1(2)2016+.pdf


Creating Contexts 
for Adult Motivation

for Foreign Language 
Learning and Acquisition

All teachers ask themselves: “What shall I do to helpmy students get started?”, “What will help them to
sustain interest in what they learn?” In search of “What?” we
arrive at the question of motivation. It is common knowledge
that two people of the same ability, age and gender will
achieve different results in working on the same task if they
have different degrees of motivation. Motivated students are
willing to learn by listening, asking questions, reacting,
participating. They enjoy being able to contribute to the
learning process and class work. They are “more
psychologically open to the learning material and enhance
information processing” (Wlodkowsky, 1993). 

Motivation is a reason or a group of reasons, for which people do things. In Applied
Linguistics it is referred to as one of the variables affecting second/foreign language
acquisition. Along with variables of self-esteem and the level of anxiety, it “lowers the
affective filter1”, which does not allow the comprehensible input to “enter the language
acquisition devise” (Krashen, 1981). Thus, motivation secures productive learning and
acquisition. 

This research considers the problem of foreign language learning/acquisition by
young adults (17-20 years old). In order to understand how to motivate adults, and why
they need to be motivated, it is necessary to see how they learn a foreign language.

First, they start learning a language having certain experience and established way of
thinking, which gives them advantage over younger learners. Second, they are conscious
of learning a new language and have their preferred learning styles, which must be
considered in the choice of teaching materials and methods. Third, they have formed
native language skills, which allow them to produce a foreign language using the
conscious grammar to adjust to target language structures. Fourth, adults are better
communicators (Scarcella and Higa in press as cited in Krashen, 1981), which
considerably expands learning opportunities. Also, they may have numerous cognitive
demands for using a foreign language, such as filling out tax forms, job applications,
writing cover letters, corresponding and solving problems through e-mail, etc. Thus,
what they learn can be directly applied to their lives (Escamilla, 2002).

At the same time, adults can face difficulties. For instance, sometimes native

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Methodology Armenian Folia Anglistika

Marina Karapetyan