pals), and from one instrumental orientation (enter a university) to another instrumental orientation (get a job).
This presentation will present the results of a study conducted with first-year Japanese university students studying English as a foreign language. The presenter surveyed these students at the start of the school year in April and the same student group a half-year later using the same instrument. The participants for this study were first-year students at a women's university who are enrolled in an English class as a foreign language class. There were 36 first year students who took the survey in early April and 29 students from almost the same group who took the same survey again in early October. The instrument used in this survey was an instrument adopted by Kimura (1999) (Cronbach's alpha=.6740). In this survey, there are 50 questions comprising 10 categories answered on a six-point scale:
Intrinsic Motivation;
Extrinsic Motivation;
Extrinsic/Instrumental Motivation;
Instrumental Motivation;
Situation Specific Motivation (Anxiety);
Teacher-Specific Motivation;
Activity Specific Motivation;
Attitudes Towards Anglofonic Culture;
Integrative Motivation;
Attribution.
According to the results, the overall average for the April group was 3.57 (out of a high of six and a low of one) and the overall Average for the October group was 3.69. Next, the April scores were subtracted from the October scores. If the number is a positive one, then it is a score that was higher in October than it was in April, and, oppositely, if the score is a negative, then the score for that item or category was lower in October than it was in April. Here are the results for this calculation done for the categories:
Category 1= +0.084291188
Category 2= +0.10967433
Category 3= +0.360632184
Category 4= +0.187739464
Category 5= +0.036015326
Category 6= -0.078224777
Category 7= +0.159482759
Category 8= +0.222222222
Category 9= +0.058429119
Category 10= +0.063457854
As can be seen, all the categories showed higher scores, except for one.
Next, conducting t-tests, it was found that the Total score was significantly higher in October, 188, than in April, 180 (p=<.05). Also, the Activity-Specific Motivation score was significantly higher in October, 36.125, than in April, 33.75 (p=<.02). Questions in this category deal specifically with what a student does in class, such as working in pairs and groups and the use of video and music in the class.
It can be seen form the above-stated results that a student's motivation is certainly not static. That the scores were higher with the very same group of students with the very same survey is possibly proof of that. It can also be seen that what happens in the class, as in the Activity-Specific Motivation, can have a great effect on what happens to shape the student's motivation. Perhaps this may mean that much more attention should be paid to the needs and expectations of the students. Interestingly, outside motivational influences did not show high significance. This may be all the more proof that what goes on in the classroom makes the greatest difference.
References
Dornyei, Z., & Otto, I. (1998). Motivation in action: A process model of L2 motivation. Working Papers in Linguistics, 4, 43-69.
Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. London: Edward Arnold.
Kang, D. (1999). Motivational constructs and changes in EFL classroom (Pilot study). (Eric Document Reproduction Service No. ED432142).
Kimura, Y. (1999). Gaikokugo ni okeru doukizuke [Language learning motivation]. Naruto Eigo Kenkyu [Naruto Educational University Studies in English], 12+13, 1-12.
All materials on this site are copyright © by JALT and their respective authors.
For more information on JALT, visit the JALT National Website