UNIT 7.

MOTIVATION
Theories of Motivation
The concept of motivation is as complex as human behaviour and has been the object of an ongoing debate for years. It is
intrinsically associated to people’s needs, goals, and expectations and influenced by a great number of other factors that change
over time. 
Motivation concerns the direction and magnitude of human behaviour, i.e.
 The choice of a particular action: Why people decide to do something.
 The persistence with it: How long they are willing to sustain the activity.
 The effort expended on it: How hard they are going to pursue it.
From what do people derive their motivation? Focus shifted from unconscious drives, i.e., affect, to cognition (e.g.,
expectations and goals) in the second half of the twentieth century. The last fifteen years have witnessed a growing interest in
the role of affect in motivation. 

Components of achievement values

Attainment value or
The importance of doing well on a given task
importance

Intrinsic value The enjoyment one gains from doing the task

Utility value or usefulness of

How a task fits into an individual’s future plans
the task

How the decision to engage in one activity limits access to other activities, assessments of how
Cost
much effort will be taken to accomplish the activity, and its emotional cost

Key Cognitive Theories: Expectancy-value theories: motivation depends on two factors: expectancy of success (or how well
an individual will do an activity) and the value a person gives to this success on that activity
Goal theories
Goal-setting is determined by the perception of one’s value,
 Goals serve a directive function; they direct attention and effort toward goal-relevant activities and away from goal
irrelevant activities.
 Goals have an energizing function. High goals lead to greater effort than low goals.
 Goals affect persistence.
 Goals affect action indirectly by leading to the arousal, discovery, and/or use of task-relevant knowledge and
strategies
Goal-orientation theory is particularly relevant in the field of education. Most studies on goal-orientation focus mostly on
two main orientations: mastery and performance.
Mastery: “Individuals are oriented toward developing new skills, trying to understand their work, improving their level of
competence, or achieving a sense of mastery” 
Performance: “Focus on one’s ability and self-worth, and ability is evidenced by doing better than others, by surpassing
normative-based standards or by achieving success with little effort” 
Goal-content and multiplicity: Studies in human behaviour have long shown that many different goals and motivational
concerns can coexist. Some goals can be predicted and others appear along the way. 
 One-directional, with fundamental orientations toward the self and the social environment guiding efforts.
 Complementary, with social and task-related goal pursuit independently contributing to academic achievement.
 Reciprocal and hierarchical in nature, reflecting students’ beliefs about how to achieve academic success
Self-determination theory: Self-determination theory shows that teachers should develop and support autonomy, because
autonomously-motivated students tend to be more successful. Self-determination theory “differentiates motivation in terms
of being autonomous and controlled”
Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is probably the most widely used distinction when we refer to motivation in
the language classroom. Intrinsic motivation relates to “a behaviour performed for its own sake in order to
experience pleasure and satisfaction”, while extrinsic motivation “involves performing a behaviour as a means to
some separable end, such as receiving an extrinsic reward (e.g., good grades) or avoiding punishment” 
One of the key aspects in motivational theories is interest. It can be related to intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, or
often a combination of the two. What is important is trying to arouse students’ interest in the foreign language and
connect their natural curiosity to the course content. In this way, students will feel that class instruction relates to
their needs and expectation, i.e. activities will be  relevant  to them One of the greatest challenges for teachers is to
adjust the difficulty of the tasks to students’ proficiency level and capacity to achieve the goals . The perceived
probability for success is referred to as expectancy  and  satisfaction  is often obtained by an extrinsic award, such as
positive feedback. A number of works explore the relation between learner’s  autonomy  and its relation to intrinsic
motivation. Autonomy support has positive impact on learners’ intrinsic motivation and self-confidence.