Motivation has long been known as a key to all types of human learning (Dörnyei, 1998), including language learning. Both empirical and anecdotal evidence have demonstrated that motivation is a fairly accurate indicator of success in learning a foreign language. As a complicated construct, motivation contains a plethora of factors like how much students value a learning task, how much they expect to succeed, whether they believe they have all the trappings of success, and what they perceive to be responsible for their success or failure (Chamot et al., 1999, p.176). Therefore, motivation deserves consideration in language
instruction.
2.4.1 The Relationship between Motivation and Learning Strategies
When it comes to language learning, Gardner (1985) asserted that motivation strongly influences the extent to which learners seize opportunities to use the language. Motivation can encourage learners’ overall effort, and so typically results in higher language proficiency (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992, p.54). Because motivation is considered essential to all learning behavior, it naturally influences learners’ tendency to apply learning strategies, the ultimate goal of which is to improve learning consequences. Also, based on Oxford and Nyikos’ (1989) study, motivation proved to be the most powerful influence on how and when students employ language learning strategies.
In the first few decades of research on motivation and L2 learning, motivation was viewed as a relatively stable learner trait. But in the 1990s, there was a shift towards regarding motivation as more dynamic and more cognitive in nature (Vandergrift, 2005). Dörnyei and Skehan (2003) argued that a dynamic perspective on motivation lends itself to the possibility that effective use of learning strategies could sustain motivational levels within the learning situation as it may encourage learners and provide benchmarks for evaluation and progress. In other words, while motivation can affect students’ willingness to put efforts into learning, including students’ inclination to employ learning strategies, effective use of strategies can, in
return, increase students’ motivation for language learning tasks (Chamot et al., 1999, p.176;
Dörnyei & Skehan, 2003). Oxford (1990, p.203) also claimed that raising awareness on strategy use can enhance learners’ attitudes, motivation, and beliefs about language learning. In brief, motivation and learning consequences are interrelated.
In a large-scale study of heritage language learners, Schmidt and Watanabe (2001) concluded that if learners believed in the value of learning a language, may the motivation be instrumental or integrative, they can be expected to apply various cognitive and metacognitive strategies to reach their goal. Put differently, motivated learners learn more because they pay more attention to the target language input and actively process it—they use learning strategies whenever possible. Similarly, MacIntyre and Noels (1996), when trying to predict the frequency of learners’ strategy use, ascertained a significant relationship among different types of strategies and social-psychological variables such as motivation, anxiety, integrativeness, and attitudes toward the learning situation. As the association between strategy and motivation was further substantiated, so was the link between strategy use and other affective constructs, or motivational factors, such as learning attitudes, confidence and interest in learning, for they are intimately connected with motivation. In the study, knowledge of strategies proved to have a positive correlation with motivation, integrativeness, and ALS (Attitudes toward the Learning Situation).
2.4.2 Previous Studies on Language Learning Strategies and Motivation
The claim that motivation has a huge effect on learning behavior, inclusive of the use of learning strategies, was supported in numerous studies. Oxford and Nyikos (1989) found that motivation was the best predictor of university students’ strategy use. In their study, the more motivated learners used learning strategies more often than did the less motivated students.
Vandergrift (2005) examined the relationships among Grade 8 ESL students’ motivation, metacognition, and proficiency in listening comprehension. Student responses to a motivation questionnaire, Language Learning Orientations Scale, which was previously validated by Noel et al. (2000), were correlated both with their responses to a metacognitive awareness questionnaire, Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire, and their listening proficiency. The outcome signified that listening level correlated negatively with amotivation.
In addition, the learners reporting a greater use of metacognitive strategies also exhibited higher motivational intensity. In noting the limitations of the study, Vandergrift proposed that these 13-14 year-old students were not able to make fine distinctions in motivational intensity that tertiary-level students could make. In response to the Language Learning Orientations Scale (Noels, Pelletier, Clement, & Vallerand, 2000) assessing amotivation (AM), extrinsic motivation (EM), and intrinsic motivation (IM), the learners could distinguish among the broad categories of IM, EM, and AM, but not so much among the six subscales of EM and IM. This implied that when measuring young learners’ motivational strength, complicated measures
might not be appropriate.
Many of the strategy instruction studies to date have tackled the effect that strategy training had on learning motivation. Huang (2001) evaluated the impacts of one-semester-long English learning strategy training on college students’ learning achievements, attitudes, anxiety, and proficiency. The measures used to investigate the variables under study were the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1990), the Motivational Intensity Questionnaire (Gardner, 1985), and the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986). The results revealed that language learning strategy instruction helped the participants make significant improvements in proficiency and learning motivation. Also, participants in the experimental group increased their strategy use and reduced their English learning anxiety level.
The above–mentioned studies on the relationship between motivation and strategy use all produced affirmative results. One possibility was that those students who were identified as highly motivated were very likely to be willing, high-achieving learners in the first place.
Because motivated and unmotivated learners differ to a great extent in their willingness to learn, the effect of learner strategy instruction would be susceptible to interfering factors if caution was not exercised. In order to give a fair evaluation of the effect of a strategy training course similar to the kind in the present study, the influence of learning motivation should not be taken into account at the very beginning. At the same time, as strategy instruction supposedly raises
learners’ confidence and arouses their interest in learning after they experience great satisfaction from the use of strategies, it is assumed that students will harbor more positive attitudes towards language learning after a period of strategy training. After all, motivation is based on positive attitudes (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992, p.53). Conceivably, learners would have positive perceptions of strategy instruction after experiencing success brought about by such training.
As was found by many previous studies, motivation influences the way learners employ strategies. So motivation, like proficiency, could be a confounding factor in strategy instruction.
Hence, the present study removed the confounding effects that motivation had on learners’
strategy use.