This section reviews literature on issues of motivation related to struggling learners and L2 learners. It then highlights issues in motivation specific to MALL use.
2.4.1 Affective issues of struggling readers: Motivation, avoidance mechanisms, and extrinsic and intrinsic rewards
Motivation is shaped jointly by environmental forces external to (extrinsic, EM) and internal psychological processes within the individual (intrinsic, IM), and can be fully understood only by considering the individual’s profile and context (Hendijani et al., 2016). The relationship of extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation is controversial (Elliot & Covington, 2001), but evidence suggests that given “conditions that depend on the individual’s motivational disposition … external reward and intrinsic motivation can become complementary and additive” (ibid. p. 2) and Hendijani et al. (2016) found that “Both performance-contingent rewards and intrinsic motivation improved motivation and performance” (ibid. p. 1).
These drivers of behavior in self-determination theory (Noels, 2000) shape the
development of reading skills: pleasurable reading experiences promote reading practice that improves skills, while negative experiences lead to avoidance of practice, thus
exacerbating the problem (Stanovich, 1986). An essential goal of the scaffolding approach is to promote learners’ positive affective outcomes and avoid negative ones (Wood et al., 1976). In applying these affective considerations to teachers’ roles in supporting reading, DeNaeghel et al. (2014) assert that
According to the self-determination theory…teachers who support students’ inherent psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are more likely to create an optimally motivating classroom climate (p. 1549).
Wolters et al. (2014) surveyed adolescent readers and found that their reading
comprehension was correlated with their motivation and perceived level of control over their learning. Engagement, the “behavioral displays of effort, time, and persistence in attaining desired outcomes” (Klauda & Guthrie, 2015:p. 240) represents the active role of language learners and is facilitated by the learner’s feeling of self-efficacy, and this belief increases effort and persistence in task performance (ibid.).
Directly related to motivation in foreign language learning is the anxiety level experienced by learners. A correlation between anxiety and achievement has been extensively
demonstrated among foreign language learners, one which increases among adolescent students grades 7 to 11 (MacIntyre, 1995). Though there is some disagreement about directions of causality and whether anxiety is merely a side effect of language-learning challenges, as in the Linguistic Coding Deficit Hypothesis (LCDH) posited by Ganschow and Sparks (2001) and Sparks et al (2011, 2016), anxiety is evidently a negative motivator in
foreign language learning. Melchor-Couto (2016) emphasizes the negative role of anxiety in learning a foreign language, especially in oral communication and in classes where it may be exacerbated by factors including competition with peers and the hesitation to speak for fear of exposure by making mistakes in public, and posits that this can be mitigated by using language in concert with multimodal environments where learners can practice language use in a more protected setting where they experience less feeling of risk of exposure and humiliation. Multimodal forms of language learning have been suggested as possible avenues to reduce the anxiety of foreign language learners, thus freeing them to engage more actively in learning and raising motivation levels (Calvo-Ferrer, Melchor-Couto & Jauregi, 2016) and language-learning achievement.
The anxiety/motivation/achievement continuum has a threshold level of negative
experience, where learners reach a point of “amotivation,” and relinquish responsibility for their own learning, as they cease to believe that effort will result in positive outcomes (Noels, 2000). This “learned helplessness” must be identified and addressed to re-motivate the learner.
Basic to the human psyche is approach/avoidance motivation, whereby people seek positive/desirable outcomes and avoid negative/undesirable ones. Educational
interventions that do not consider their impact on motivation are destined to fail (Elliot & Covington, 2001). Learners prefer pleasurable experiences, including intrinsic rewards (feelings of self-efficacy, self-esteem, success, and pride), extrinsic rewards (praise, good grades, stickers or pizza) or both, to unpleasant, uncomfortable, discouraging learning experiences (Hendijani et al., 2016).
2.4.2 Motivation in L2 language learners
Relevance of materials to learner identity contributes to learners’ pleasure and reading motivation. Providing texts of interest to older L2 learners with minimal L2 skills is
challenging. Suggested solutions include simplified classics (Campell, 1987) and elaborative, pedagogically modified authentic texts (Heyer, 1998; Guariento & Morley, 2001;
O’Donnell, 2009). The need for cultural appropriateness of EFL materials has been observed by EFL teachers (e.g. Hellerstein-Yehezkel, 2013; Al Riyami, 2016) and “reflects an increasing critical concern in applied linguistics with issues of identity in language learning and use” (Ushioda, 2011, p.202).
L2 learning is maximized through language-learning strategies involving cognitive and emotional aspects of learning (Oxford, 1990, Oxford & Shearin, 1994). Oxford recommends employing both direct learning strategies (memory, cognitive, and compensation) and indirect strategies that reflect affective, metacognitive, and social language-learning aspects. These strategies scaffold language learning by identifying tasks the learner is both cognitively and affectively equipped to attempt, and acknowledges the relationship between a learner’s affective needs and successful outcomes. Noels (2000, p.58) notes that “affective variables…have been shown to be at least as important as language aptitude for predicting L2 achievement.”
Some L2 motivation issues are unique. Ushioda (2011) notes that the L2 motivation field developed independently due to the special complexities of learning new codes of
communication. Researchers of L2 motivation emphasize “individual differences within the context of self and identity” (Baker, 2011, p.201). Ushioda observes that some of the past motivations for EFL learning (e.g. identification with a specific language community) have changed, with English’s status as a global lingua franca having changed learners’ reasons for wanting to know it. Dornyei (2009) identifies types of language self-identity, both the “ideal L2 self” (what the learners envision for themselves as proficient L2 users) and the “ought- to L2 self” (the learners’ understanding of what is needed in language learning to satisfy social expectations and avoid negative consequences).
Gardner & Masoret’s (2003) meta-analysis determined the effects of various components of Gardner’s socio-educational model on L2 learning. They concluded,
The results clearly demonstrate that the correlations between achievement and motivation are uniformly higher than those between achievement and integrativeness, attitudes toward the learning situation, integrative orientation, or instrumental orientation (p. 123, emphasis in original).
No directional/causal connection between intrinsic reading motivation and reading competence is claimed, a point reiterated by Schiefele et al. (2012), though their survey highlights the stronger contribution of intrinsic reading motivation, over extrinsic rewards, on reading competence and behaviors.
2.4.3 Motivation issues of MALL use
Ushioda (2013) distinguishes between motivation to use technology for language learning due to inherent interest in technology versus strong language-learning motivation. Rogers’s work (1962, updated 2003) on diffusion of innovation stressed that people vary in their
receptivity to new technologies. Advocating leaving the choice to use mobile technology to the learner, Ushioda (2013) notes that:
mobile devices are primarily owned and used for personal and social purposes, which means that their potential as language learning tools may not be particularly valued or accepted by users… students may regard their mobile devices and smartphones as their personal territory or ‘private space’ to be kept clearly separate from their ‘studying space (ibid. pp.2-3).
Teachers’ choices regarding MALL must consider students’ feelings about control over their personally-owned digital devices. Ushioda also suggests that MALL is more suited to “frequent (rather than deep) engagement in language learning” (ibid., p.3), observing:
motivating the more demanding cognitive and metacognitive efforts needed for developing language skills and knowledge may be difficult to achieve using mobile technologies (ibid., p.4).
2.5 Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) and its Potential to support