浅析怎样激发非英语专业学生英语口语学习动机(2)
Ⅱ.The Motivation
2.1 The Definition of Motivation
In the early of the 20th century, motivation, a concept in the newly emerging discipline of psychology, was the psychological feature arousing an organism to action toward a desired goal. The mainstream conceptualizations of motivation were in terms of volition, will and instincts. On the hand, Motivation is usually defined as an internal component inspiring us to reach to our demand. It is itself a complex issue, originally a psychological term which later interests methodologists of language learning, that is a comprehensive issue which originate from a psychological term, later interesting methodologist of language learning.
The concept of motivation is consists of many different and complex factors such as interest, curiosity, or a desire to achieve. Different definitions have been drawn to highlight some of its specific aspects.
A simple definition is provided by Keller (1983), which is thought by a lot of researchers as an early definition: “ motivation refers to the choices people make as to what experiences or goals they will approach or avoid, and the degree of effort they will exert in that respect”(cited in Crooks & Schmidt, 1991:481). We can find here that motivation includes making choices and exerting efforts. Kanfer&Ackerman (1989) develop the definition of motivation further by indicating that motivation refers to “the direction of attentional effort, the proportion of total attentional effort directed to the task (intensity), and the extent to which attentional effort toward the task is maintained over time (persistence)”.
As a result, it is not easy to confirm which definition is the best and the most appropriate, with the developing study, the different conclusions will be made from different perspectives.
2.2 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Motivation is pided into two different types, each based on a different kind of reward by in Harmer (23). The one is extrinsic Motivation, based on desire for rewards that lie outside the student，rewards such as good test scores, prizes, and even good job opportunities. The second, intrinsic motivation, the appetite from inside the student, is spontaneous, such as self-satisfaction, wanting to get the praise and feelings of accomplishment. When they achieve the goals, they will feel happy. Both motivations are important in language learning, and are at least partially accessible to teacher influence.
Many researchers strongly favor intrinsic motivation, which believe it is superior in contributing to successful L2 learning．The reason is that the essentially motivated conducts result from inpidual desired, reflecting learners’ personal choice, attitude, value, behavior tendency, interest and inpidual evaluation of self and task. Maslow is a well-known academics of the study of hierarchy of need, once the basic desire are met, people will eventually be motivated to accomplish ‘self-actualization’ whether the extrinsic rewards are presented or not (43). Since intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation is a significant component in the learning, the main task of language teachers is to stimulate students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. Meanwhile, they call use extrinsic motivation to marshal the productive forces of intrinsic motivation. Sometimes, extrinsic rewards are useful to the younger, which was lack of self-actualization.
While the focus of the thesis is intrinsic motivation, both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation affect what happens in the classroom. It is suppose that if we can content student’s extrinsic motivation in the learning, then their intrinsic motivation will be inspired. The means of intrinsic motivation is that the motivation to learn the language derives from an inner desire and competence rather than extrinsic reward. Extrinsic motivation which is an outer motivation to inspire you accomplishes the demand, like when you’re paid to achieve something specific. On the other hand we do something because we receive some reward, like a certificate prizes, praise, money, or positive feedback from the teachers