Language Learning Motivation: What Drives You?

​Image source: Morguefile

​Image source: Morguefile

There's been an awful lot of research into language learning motivation, with scholarly articles, curriculum changes and millions of research funding spent on working out what makes us learners tick. Motivation is one of the most significant factors for successful language learning, so there is a lot of value in sitting down and having about yourself and what makes you tick. Here are my ideas about the motivation groups - which camp are you in?

2 camps of learners

To me, there are two key camps, let's call them Camp Requirement and Camp Acquisition. Those who learn for a practical application and out of necessity. They may not feel the joy of learning a language from the word Go, but keep going anyway because they are working towards a clear goal. They have the motivation of requirement.

And those who learn because they are curious about a language and simply learning because they want to get good at this. These guys often love the process of learning just as much as applying their new knowledge and will feel happy with the "lifelong learner" label. They have the motivation of acquisition.

None of these types of motivation is any more valid than the other, and I don't believe that either one will make you a better, more skilled learner. It's simply important to understand your driving forces. Be clear about why you are in this learning process. Make sure your motivation is clear to you, and you'll find it will help you kick through those dips and keep going even in the boring drills. If you have a tutor or teacher, why not try and catch them for a conversation about what motivates you and gets you going. That way, they may be able to support you better - even a busy school teacher is likely to jump at that chance of understanding how to get more out of a student.

​No Success without Motivation

You have GOT to ​stay motivated, you have got to stay excited or keen about learning your target language. This is the only way that you will actually look for chances to speak, you'll listen to things you only half understand and in effect the only way that you can keep going once the lesson is over and you have a whole week to forget all you've just been told.

For me as a language tutor, this brings in an extra responsibility. It's my job to understand, as well as I can, the motivations of my students and help them work towards goals that are important to them. Teachers may sometimes make assumptions about language learners which don't match up with their own inner drivers, and that results in both steering in different directions. I want to make sure that I understand where my students stand, so I'll be my best at supporting them reach their goals, and at facilitating a real sense of achievement.

​My Allegiances

I have drawn you a little graph to show just how much variation I find in my own language learning motivations:

​You can see how far I was in Camp Acquisition at some points, for example when I took Italian. That was my third language, it was an optional offer, afternoon lessons at school doing something new and fun, with friends - I was in it for social reasons. Later when I took Spanish, the main motivation was more about where it was in my curriculum and my career. I wasn't desperate for another new language, but there was a clearer requirement. These days, my lifelong learner is very keen and I'd say it's nearly all that drives my Russian learning.

This was actually a bit tougher to work out than I thought. It's a great exercise to have a little think about the question "Why is it that I'm putting the effort into this language?" Be clear with your answer about this question and review it on a regular basis. What is your personal language learning driver?

Five myths about language learning: Myth 4

Why bother when everyone speaks English anyway?

Okay, so before I sit down and watch the highlights of last night's opening of the London Olympics, I had better get this blog post covered. Not lastly, the topic of our Myth 4 is rendered pretty current by such an international event, because now we're looking at one of Britain's absolute favourite reasons to avoid language learning: the belief that "everyone speaks English". Some of the parties that like to promote this myth are tabloid papers, right-wing politicians (often guising it as "holy crap! people dare enter our country and bring their own languages!") and, scarily enough, some of the learners themselves.

Language learning is about connecting with people, making your own life easier and understanding more about how people express themselves and what for. It should go way beyond parroting "Where is the supermarket?" and "I have a brother and two sisters", and be seen as a way of reflectively engaging with how people communicate. If you're only ever going to view another language as a means of obtaining basic necessities during a brief stay abroad as a tourist, then you're losing 90% of the benefit. Take, for example, the intricate system of Japanese honorifics or the special German terms referring to 20th century history (Ossi, Wessi, Ostalgie etc). Language evolves with society, and that's what's amazing about it: You'll get to know another place's history, values, food, traditions and so much more. And you don't even have to travel there.

Secondly, it may not have occurred to you that the feeling of pointlessness as you stare at a jungle of verb tables is much more closely related to language choice than lack of necessity. I believe schools would see a much higher rate in language take-up if they were able to offer a wider choice of languages. Maybe French was never much to get you going, but your love of yoga makes you wish you could read Sanskrit.

Now, what's

Or you would love to cycle through Spain, haggle 40% off a cashmere scarf from your local Indian market stall, get in touch with your Gaelic roots? It certainly worked for me, studying my way through the lyrics of Pulp's whole musical oevre with a dictionary by my side.

One final point: Yes, a very large part of the world now learns English as a second language. It's an also-ran official language in countries like India, Nigeria and Cyprus. Having said that, this doesn't mean that it is the international community's preferred language. Even the British Foreign Office seem to have recognised that you miss out if you're the monolingual guest at the world's multilingual party. The amount of literature, film, theatre and music from another country that doesn't even make it into an English-speaking country is staggering. It's like looking at a painting and only seeing one colour.

Luckily, the many other positive reasons for picking up a foreign language are only a google away. No one says that this is something you have to do, but just think how fun and enriching it would be to start seeing in colour.

Five myths about language learning: Myth 3

I don't have the language gene.

This is one that I picked up from a gentleman called Benny, promoting his easy tips for language learning online. Some great stuff in this video, a Tedx talk summarising his approach to languages.



What Benny is essentially doing is removing the apprehension from language learning. It's awesome, and exactly how it should be done. Watch the video for a good demolition of various excuses (you may recognise the myths already, for example !), a positive account of how you can pick up languages, and some great tips. I particularly agree with Benny's point about vocabulary - when I learnt Spanish, I spent so many conversations just falling back on English or French words and pronouncing them in a Spanish way. It almost always works, and no one's going to care about the 5 times when it doesn't.

The guy is no genius. He's not smarter than me or you. In fact, his grasp of eight languages is not even that unusual - I'm confident that I can speak in seven, and I haven't even lived abroad that long. The one thing that Benny has done and you haven't if you're still worried about the "difficult languages" is this: he's stopped being scared. Now sit down, write down all your excuses and really examine them. I hope you can feel your language gene waking up.

Hey there world! Remember this recent post on my blog, taking on the most prevalent language myth that I know? What do you know, I'm not the only one around. The linguistic genius of adults takes a really close look at some of the reasons why you are actually much better positioned to pick up languages than toddlers and children are.