Page 15 - ELG2207 Jul Issue 481

INTERVIEW
Mixed motives
Mixed motives

ning?
for language lear
for language learning?

Melanie Butler talks to Hayo Reinders

t was a white paper from Oxford University Press called ‘Using
Technology to Motivate Learners’ that first bought Hayo Reinders
to my attention. The paper is an excellent and timely response
Ito the questions thrown up by the rush to online teaching during
Covid, with a myriad of good evidence-based ideas on how to use
technology effectively.
Yet, I as I read it, I found myself asking the question: Why just look
at motivation?
I decided to interview one of the authors and looked up Hayo,
a Dutch professor with university chairs in the US and Thailand
who lives in New Zealand. Reading up on his background, I realised
that, while we were both multiilinguals, our motivations for learning
languages are miles apart.
Hayo is intrinsically motivated. He fell in love with languages
as a child. At four, his favourite TV programme was Sesame Street
in German, at 11 he was thrown out of a restaurant for correcting
the French on the menu. He’s a language nerd who made his
hobby a job.
I am extrinsically motivated. The child of a peripatetic family, my
father believed in learning the language of the countries we lived in
and sent me to local schools where nobody spoke English. I didn’t
choose to learn languages, I had to – though losing my languages
would be like losing a leg.
“There is nothing wrong with instrumental motivation,”
Hayo consoles me on the phone from his father’s home in Holland.
People who urgently need to learn a language – immigrants,
refugees, people in love with a foreigner – are, given the right
support, likely to learn.
The main problem is extrinsically motivated students with no
obvious need to learn: three-year-olds in China in English-medium
kindergartens forced to speak only in English, for example, or Asian
students in classes of 40 made to learn a language which might, in Hayo agrees. “I did a project with engineering students in Thailand
some distant future, help them get jobs. where we said, ‘We’re going to let you play as much of your favourite
One quote from the paper stays in my head: ‘Achieving fluency in game in English as you like on condition you log onto the international
a second language requires learners to stay motivated for years’. But server, play in English and fulfil certain tasks’. It was very successful.”
isn’t that also true of many school subjects, I ask Hayo. Maths, science, But technology is not the only answer to FCLA. “We ran a recent
music? You need to stay motivated for years. project which deliberately challenged learners with anxiety problems.
“Yes, and you need not only to be motivated, but also engaged,” he With support they got through and their anxiety levels fell.” In
says. “Sometimes engagement can be more useful.“ cognitive behavioural psychology they call this desensitisation.
If, as one definition has it, ‘motivation represents initial intention However, you have to acknowledge the existence of a problem
and engagement is the subsequent action’, then motivation is a like FLCA, I point out. You have to recognise when students have it.
necessary condition of language learning, but not, on its own, a Motivation, engagement, FCLA – using technology can help students
sufficient one. with many affective elements of learning – so why the focus on
What about other affective emotions, such as anxiety? Hayo and motivation?
I are both fans of the work of Jean Marc Dewaele, who investigates “When we first met as a panel, we had a freewheeling discussion,”
using positive psychology in language teaching. He has trialled a says Hayo, “and we asked the publishers: why motivation? They told us
variety of teacher behaviours and methodological interventions, that in surveys of thousands of teachers, motivation was given as the
and measures their impact on both motivation and foreign language main reason for using technology.”
classroom anxiety (FLCA). Many interventions – from telling jokes There is nothing wrong with teachers using technology as a
to using more L2 in the classroom – have a positive impact on motivator and there is nothing wrong with publishers researching it.
motivation, but no impact on FLCA. You can be more motivated, but But in my view, other aspects of positive psychology are also important.
no less anxious. Hayo also argues the case for Positive Computing, a movement
Classroom anxiety is not just limited to language learning. I confess which aims – accoring to two of its founders – to create a “digital
to physics anxiety. For Hayo it was maths. “I spent the whole of high environment that can make us happier and healthier, not just more
school figuring out ways to avoid it. I did my first degree in Arabic and productive”. As Hayo adds, “It is about designing technology which
Hebrew, then I switched to applied linguistics for my higher degree helps human beings.”
and my first course was… statistics!” So, the message from two differently motivated multilinguals is
I can hear his anguish. Technology, I point out, is proven to help simple: think positive.
with maths anxiety. Why not with FLCA? To find out more about Hayo Reinders, visit innovationinteaching.org
editorial@elgazette.com 15