Does Motivation Play a Major Part in Second Language Acquisition - Essay Example

Put the arguments for and against the idea that Motivation (a learners factor) plays a major part in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Introduction Second language acquisition is difficult to have. A number of people belonging to different households are imperfect when the talk goes out loud about being good at the acquisition of the second language. The reason is that they are simply not proficient at the new language. The changes take place not only within the age groups but also in the lifestyles of people living in different environments as it is very significant to understand what the role of the educators needs to be in the whole equation. The motivation that goes behind the scenes in this whole new language acquiring process is something that we will delve into in detail and for this reason we find the exact basis as to how motivation plays its due part. There are a number of reasons that the students and different language learners offer when they are questioned as to why a new language would just be the order of the day for them. These responses include their willingness to have a sound and prosperous future that is full of growth and advancements. Also the reasons include their liking for a particular language and their incorporation of these languages into the countries in which they intend traveling or living in for a specified period of time. Background With the addition of more and more people wanting to learn a new language we see that the limited proficiency in English, the instructors are having a hard time making these people learn the new language. There is just so much that can be taught to these individuals. Enormous patience is required on their part as well as a huge amount of understanding and empathy. This is a mighty challenge for the teachers as they have to train the language seekers without having any prior training themselves. This would be done to promote second language development as well as to find out a little bit about the procedure of second language learning. [Favreau, M., & Segalowitz, 1983] The motivational aspects stem from the fact that the second language gives them a better understanding of the ways and means of the people who make use of the same in their day to day lives as well as the international usage of the new and acquired language. English is indeed the international language but learning German, French, Spanish or Chinese on the part of the different language seekers/learners is a positive step and one that should surely be counted as a plus on their curriculum vitae. The focus therefore should not only be on young children but we can also take into consideration the older ones. As we are focusing on people from all ages who have limited proficiency in English, these learning rules do also relate to the native-English speaking individuals who are in the middle of acquiring and learning second languages in a two-way bilingual or foreign language interest programs and plans. [McClure, E.F., 1977] Background of Language Without a shadow of a doubt, the theories of adult learning as well as literacy have got a lot to do with the provision of a suitable structure as per the second language learning when the same is compared with the ones that come under the tenet of the development phase. Linguistic-oriented theories of learning a language seem to underscore hereditary means that are the supposed "universal grammars" in elucidating the language acquisition process. Behavioral theories dispute that association, reinforcement, and imitation are the primary factors in the acquisition of language. Cognitive theories put forward that rule structures, schema and meaning are the traits of learning a language. Theories of discourse are of the notion that interaction with different speakers is the significant aspect in seeking to learn a new language. Vygotsky has argued that nearly all cognitive processes, with the inclusion of the ones concerned within language take place due to the paradigm of social dealing. [Phillips, S., 1972] The meaning of learner variables in seeking to learn a language has been sought out in depth including the different abilities, styles of cognition, motivational limitations as well as the different strategies related with learning and the like. The theories of intelligence also on their part make apparent their point towards the divergent linguistic aptitudes which fluctuate and vary from one individual to another. The research on learning strategies clearly exhibits the fact which speaks that student performance can be raised up a little bit by pursuing specific strategies, however the results depend a great deal on the disposition of the job as well as the way in which learners are inclined towards the very same. Second Language Learning and Motivational Aspects The motivational aspects with regards to the second language learning encompass the subject’s desire to get noticed amongst the chosen target language community as well as have a close and easy going interaction with the people who speak that very language. Then there is the aspect related with becoming a better and highly educated individual. There are a number of learning rules, which are related, with second language acquisition of the individuals but in the following paragraphs, only the most imperative ones are stated. Bilingualism is an asset hence it must be promoted at all levels. The topic of the use of language for bilingual individuals has now been a debate for the last so many years and there are no simple and definitive answers. At times, members of a community start feeling pretty strongly about their individuals who could not speak English in their normal day to day lives. At other points in time, it has been witnessed that there is a robust attitude attached with the strengthening of the home language, while at the same time teaching English. This decision as to how and when to bring in English towards the individuals coming to learn the new language having limited skill and ability in English must be left to restricted domains of their guardians as well as at times, to the individuals themselves, the latter being the case when they have serious problems understanding the second language or have trouble speaking and/or writing or even both. [Oxford R., 1990] Thus it is pretty evident that when these individuals are instructed wholly and solely in English, then hard work is needed to make a strong support for their native language. On balance, bilingualism is surely an asset and not a liability, at all. Bilingualism is an asset, which needs to be protected at all costs. Being bilingual for a commoner has definite and clear-cut economic as well as social advantages, which increases his/her career opportunities beyond the individual’s expectations. This is indeed true that to permit the language of the native land of a family to be ignored is in a sense to put at risk the well being of everyone as well as of the society in a nutshell. It has been seen that the colonists do not quite get a hand at learning English very well and in those cases, the individuals who fail to build up and therefore uphold proficiency in the native language more often than not challenges themselves of losing their aptitude to communicate and converse well with their colleagues as well as within their own families. Also if the near and dear ones for that matter promote bilingualism, they in the process give them a way so that they could help these individuals throughout their lives. [Light, R. J., 1992] For starters, there is one language, which is the major one, which could be used and exposed beyond stretched levels resulting in the losing of the vital elements of that very language during this very process. Say for example a child, he or she can quickly disregard and overlook words from his or her vocabulary and even the rules that have been coined courtesy the grammar of that language. A number of school going children lose much of their home language as they pass under the school system of the country. Meanwhile parents in the homes continue using the native language with their children, which signifies that this language might just not develop as well as the second language. This is more than ever spot on if literacy skills, reading as well as writing are under-developed in the native language of the family. Rationally speaking, a language can be preserved only if there is an exposure to the speakers of that very language as well as the opportunities which are used with it. Children must definitely be buoyant enough to speak their native language and opportunities for use should also be sufficient to uphold the language. During all this debate, language instructors must do the needful that they can to foster the subject’s language development process as far as the home language is concerned. If this language is not being used in the subject’s school, the instructors should give confidence to the guardians to use the native language at home with their family members no matter how much resistance they face from these people. This goes a long way in the future when many of the students long for the time they lost in gaining proficiency of their native language. Nonetheless, the price for the family can be literally endless if grown-up children as well as adolescents cannot communicate well with their parents. Individuals from different cultural backdrops can actually experience and encounter cultural conflicts in language learning centers and other interaction sports because of their habituated manners related with learning as well as communicating which at times might not contest with the practices of the learning centers. Interaction ways and patterns can be tilted, changed and chopped up to imitate the forms of communication patterns which people are used to experiencing at their homes within their families. Language instructors can change the speed of their activities in a manner, which is close to cultural sensitivity. The instructors need to provide these people more and more time to answer the questions. Also cultural validation and the employment of delicate communication patterns, which are much more familiar to the children than adults, are richer and quite effective approaches to different ethnic groups. [Jespersen O., 1904] All said and done, there are a number of diverse ways in which a person is caught up with being bilingual, the main one is his or her being concurrently attaining two languages and the successive acquisition of a second language along with the first one, which in most cases is the primary language. These two stipulations convey their basis to the person’s contact with a second language and thus for this reason, a few individuals this revelation starts to uncover at a very young age and for others, exposure to a second language begins in the later stages. Successful language instructors and lecturers are always on the hunt for feedback and criticism from the subjects, which might indicate that he or she in essence, recognizes what the instructor or other language learning colleagues are saying. For those subjects who are on the verge of beginning to learn English, a range of plans can be pretty ready to lend a hand in promoting the language development process. Demonstrations, modeling and role playing could be used as well as new information be presented in the setting of already known and interpreted information. Paraphrasing also helps and so does the use of simple structures with a complete avoidance of using the complex ones, which could be the structures. A repetition of the same sentence patterns and routines could be used for the betterment of the language learner. In the end, questions could be tailored for a number of varied levels, which are concerned with language competence and the active participation. [Smith, M. Sharwood, 1981] It is an absolute must that instructors of language learners who have limited proficiency in English should create language rich environments. It is imperative that the teachers must be good models of the language the subjects are into learning. This can be done through speaking clearly as well as logically with comprehension at its very best level. They must get bigger and enlarge the overall picture as regards to the persons speech and not only when the language is actually being taught to him or her in the language centers, but also throughout, i.e., in all the subjects. Instructors of language learners with limited proficiency in English should be ready to lend a hand at explaining the intricacies of vocabulary which is new and untried to most of these people as well as to keep a constant check at developing their vocabulary all this while. The language learning center must make provision for a number of opportunities for language use in addition to its interaction, as there should be rich and interesting activities worth talking about. Quite a few immigrants come from low literacy backgrounds which account for them not being able to read or write thus these people had never had the sight of books. [Palmer, H. E., 1964] The way to becoming bilingual is indeed a way of life. A person’s whole personality is affected as one struggles to reach beyond the confines of his or her first language and then onto a very new language which in a way is a new culture, a new way of thinking, feeling, and not to forget acting as well. Second language, realistically speaking, has its learning as not a set of easy and simple steps which could be programmed but a real complex one for that matter. The teaching process of the same is the facilitation of learning, in which one can teach a foreign language with much success and if among other things one knows something about, he or she learns or at other times, fails to conquer (learn) a second language. The question that arises here is that where actually does a language instructor start the expedition of an agreement and settle with the learning rules concerning the foreign learning and teaching. This could be answered by coming across the notions like who does the learning and teaching as well as what is the actual communication for the language itself. Also when does this second language learning actually start and where are the learners who are attempting their hand at acquiring the second language inside the cultural and linguistic setting of the second language? Lastly, why are the language learners attempting to acquire the second language at all? These questions have been asked, in global terms, to give one an inkling of the diversity of issues involved in the pursuit for comprehending the main beliefs of language learning and teaching and while a person cannot hope to find the final answers to all these questions, one can sincerely hope to begin in achieving some provisional and exploratory answers. Thomas Kuhn in 1970 referred to "normal science" as being a process of puzzle solving in which part of the task of the scientist, in this case being the teacher, to discover the pieces, and then to fit those very pieces together. Many of the pieces of the language-learning puzzle are not yet discovered, and the careful defining of the questions will lead to finding those pieces. To presume to define language in a satisfactory manner would be a mistake. A definition is really a reduced description of a hypothesis and a theory is simply and/or not so simply an absolute and unmitigated definition. Thus, language is a system of arbitrary, vocal symbols, which permit all people in a given culture, or other people who have learned the system of that culture, to communicate or interact. Brown in 1980 argued that the analysis of errors made in language learning reveals the development of an inter-language, which is a set of rules made up by the learner that map the new language onto their native language. Brown suggests that correction of errors can become important in facilitating the student as concerns to his understanding of the grammar related with the new language. Furthermore, Krashen in 1981 opined the fact that there is a difference between acquisition and the learning processes; the former involves the complete understanding as well as the communication while the learning process is more or less focused towards the conscious monitoring of language that is being used. Add to that Krashen also argued that acquisition process is at times pertinent enough to suggest its own self in comparison with the learning process and hence for this reason it must be encouraged with the help of different activities involving the use of communication. [Kramsch, C., 1993] The Real Role of Motivation Motivation can lead to language acquisition being done in a manner which is higher than what would be the case when it would be inexplicably missing. In such circumstances, there is a need to inculcate the right kinds of attitudes and feelings within the individuals who want to acquire a second language for their own betterment that they comprehend the need to be motivated at all possible times. [Dornyei, Csizer & Nerneth, 2006] It is for this reason that Gardner and Lambert (1972) opined that there are in essence a couple of differential types when one talks about motivation in the related segments. These could be attributed to the integrative motivation and the instrumental motivation. Now the difference between the two is that integrative form of motivation is more towards the establishment of the second language within the environs of the particular individual but the instrumental motivation aims to learn the second language due to the sound performance of a single function or reason for that matter. Thus there is a huge difference as far as their overlapping methodologies are concerned. In the integrative form of motivation, the learner has generalized positive vibes and feelings about what he is doing but in the instrumental sense of motivation, the feeling is just present to capture the functional basis than anything else. The role here is to integrate the language that is being learnt rather than use it for a functional reason and then discard when the need finishes. The second language acquisition process thus becomes more significant when the need is to seek it from the integrative stance rather than the instrumental basis. Integrative motivation of second language learning does wonders than the instrumental one since the subjects seem to find out more and more behind the language, i.e., the different cultural ideologies, the people and their sets of customs and so on and so forth. Gardner (1982) has focused more on the setting of a classroom than a natural environment which would see individuals discussing their ideas in an acquired language. What this does, and that too in betterment for all concerned, is to inculcate the strengths of the acquired language in a manner which will make them look more developed and refined as compared to a natural setting where there would be little room for tolerance and less learning as well. The structured class room setting is thus the way to learn the new and acquired language, as Gardner (1982) fathoms. Moving further ahead, we find that Gardner has discussed motivation in the light of the three significant and slightly different elements. These three include the effort, desire and the eventual affect. Effort includes the time and energy spent by the subject on learning/seeking the new language as well as his enthusiasm. The desire demonstrates the amount of energy and zest he has for gaining the new language. The last one is the affect which talks about the learner’s emotional aspects as concerns to a language that has been learnt. Zoltan Dornyei and others suggest that instrumental motivation and success are interlinked. Thus there is need for accomplishment which is in direct linkage with the significance of instrumental motivation, which stems from the fact that functional reasons are more imperative to learn than becoming integrated in a second language for that matter. [Dornyei, 2001] However as discussed before, instrumental basis is not complete when we compare the two of them and integrative motivation always seems to be the leader in the race. Similarly, Gardner and MacIntyre (1991) have also emphasized on the basis of instrumental motivation playing its effective and more facilitating role in learning a second language. [Gardner & MacIntyre, 1991] The paradigm shift of Zoltan Dornyei (2006) suggests that quantitative methods play their huge role at determining the language learners’ attitudes and motivational basis. Surveys thus have been earmarked for this very purpose. However there is a lot of room for having new quantitative and other research methods to find out more and more about the second language learners’ attitudes and motivations. Interviews and case studies can help determine the very same in the times to come as well. Conclusion Second language learning requires motivation on not only the part of the subject but also the people who make it possible. This means that the parents and teachers have to undertake such steps which ensure that the kids do not make mistakes and learn to speak the proper code. There must be encouragement at all possible levels and times so as to make the people aware that they are doing something for their own personal betterment and not the rational that they are being forced into learning a whole new dictum. All said and done motivation forms the key when second language learning is the way to go about doing things and thus has to be studied in the proper contexts before moving any further ahead. 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