Psychology in English teaching and learning, motivation, how to be self motivated, and some interesting ideas of how to develop your self-efficacy.

1. What makes a
person want to
learn? Motivation in
language learning

2. Perceived value of the activity
The greater the value that individuals attach to the
accomplishment of or involvement in an activity, the more
highly motivated they will be both to engage in it initially, and
later to put sustained effort into succeeding in the activity.
1. Why should a sports fan devote his life to supporting a
particular team and devote all his energies to following the
fortunes of that team?
2. Why should one person be motivated to spend all her time
and money collecting postage stamps?

3. • As Adam Sternbergh (@sternbergh) explains in this great
piece that being a sports fan allows you to feel deep
emotional investment in something that has no actual real-
world consequences. Sports are never guaranteed to end
happily. In fact for some fans, most games end in a highly
unsatisfying way. As a fan, you will feel actual joy or actual
pain in relation to events that really don’t affect your life at all.
It matters, deeply, and yet it doesn’t matter at all. It’s
heartbreak with training wheels. The opportunity to
experience and survive it is something to be valued, not
lamented. It’s the one time you should really be grateful for
deciding to be a fan.

4. • In a study of the ability of academically retarded children to
transfer memorisation strategies from one type of learning task to
another, Male (1992) found that, this could be accomplished by
establishing the ‘personal authenticity’ of the task.
• Much of the previous research in this area had used tasks (such as
remembering nonsense words) which carried little or no personal
meaning for the subjects.
• When Male was able to provide an authentic link between the
strategies that had been taught and the new task to be performed,
her retarded learners became much more motivated to employ
those strategies and were able to remember more than before.

5. Arousal
• One major component of arousal is curiosity.
• It was the identification of curiosity as a motivating variable by
John McVicar Hunt in 1961 that provided a significant
landmark in cognitive theory, whether humans or even
animals always sought to achieve a state of balance, and
postulated instead that they might actually have an inclination
to explore the unknown just because it was unknown.
• In order to be motivating, it would appear to be important to
ensure an optimum level of arousal and complexity (Berlyne
1965).

6. • In recent years the notion of optimal arousal has been
excitingly extended and built upon by Csikszentmihalyi and his
co-workers who developed the concept of flow.
• These researchers arranged a number of ingenious
investigations which involved a wide range of different people
from rock climbers to chess players to old men and women
living in mountain villages recording what they were doing,
thinking and feeling at various random times throughout the
day.
Out of all the information that was gathered in this way, it
transpired that when people are involved in any activity in a
manner which could be described as highly motivated or
aroused, the following conditions are likely to apply:

7. 1. All of their minds and bodies are completely involved;
2. Their concertation is very deep;
3. They know what they want to do;
4. They know how well they are doing;
5. They are not worried about failing;
6. Time passes very quickly;
7. They lose the ordinary sense of self-conscious gnawing
worry that characterises much of daily life.
(Csikszentmihalyi and Nakamura 1989)
The term that Csikszentmihalyi coined to describe this sense of
total involvement was ‘flow experience’, which was
operationally defined as situations in which people perceive
themselves as having a high level of skill and are posed with
challenges that stretch those skills.

8. Learners’ beliefs about
themselves
• Some researchers propose that the sense people have of
whether they cause and are in control of their actions, or
whether they perceive that what happens to them is
controlled by other people is an important determinant in
motivation.
• These factors are a part of what is known as ‘a sense of
agency’.

9. Locus of causality
• This notion was introduced by Richard de Charms.
• It is about to account whether people see themselves or
others as the cause of their actions.
• People who see themselves as largely responsible for
originating their own action are termed origins by de Charms.
• While those who see other people as causing what happens to
them are known as pawns.
• We are all origins some of the time and pawns at other times
(de Charms 1984)

10. • Principles of an origin :
Choice, freedom and ownership of behaviour become issues of
personal responsibilities.
• Pawn:
On the other hand, feeling oneself to be a pawn in the hands of
others abrogates choice and discourages any sense of personal
responsibility for one’s actions.

11. Locus of control
• Internal locus of control vs. External locus of control
• It is defined as the people’s perception of whether they
are subsequently in control of their actions.

12. Effectiveness motivation
• When we seek to master something, the outcomes are often
uncertain; however, there is an optimum level of uncertainty
which provides for the most motivating conditions.
• A more recent development of these ideas is contained within
Bandura’s theory of self efficacy (Bandura 1977, 1986).
• The term for self efficacy for learning refers to ‘students’
beliefs about their capabilities to apply effectively the
knowledge and skills they already possess and thereby learn
new cognitive skills’.

13. • Our self efficacy will influence our choice of activities that we
undertake.
• It will also affect the amount of effort that we are prepared to
expend and our level of persistence.
• It is clear that aptitudes and prior experiences will affect
learners’ initial beliefs about their capabilities for learning.
There is a connection here with another form of mediated
learning experience – the development of a sense of
competence.

14. Motivational style
• There are many styles of motivation like the following:
• Learned helplessness: is when a person begins to believe that
they have no control over a situation, even when they do.
• The mantra of the person who suffers from learned
helplessness is : “What’s the point of trying?”
• This concept originated in laboratory work with animals that
were placed in situations where they had no control over their
environments (Seligman 1975). It has proved useful in
describing people who see failure as essentially due to a lack
of ability, and who feel that they have no control over their
actions.

15. • An opposite group referred to as mastery oriented, tend to
explain failure in terms of lack of effort and seek clues in their
mistakes for ways of improving their subsequent performance.
• A different approach to the self-perception of ability has been
taken by Covington (1992), who has developed a theory of
self-worth concern.
• People with high self-worth concern will seek situations where
they enhance their feelings of their worth and avoid situations
in which failure would signify low ability, particularly where
the expenditure of a great deal of effort is involved.

16. Setting and achieving goals
• Setting appropriate goals becomes an important part of
motivated behaviour so that the decision can be carried out
and the required effort sustained.
• Cognitive psychologists have come to make a distinction
between the two types of goal orientation, which have been
variously described as
• performance vs mastery goals (Ames 1992),
• performance vs learning goals (Dweck and Leggett 1988), and
• ego involvement vs task involvement (Nicholls 1979).

17. • Although there are differences in each of these approaches,
they are essentially similar in distinguishing between:
• Performance, where the prime concern is to look good, or at
least, not to look stupid.
• Learning, where the goal is to increase knowledge, skill or
understanding.
• With performance goals, an individual aims to look smart,
whereas with learning goals the individual aims at becoming
smarter. (Dweck 1985)

18. • Performance goals are considered to tend to view intelligence
as something fixed and unchangeable.
• In contrast to this, those who pursue learning goals tend to
have an underlying belief that intelligence or ability is
malleable and that effort is, therefore, worthwhile.
John Holt, a radical educator, writes about children trying to
read the teacher’s mind, he is providing us with a graphic
example of performance goal orientation. The learners are not
concerned with learning for themselves but in trying to guess
the teacher’s required answer and performing accordingly.
However, whatever the learner’s concept of goal, the
important question is whose goals an individual is expected to
achieve.

19. • Rollet (1987) coined the term ‘effort avoidance motivation’ to
describe the behaviour of people who were motivated not to
work to achieve goals that were set for them by others.
• It cannot be accounted for by laziness or by fear of failure. It
appears rather that the causes of effort-avoidance are more
likely to be frustrating experiences during the first contacts of
the learner with the particular activity or type of tasks
involved.
• It is important, therefore, when faced with such learners to
focus on redirecting the energy put into effort-avoidance in
creative rather than controlling ways.

20. • An interesting approach which has taken up this point and
used it constructively to motivate young children who are
underachieving and have become ‘switched off’ from their
schoolwork has been developed in the Netherlands (van
Werkhoven 1990).
• Known as attunement strategy,
• this involves the teacher negotiating with the learner all
aspects of the work to be completed, including the definition
of the task, how it might be tackled, setting goals and
evaluating outcomes.
• We can see in this approach the significance of the mediating
role of the teacher.

21. The involvement of significant
others
• Two main factors can be seen as contributing to the learners’
motivation to participate in these activities.
• The first is the personality or nature of the person introducing
the activity.
• All learners are likely to be influenced by their personal
feelings about their teachers, and therefore, their perceptions
of their teachers and of the interactions that occur between
them and their teachers will undoubtedly affect their
motivation to learn.

22. • The second is the way in which the person presents the
activity and works with the learner during the completion of
that activity. Thus, the role of the teacher is important at all
stages of the motivational process.
• If teachers explain clearly how performing such activities will
be helpful elsewhere, then powerful motivating conditions are
likely to be set
• As well as this, they need to be aware of the importance of
helping learners to develop an internal sense of control as
well as feelings of effectiveness in their ability to carry out
tasks.

23. Feedback
• Behavioural psychologists were the first to recognise the
power of feedback as a motivating influence.
• Feedback can be given by means of praise, by any relevant
comment or action, or even by silence.
It depends in one area on the intention of the person giving
the feedback, the way in which it is given and the way in which it
is construed by the person receiving.

24. • It is in the broader area of reinforcement,
• Negative attention, because it is attention of any kind, can
sometimes be more reinforcing than what appears
superficially to be a more positive reward.
• So reinforcement, is the application of rewards and
punishments
• External reinforcers in the form of rewards, merit marks or
simple praise, are often considered to be excellent ways of
motivating underachieving.

25. • Wheldall and Merrett (1987) cite a large number of studies
which show that rewards, such as praise, are far more
effective than punishment. They have even built an approach
to teaching based on this principle which they term ‘Positive
Teaching’ and which they claim to be highly effective
(Wheldall and Merrett 1984).
• Lepper, Greene and Nisbet (1973) offered prizes for drawing to
a group of pre-school children who had originally chosen than
activity of their own free will. Later, when offered a range of
activities to choose from, the children who were rewarded for
drawing were significantly less likely to choose that activity
again than those children who had not been rewarded.
• At the same time, another group of researchers under the
leadership of Edward Deci (Deci 1975, 1980; Deci and Ryan
1985) found that if people were given money for doing things
they enjoyed, they lost interest in those things faster than
when they were not rewarded.

26. • The comment ‘Well done’ may make learners feel good
momentarily, but it may be accepting standards below that at
which they are capable of working and it does not give any
indication of how they might subsequently improve their
work.
• Similarly, indiscriminate praise or praise which is given only to
hose who perform well according to some general ‘norm’ may
lower the feelings of self-competence and self-efficacy of
other learners in the class.
• Lepper and Hoddell (1989) offer a constructivist explanation
for this phenomenon in terms of the meaning that rewards
(and sanctions) convey to learners.

27. 1. First, praise or rewards will convey messages about the
kinds of behaviour that are likely to gain the approval of
teachers of parents and lead to expectations about similar
rewards in the future. The future behaviour of the learners
will, therefore, depend more upon how they perceive the
outcomes to be valued by significant others than upon the
activity itself.
2. Second, praise may be construed as providing information
about one’s personal competence, which in turn will be
influenced by one’s view of oneself.
3. Third, praise or reward may lead learners to feel that their
involvement in any activity is in the hands of others and
beyond their control, thereby decreasing their intrinsic
motivation.

28. Summary
• Motivation can be intrinsic, that is, we do something because
the act of doing it is enjoyable in itself.
• Alternatively, it can be extrinsic, that is, we engage in an
activity to achieve other ends.
• If people attach a high value to the outcome of an activity,
they will be more likely to be motivated to perform it.
• People also need to be aroused, often by curiosity or interest,
and to sustain their arousal. A state of sustained arousal is
known as ‘flow’.

29. • People’s motivation is greatly affected by their perceptions of
themselves, and by whether they see themselves as in control
of their actions.
• They also need to believe that they are capable of carrying out
an action; this is known as effectiveness motivation.
• Individuals have different motivational styles.
• Those who are mastery oriented seek to master an activity by
trying to improve their performance, while those who feel a
sense of learned helpelessness see their failures as due to lack
of ability and give up altogether.

30. • Setting and achieving goals are important elements in
sustaining motivation. Performance goals are concerned with
looking good whereas mastery goals are concerned with
increasing understanding.
• Finally, teachers and others play a significant part in an
individual’s motivation. Of particular importance is the nature
of feedback provided to learners.
• There are great dangers in relying on rewards and praise as
motivators; these can have a potentially negative effect,
particularly if learners are already intrinsically motivated.