Motivation as a key factor of students’ success in learning ESP

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MOTIVATION AS A KEY FACTOR OF STUDENTS' SUCCESS IN LEARNING ESP

Lyubov Krainyk,

Lecturer of the Foreign Languages Department, Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences, Lviv Polytechnic National University

The English language has been a language of global communication and there is no doubt that any graduate is expected to master this language in their professional environment. Hence, the English language is an important need for students, especially Vocational English that is why students seem to be highly-motivated. Motivation of students in English for Specific Purposes is an important taskfor a teacher as it can lead to their success or failure. The article is aimed at considering the importance of motivation for students and studying how teachers can enhance it to improve second language teaching, in particular ESP. In the article, there have been considered two key motivations, namely instrumental and integrative ones and there have been supposed some techniques which build instrumental and integrative motivation. In order to build these two kinds of motivation a teacher is to enhance the students ' enthusiasm in learning second language during the whole ESP course. Teachers should implement some techniques which build instrumental and integrative motivation. The task of a teacher is to combine both kinds of motivation to get benefits from them. The main focus is paid to the students' micro-motivation and its types, namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and biological drive. There have been studied advantages and disadvantages of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The article reveals the importance to develop the students' autonomy, mastery and purpose which together build intrinsic motivation.

Любов Крайник, викладач англійської мови кафедри іноземних мов інституту гуманітарних та соціальних наук, Національного університету “Львівська політехніка ”

МОТИВАЦІЯ ЯК КЛЮЧОВИЙ ФАКТОР УСПІХУ СТУДЕНТІВ У ВИВЧЕННІ АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ ПРОФЕСІЙНОГО СПРЯМУВАННЯ

Англійська мова є мовою глобальної комунікації, і немає сумнівів, що будь-який випускник повинен володіти цією мовою у своєму професійному середовищі. Мотивація студентів англійською мовою для професійних цілей є важливим завданням для викладача, оскільки вона може призвести до їх успіху або невдачі. Розглянуто два ключових типи мотивації, а саме: інструментальна та інтегративна, також були запропоновані деякі методи, які формують інструментальну та інтегративну мотивації. Основна увага приділяється мікро-мотивації студентів і її типам, а саме внутрішньої та зовнішньої мотиваціям, а також біологічному мотиву. У статті розкривається важливість розвитку автономії студентів, їх майстерності та мети, які формують внутрішню мотивацію.

Ключові слова: мотивація; інструментальний; інтегративний; біологічний мотив; мікро-мотивація; макро-мотивація; метод винагороди і покарання; гра як метод викладання; автономія; майстерність, мета.

Introduction. Motivation for language learning is a highly important issue in higher education nowadays. The ability to communicate in a foreign language in a number of professional subject areas appears to be one of the crucial competences of a highly-qualified specialist. As English has been a language of global communication, so-called “bridge between nations”, there is no doubt that any graduate is expected to master English in the professional environment. Since the English language is an important need for students, especially Vocational English, so students seem to be highly-motivated. Motivation of students in English for Specific Purposes is no doubt an important issue which will be studied in this article.

The aim of research is to consider the importance of motivation for students and study how teachers can enhance it to improve second language teaching, in particular ESP. The term ESP stands for English for Specific Purposes which means “training learners the particular skills and language they need in order to function in a particular set of professional situations in English. Learners are grouped according to their needs, not just their language level, and the trainer tries to tailor each course to the learner's particular needs” [7]. Thus, the article explores students' motivation for learning Specific language discipline, for example, English for Economists, Finance, Law, Tourism, etc.

The main part of research. Motivation is considered to be a key priority for education system. Thus, how can we define the term “motivation”? According to Masgoret M. and Gardner R. (2003), “motivation refers to goal-directed behavior, and when one is attempting to measure motivation, attention can be directed towards a number of features of the individual. The motivated individual expends effort, is persistent and attentive to the task at hand, has goals, desires, and aspirations, enjoys the activity, experiences reinforcement from success and disappointment from failure, makes attributions concerning success and/or failure, is aroused, and makes use of strategies to aid in achieving goals. That is, the motivated individual exhibits many behaviors, feelings, cognitions, etc., that the individual who is unmotivated does not” [4, 173].

Fig. 1. Motivation for language learners

According to Steven McDonough, “Motivation is a property of the learner, but it is also a transitive concept: coaches can motivate their clients, teachers can motivate their students. Furthermore, it is dynamic and changes over time, especially in the usually long- drawn out process of language learning. Motivation is thus remarkably complex”[6].

Concerning the field of second language learning, the best known research was done by Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert in 1972. In their book “Attitudes and motivation in second language learning” they defined two key motivations for students, namely instrumental and integrative [3].

Instrumental motivation is considered to be an outcome of an external need. For instance, if learners' need is to communicate in the foreign language in the job, or to study successfully in academic environment, that will be the external need as the need itself comes from outside, not from the learners themselves. In this case the language is a useful tool to accomplish tasks successfully.

Unlike instrumental motivation, integrative one comes from within the learner. It comes from the learner's desire to integrate with other people who speak the same language, to feel confident speaking a foreign language in the future when they will communicate with other people of the same professional area, for example, medical English, legal English, business English, etc.

As we can see in Figure 1, the classification of motivation conducted by Gardner R. and Lambert W. in 1972 shows a clear correlation between motivation and needs. That means, to motivates students, teachers must take in consideration students' needs while planning lessons for ESP.

Studying students' motivation, we can state that there are two important things about instrumental and integrative motivation. “Firstly, all learners probably have some combination of the two types, and this combination will vary over the course of their learning. As teachers, we need to be aware of both types, in order to take advantages of them. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, both instrumental and integrative motivation work on a large scale: they help us to understand why a particular learner is attending a course, their macromotivation. But they say very little about their micromotivation: how that learner feels during and between individual lessons. It is quite possible for a learner to have high levels of integrative and instrumental motivation, and still feel demotivated by boring lessons or an unpleasant learning environment. Conversely, it is possible for a learner with little or no instrumental or integrative motivation to be highly motivated in the classroom, due to the quality of the teaching, for example” [7].

As teachers we can use some techniques for exploiting and building language learners' motivation both instrumental and integrative in an ESP course”[7]. In the table below we can see some techniques which can be implemented in ESP lessons.

As we can see some techniques tend to focus more on instrumental motivation while others on integrative one. The task of a teacher is to combine both kinds of motivation to get benefits from them. This is really essential when we design an ESP course for a particular group of students.

The next aspect of motivation worth studying is micro-motivation. As it was already mentioned, macro-motivation is large-scale, and it can predetermine the reason why a student attends a particular course or why learners need a second language. While micro-motivation is small-scale which means it is more about how students feel during and between classes, whether they find the tasks useful, relevant and whether they are involved in the class and to what extent, namely the motivation carries out specific actions. Micro-motivation can be divided into three types: intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and biological drive, as shown in Figure 2.

Table 1.

Techniques to improve students' motivation [7]

Fig. 2. Micro-motivation [7]

The simplest motivation is our biological drive. “This is what makes us want to eat, to be comfortable, to look good in front of other people, etc. For those of us, like teachers, who want to increase motivation, there is not much we can do about biological drives, although we can easily demotivate people if we do not respect those drives” [7].

Traditionally, there has been used motivation based on a combination of rewards and punishments. This well-known approach is called the carrot-and-stick approach. This metaphor means “if we want to persuade our donkey to move, we can offer him a carrot as a reward or we can hit him with a stick if he refuses. This approach was widely used in families, in schools and in businesses” [7]. Therefore, this method tends to be quite ineffective in changing behavior, or even damage motivation at all.

The other forms of motivation, namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (Deci and Ryan 1985) [1], appear to be more effective in language learning. In particular, intrinsic motivation is considered to be the best form of motivation. That can be motivation to do a task because it is fun, not because you have to, or you get a reward or can be punished. A good example is games: we play because it is fun, enjoyable. Extrinsic motivation can include expectations of teachers, grades, or in case of games, if you try to reward someone for playing a game, they will see the activity as extrinsic motivation. Thus, gamification has become one of the effective principles to make language learning intrinsically motivating.

However, both extrinsic and Bi_ological drive intrinsic motivations have some advantages and disadvantages [5; 8]. One the one hand, extrinsic motivation makes students ready for behavior changes and students “typically involve relatively little effort and preparation. Also, efforts at applying extrinsic motivators often do not require extensive knowledge of individual students. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation can often distract students from learning the subject at hand. Thus, it can be challenging to devise appropriate rewards and punishments for students' behaviors. Also, extrinsic motivation typically does not work over the long term. Once the rewards or punishments removed, students lose their motivation” [5, 163].

Regarding intrinsic motivation, a big benefit is that it is “long-lasting and self-sustaining, and the focus is on the subject rather than rewards or punishments” [8]. Considering drawbacks, we can note that sometimes it takes some time and efforts to learn interests of students. That is why it is helpful to know your students' interests in order to connect these interests with the subject matter [5].

In the ESP classroom, we can take the advantages of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to make language teaching more effective and language learning more inspiring for students. That is, of a teacher sets an achievable task which appeals to a particular group of students, he can raise students' intrinsic motivation in such a way. On the other hand, if we keep a record of students' scores and give them the opportunity to beat their previous scores, in other words to improve their grades, that gets students more motivated. Thus, we can combine benefits of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Another good example is when a teacher gives students autonomy to choose the topic of the task they like or are interested in, and students are instructed about the task but are free to present the topic the way they see it, or like it.

Table 2.