Developing a motivation-sensitive teaching approach

Motivation concerns human behaviour in general, and with human behaviour being as complex as it is, the number of motivational tech-niques is rather extensive. As illustrated by the variety of the material described in this chapter, human action can be influenced or modified in so many different ways that even a selection of the most important strategies will make up a long list if we want to be systematic. For example, Dörnyei’s (2001b) comprehensive taxonomy lists 35 key strategies, each of which is then broken down into a number of more specific sub-strategies, and we saw in Section 5.3 that the catalogue of motivational techniques can be further extended by focusing on the learners’ vision. Given such an extensive array of suggestions and pos-sibilities, teachers might face a near impossible task in deciding which strategies to implement in their own classrooms, or in trying to incor-porate as many as possible into their practice while giving due attention to all the other important aspects of their teaching and classroom man-agement (see Concept 5.5).

For this reason, it seems sensible and pragmatic to begin with a smaller set of ‘core’ strategies to which teachers can pay special attention when trying to implement a motivation-conscious teaching approach. This core set can then be extended when the techniques have been suffici-ently internalised and automated. This was the rationale for developing the ‘Ten commandments for motivating language learners’ (Dörnyei and Csizér, 1998; for an overview of the study, see Study 9.1 in Chapter 9), and the positive reception of this list by teachers has confirmed that the generation of a distilled set of macrostrategies might indeed make the concept of motivating learners more teacher-friendly.

The ‘Ten commandments for motivating language learners’

1. Set a personal example with your own behaviour.

2. Create a pleasant, relaxed atmosphere in the classroom.

3. Present the tasks properly.

4. Develop a good relationship with the learners.

5. Increase the learner’s linguistic self-confidence.

6. Make the language classes interesting.

7. Promote learner autonomy.

8. Personalise the learning process.

9. Increase the learners’ goal-orientedness.

10. Familiarise learners with the target language culture.

(Dörnyei and Csizér, 1998: 215) Concept 5.5 The ‘good-enough motivator’

Drawing on D. W. Winnicott’s (1965) concept of the ‘good enough mother’, Bruno Bettelheim (1987) has introduced the concept of the ‘good enough parent’, advocating that in order to produce psychological health in the child, the parent does not need to be perfect. Instead, there is a minimum level of support needed for healthy development, including empathic understanding, soothing, protection and, of course, love. In other words, ‘good enough parenting’ requires the parent to exceed a certain threshold of quality parenting without necessarily having to be a

‘Supermum’ or ‘Superdad’. Following the ‘good enough’ analogy, Dörnyei (2001b) argued that teachers should aim to become ‘good enough motiv-ators’ rather than striving unreasonably to achieve ‘Supermotivator’

status. What we need is quality rather than quantity: a few well-chosen strategies that suit both the teacher and the learners might take one beyond the threshold of the ‘good enough motivator’, creating an over-all positive motivational climate in the classroom.

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MOTIVATION IN PRACTICE: STRATEGIES AND APPROACHES

However, as noted in Section 5.1, no single set of pedagogical re-commendations (even if called ‘commandments’) should be considered readily generalisable to all teaching contexts, without taking into account what is appropriate for the local sociocultural context and the unique particularities of each teacher–learner group and classroom set-ting. While Dörnyei and Csizér’s (1998) ‘ten commandments’ were developed in the Hungarian ELT context, a comparative study in Taiwan revealed some similarities but also differences in the preference pattern of motivational macrostrategies among ELT teachers in that cultural setting (Cheng and Dörnyei, 2007). Macrostrategies strongly endorsed by both Hungarian and Taiwanese teachers include ‘dis-playing motivating teacher behaviour’, ‘promoting learners’ self-confidence’, ‘creating a pleasant classroom climate’ and ‘presenting tasks properly’. On the other hand, compared to their Hungarian counterparts, Taiwanese teachers attach comparatively much greater importance to ‘recognising students’ efforts’ (reflecting perhaps Chinese Confucian values), and rather less importance to ‘promoting learner autonomy’.

Aside from the issue of deciding what is best and appropriate for one’s own teaching context, two further practical concerns deserve consideration.

1. Many teachers may feel that they already do many of the things we have described as motivational strategies or macrostrategies, as an integral part of their normal classroom practice, yet without paying explicit attention to issues of motivation. Therefore, a concern for teachers and researchers alike may be to what extent motivational teaching practice should be regarded as an extra dimension of good or effective teaching practice, and thus require conscious attention and possibly additional training of some kind; or to what extent it should be considered part and parcel of effective pedagogic practice.

A recent study by Guilloteaux and Dörnyei (2008) for example sug-gests that in the Korean ELT context some teachers do implement a variety of effective motivational practices in their day-to-day teaching without any kind of previous systematic training. On the other hand, as Kubanyiova (2006, 2009) reports in a study of Slovakian ELT teachers, even when explicit in-service training in motivational teaching practices is provided, some teachers may not change what they do in any significant way, despite recognising the value of such practices.

2. The second practical concern for teachers relates to negotiating the delicate balance between fostering or socialising students’ motivation

Quote 5.10 Dörnyei on cooking and motivational strategies [J]ust like in cooking, achieving an optimal, motivating outcome can be done using different combinations of spices: While some chefs rely on paprika and build the recipe around it, others prefer pepper and the herbs that go with it. This is exactly the same in developing a motivating teach-ing practice. As long as we are aware of the vast repertoire of techniques that are at our disposal, it is up to us to choose the specific ones that we will apply, based on the specific needs that arise in our concrete circum-stances. There is only one thing we should not attempt: to try and apply all the techniques we know at the same time. This would be the perfect recipe for teacher burn-out. What we need is quality rather than quantity.

Some of the most motivating teachers often rely on a few well-selected basic techniques!

Dörnyei (2007a: 731)

on the one hand, and controlling or regulating it on the other.

While we must recognise that teachers have a responsibility to find ways of developing and sustaining students’ motivated engagement in learning, and that often this is a major challenge, we must also recognise that there is a critical difference between ‘motivating’ stu-dents and ‘developing their motivation’ – that is, between creating unhealthy teacher-dependent forms of student motivation (e.g. the traditional ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach informed by behaviourist theories), and socialising and generating healthy forms of internally driven motivation (what Deci and Flaste, 1996, call ‘motivation from within’). Given that developing communicative proficiency in a language takes considerable time, effort and commitment, that levels of motivation are bound to fluctuate throughout this process (Section 3.3), and that learning will need to be sustained outside and beyond the classroom, students who become dependent on their teachers to motivate them and who do not develop their own motiv-ation and self-regulatory strategies will not get very far (Ushioda, 2008). Thus, rather than merely thinking about techniques for motivating students, we should perhaps also think in terms of creat-ing the conditions for developcreat-ing students’ motivation from within and helping them to sustain this motivation (Ushioda, 2003). This principle underlies the promotion of self-motivating strategies (Section 5.2.3) as well as the generation and enhancement of the learners’ vision described in the previous section.

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