Kató Lomb in her book wrote: “self-assurance, motivation, and a good method play a much more important role in language learning than the vague concept of innate ability”. Motivation indeed plays a significant role in terms of language learning, but it does not apply to everyone to the same extent and there are different kinds of it.
Robert Gardner defines a motivated individual as someone who is “goal directed, expends effort, is persistent, is attentive, has desires, exhibits a positive affect, is aroused, has expectations, demonstrates self-confidence and has reasons” Motivation is therefore not important only for language learning, but for every activity where one can reach a certain level (for instance work, school, physical and non-physical skills). E.g. Richards sees motivation as a factor that determines one’s desire to achieve something .
Gardner reviewed the impact of motivation on language learning and states that motivation to learn a new language is not a simple establishment. He claims that it cannot be defined by one type of motivation; instead, it can even be looked at from three or four different points of view .
Researchers differ in small nuances; sometimes they use different terminology yet meaning the same type of motivation. E.g. Mondahl and Razmerita understand motivation as the reason why people do something, and how long and how hard they are willing to pursue it. They admit that during the process “motivation does not remain constant but is associated with a dynamically changing and evolving mental process characterized by constant (re)appraisal and balancing of the various internal and external influences” .
Fasold and Connor-Linton claim that motivation is another characteristic that varies across second language learners; they state that language learners with strong motivation who are willing to give more time and energy towards the goal of fluency in the target language are more successful. According to them, some researchers even claim that “motivation is the single most important individual difference impacting second language acquisition” . They use Robert Gardner’s socio-educational model of motivation to distinguish two types of motivation – integrative motivation (involving the learner’s attitudes toward a specific group and his/her desire to get in the group; this usually happens when a learner is abroad and wants to integrate with a native-speaker group) and instrumental motivation (which refers to more practical reasons for learning a second language, i.e. good marks, an economic reward etc.) .
Gardner also differentiates two another types of motivation – language learning motivation and classroom learning motivation, which actually works on the basis of integrative and instrumental motivation . Khasinah further develops Gargner’s theory and states that different kinds of motivation in various situations can be more effective than other. She believes that an integrative motivation has a significant role when learning a language (“foreign language learning” according to Fasold & Connor-Linton) and contrarily an instrumental motivation is more important when acquiring a second language.
As mentioned before, motivation can be defined and divided in several ways. Another distinction between the types of motivation is between intrinsic and extrinsic. Fasold and Connor-Linton define intrinsic motivation as motivation that often involves the wish to socialize and communicate with the people of the second language being learnt, whereas extrinsic motivation is considered as an obligation (e.g. to learn a language because it is a local lingua franca) and this does not necessarily motivate and promote language learning. This distinction is very similar to Gardner’s language learning motivation and classroom learning motivation.
Khasinah describes intrinsic motivation as motivation with no apparent reward; it should bring a certain internal reward. Extrinsic motivation is moved by the expectation of an actual reward, e.g. money, praise of positive feedback . Maslow and Brown focused on the importance of motivation in SLA and claim that “intrinsic motivation leads to greater success in learning a foreign language” as cited in Khasinah . The learner’s motivation is, from my point of view, one of the most significant aspects of language learning. Learning a language needs time and dedication and polyglots seem to understand this very well. Yet motivation is again often affected by other factors, e.g. the environment, group dynamics, learner’s self-image etc. or simply the attitude towards learning.
