● Both integrative and instrumental motivations may lead to success, but lack of either causes problems.
● Motivation in this sense has great inertia.
● Short-term motivation towards the day-to-day activities in the classroom and general motivations for classroom learning are also important.
● What do you think are people’s typical reactions to foreigners? To bilinguals? To monolinguals?
● Mark how much you agree with these statements:
It is important to be able to speak two languages.
strongly slightly neither agree slightly strongly agree agree nor disagree disagree disagree
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I will always feel more myself in my first language than in my second.
strongly slightly neither agree slightly strongly agree agree nor disagree disagree disagree
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Focusing questions
The roots of the motivations discussed in the last section are deep within the stu- dents’ minds and their cultural backgrounds. One issue is how the student’s own cultural background relates to the background projected by the L2 culture. Lambert (1981, 1990) makes an important distinction between ‘additive’ and ‘subtractive’ bilingualism. In additive bilingualism, the learners feel they are adding something new to their skills and experience by learning a new language, without taking any- thing away from what they already know. In subtractive bilingualism, on the other
additive bilingualism: L2 learning that adds to the learner’s capabilities in
some way
subtractive bilingualism: L2 learning that takes away from the learner’s
capabilities
acculturation: the ways in which L2 users adapt to life with two languages
hand, they feel that the learning of a new language threatens what they have already gained for themselves. Successful L2 learning takes place in additive situa- tions; learners who see the second language as diminishing themselves will not succeed. This relates directly to many immigrant or multi-ethnic situations; a group that feels in danger of losing its identity by learning a second language does not learn the second language well. Chilean refugees I taught in the 1970s often lamented their lack of progress in English. However much they consciously wanted to learn English, I felt that they saw it subconsciously as committing themselves to permanent exile and thus to subtracting from their identity as Chileans. It is not motivation for learning as such which is important to teaching, but motivation for learning a particular second language. Monolingual UK children in a survey con- ducted by the Linguistic Minorities Project (1983) showed a preference in order of popularity for learning German, Italian, Spanish and French. Young people in the European Community as a whole, however, had the order of preference English, Spanish, German, French and Italian (Commission of the European Communities, 1987).
A useful model of attitudes that has been developed over many years is accultur- ation theory (Berry, 1998). This sees the overall attitudes towards a second culture as coming from the interaction between two distinct questions:
1 Is it considered to be of value to maintain cultural identity and characteristics?
In my experience as a teacher in London, Hungarian students of English tended to merge with the rest of the population; they did not maintain their separate cultural identities. Polish students, on the other hand, stayed within their local community, which had Polish newspapers, theatres, churches and a Saturday school; they were clearly maintaining their cultural differences. What the Poles valued, the Hungarians did not.
2 Is it considered to be of value to maintain relationships with other groups?
Again from my own experience, some students keep to themselves, others mix freely. Greek students in England, for example, usually seem to mix with other Greeks; one of the Essex university bars is informally known as the Greek bar. Japanese students, on the other hand, seem to mix much more with other peo- ple, and I am often surprised that two Japanese students in the same university class do not know each other.
According to the acculturation model, both questions could be answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’, though of course these would be questions of degree rather than absolute differences. The different combinations of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ yield four main patterns of acculturation, as shown in Figure 8.2: integration (Q1 ‘yes’, Q2 ‘no’), assimila- tion (Q1 ‘no’, Q2 ‘yes’), separation (Q1 ‘yes’, Q2 ‘yes’) and marginalization (Q1 ‘no’, Q2 ‘no’).
There are then four possible patterns of acculturation. Marginalization is the least rewarding version, corresponding loosely to Lambert’s subtractive bilingualism. Assimilation results in the eventual dying out of the first language – the so-called melting-pot model once used in the USA. Separation results in friction-prone situ- ations like Canada or Belgium, where the languages are spoken in physically sepa- rate regions. Integration is a multilingual state where the languages exist alongside each other in harmony.
This model is mainly used for groups that have active contact within the same country. My examples come from the use of English in England, not of English in Japan. When there are no actual contacts between the two groups, the model is less relevant, particularly for classroom learners who have no contact with the L2 culture except through their teacher, and whose experience of the L2 culture is through the media or through the stereotypes in their own culture.
A crucial aspect of attitudes is what the students think about people who are L2 users or monolinguals. I asked adults and children in different countries to rate how much they agreed with statements such as ‘It is important to be able to speak two languages’. As we see in Figure 8.3, most groups have fairly positive attitudes towards speaking two languages, but the British adults, who were university stu- dents, are clearly more positive.
Question 1
Question 2
Is it considered to be of value to maintain cultural identity and characteristics?
‘YES’ ‘NO’ INTEGRATION ASSIMILATION SEPARATION MARGINALIZATION Is it considered to be of value to maintain relationships with other groups? ‘YES’ ‘NO’
Figure 8.2 The acculturation model
0 1 2 3 4 5 British children British adults Belgian children Polish children Strongly disagree Strongly agree
Figure 8.3 Responses to ‘It is important to be able to speak two languages’
The same groups were asked about monolingualism. Their answers to the ques- tion ‘I will always feel more myself in my first language than in my second’ are shown in Figure 8.4.
The British children feel less comfortable in the second language than the oth- ers; they feel more threatened by the new language.
In this case, rather few of the people feel that learning a second language means forfeiting the first language, a topic developed in the context of language teaching goals in Chapter 11.