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LANGUAGE ATTITUDES, MOTIVATION, AND STANDARDS

So, if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin
to linguistic identity –I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take
pride in myself. (Anzaldúa, 1987)

Language is an intimate part of social identity. There is a bond (link) between language and selfhood, a
bond demanding that any language variety used by speakers during natural communication take its
place as a legitimate form of expression. In all school settings, language is always the medium and
sometimes the object of formal study. Teachers have a particular responsibility for certain aspects of
language instruction, whether they be acquisition of native language literacy skills or skills in a second
language.

When the subject is language instruction, whether in a native or a second language, a host of factors
come into play. One set of factors related to success in the language classroom are: the attitudes and
motivation of those who participate, both students and teachers. Although these factors are not the
only ones that account for differences in classroom processed and student outcomes, they shape the
environment for instruction and individual efforts of teachers and students in important ways.

Current theory and researches say:

 The relationships between a person´s prior linguistic and academic experience, the social context
of instruction, and the results of formal language instruction have complex and reciprocal
connections with each other.
 Positive attitudes about language and language learning may be as much the result of success
as the cause.
 Students with positive general attitudes may not be particularly successful if these attitudes are
not linked with effective strategies that enable them to take advantage of instructional
opportunities presented to them.
 Students are affected by the attitudes and examples of their peers, teachers, and parents.
 Attitudes and motivation affect learners and teachers in ways that, though perhaps powerful,
are often unconscious; thus it is difficult to identify their influence readily or unambiguously.

DEFINITIONS: According to Gardner and Lambert:

1. Attitude has cognitive, affective, and conative components (i.e., it involves beliefs, emotional
reactions, and behavioral tendencies related to the object of the attitude) and consists of an
underlying psychological predisposition to act or evaluate behavior in a certain way. Attitude is
linked to a persons´ values and beliefs and promotes or discourages the choices made in all
realms of activity, whether academic or informal.
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2. Motivation refers to the combination of desire and effort made to achieve a goal; it links the
individual´s rationale for any activity such as language learning with the range of behaviors and
degree of effort employed in achieving goals.

MEASUREMENT OF ATTITUDE AND MOTIVATION

1. Early work: The classic direct measures of individual attitudes and motivation used by Gardner
and Lambert were:

 Extensive self-report questionnaires, where the items on these questionnaires appeared in

the form of statements about the language
 Likert-type scale
 Matched guise technique developed by Lambert.
 Orientation index, this index sought to identify the types of motivation associated with
success in language.
 Gardner and Lambert proposed two overarching constructs governing motivation to learn a
language, which they later labeled Orientations:

⇒ Integrative motivation: the desire to be like and interact with speakers of the target
language. It is more strongly linked with success in second language study of a school-
age population.
⇒ Instrumental motivation: the desire to learn a language in order to achieve some other
goal such as academic or occupational success. It is lined with adults interested in job
success.

2. Limitations of the classic approach: The psychometric approaches to the definition and
measurement of attitudes and motivation have established a well-grounded theoretical model
for second language acquisition in educational settings, but the model has had limited impact on
classroom practice for several reasons. Many of these limitations are discussed in more detail
by Crookes and Schmidt, who note that the definitions of motivations used in socio-
psychological research have been too narrow and too remote from term motivation more
inclusively to capture aspects of students behavior they find relevant to success or failure in
formal instruction. Socio-psychological approaches also present theoretical problems.

 The matter of causality. It is not clear whether instrumental motivation is the cause or, just
as likely, the result of successful efforts to acquire a second language.
 The results depend on how each construct is measured.
 The methodology and analysis for studying attitudes and motivation have been derived
mainly dorm the discipline of experimental psychology.
 More recent studies have often sought to situate language learning aptitude and motivation
within a broader account of the human personality, on the one hand, and the social context
of instruction, on the other.
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 Many studies suggest that much depends on the interaction between the person, the nature
of instruction received, and the broader language learning.