Supporting students' self-determined motivation to learn languages

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Noels, Kimberly A.

• There are many reasons, some of which are better than others for sustaining motivation over the long run. Research evidence suggests that a personally relevant, self-engaged, and inherently interested orientation to language study supports engagement in the learning process, and thereby a variety of positive learning outcomes. Moreover, feelings of pressure, whether from others or self- imposed, can undermine motivation. Teachers can effectively foster students’ self-determined motivation by supporting their sense of autonomy, competence, and connectedness with other people. Drawing from recent conceptualizations of language learning motivation as a complex, dynamic system, I point out how reasons, engagement, and feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness reciprocally influence each other across the duration of the language course. Likewise, I discuss how students’ motivational orientation and engagement and teachers’ motivational orientation and engagement mutually interact in a transactional relationship.

• Date created

  2015-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Engagement
  • Self-Determined
  • Language Learning
  • Motivations

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R39K46714

• License

  © 2015 Noels, Kimberly A. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original author(s) and source must be cited.