IGNITING THE VISION: Guiding students to imagine

the ideal L2 self

Katie Butler & Virginia ScottVanderbilt University

ACTFL 2014

ACTFL 2014

OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENTATION Virginia Scott:

Realities of the American FL classroom

Language teaching vs. language education

Hypothesis regarding motivation for classroom FL learners

Katie Butler:

Brief history and current theories of L2 motivation

Classroom interventions

Preliminary findings

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REALITIES … Most students who start their study of a foreign language in high school or college do not continue beyond the second year.

Students often leave their FL studies feeling like deficient native speakers rather than proficient second language users.

Many of our students will not have opportunities to travel outside the U.S.

Students (and their parents) often question the value of FL study.

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QUESTIONS … ?

What might make FL study worthwhile to all students – not just the 10% who are successful?

What can we do to motivate learners to continue their FL study beyond the first/second year?

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TEACHING VS. EDUCATIONLANGUAGE TEACHING …

… to help students learn about a particular language & culture.

… to develop L2 skills (speaking, reading, writing,

listening)

LANGUAGE EDUCATION …

… goes beyond an exclusive focus on learning the target language and learning about the target culture.

… places critical reflection about oneself, one’s own language and culture, and the target language and culture at the heart of foreign language education.

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LANGUAGE EDUCATION …Students should be guided to explore questions such as …

In what ways are the languages you speak part of your identity?

What is the difference between your language and your nationality?

What is a “native speaker”? Are you a native speaker of a particular language?

Does your native language give you a sense of power? A sense of belonging to a

group?

Have you ever felt like a “language outsider”?

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LANGUAGE EDUCATION …

What languages are/are not “cool”? Why?

Name some languages spoken by people in power.

Name some spoken by marginalized people.

In what ways can learning a second language give you power?

BIG QUESTION: What does “L2 self” mean?

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THE LANGUAGE LEARNERDörnyei’s “tripartite system of the human mind … comprises cognition, affect, and motivation” (2010, p. 248).

Cognitionunderstanding / awareness

Affect

feelings (fear, joy, sadness)

Motivation desire / willingness to do something

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THE LANGUAGE LEARNER

AFFECT

COGNITION MOTIVATION

“… if the person we would like to become speaks an L2, the ideal L2 self is a

powerful motivator to learn the L2 because of the desire to reduce the

discrepancy between our actual and ideal selves.”

(Dörnyei, 2010, p. 257)

Ideal L2 self

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HYPOTHESIS

If a learner is aware of the role that language plays

in his/her life, and feels that knowing a second

language can be an important part of his/her ideal

self, s/he will be motivated to continue.

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HISTORY OF MOTIVATION IN SLA

1. Social Psychological Period: macro-perspective

2. Cognitive-Situated Period: micro-perspective

3. Process-oriented Period: cause-and-effect

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NEED FOR A NEW THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK “Another question is whether any SLA motivation construct that has been proposed and studies has been wrong? I would suggest that none of them have been wrong. They may have been incomplete; they may have been extended too broadly or narrowly; research on the construct may have been inadequate owing to limitations on current technology or statistical procedures. The constructs may have been limited because of the lack of a larger theoretical framework in which to place them” (Schumann, 2014, xvi).

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SOCIO-DYNAMIC PERIOD concerned with “the situated complexity of the L2 motivation process and its organic development in dynamic interaction with a multiplicity of internal, social and contextual factors”

attempts to “theorize L2 motivation in ways that take account of the broader complexities of language learning and use in the modern globalized world” (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011, p. 72).

One theory within this period: Complex Dynamic Systems Theory

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SOCIO-DYNAMIC PERIOD

Framework for researching SLA:

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory

Zoltán Dörnyei’s framework for researching L2 motivation:

L2 Motivational Self System

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L2 MOTIVATIONAL SELF SYSTEM1. Ideal L2 Self

“the L2-specific facet of one’s ‘ideal self’”

2. Ought-to Self“concerns the attributes that one believes one

ought to possess to meet expectations and to avoid possible negative outcomes”

3. L2 Learning Experience“concerns situated, ‘executive’ motives

related to the immediate learning environment and experience” (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009, p. 29)

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L2 MOTIVATIONAL SELF SYSTEM Based on Possible Selves Theory (Markus &

Nurius, 1986) and Self-Discrepancy Theory (Higgins, 1987, 1996)

“Motivation to learn the language is enhanced because of the learner’s psychological desire to reduce the discrepancy between current and possible future selves” (Gergersen & MacIntyre, 2014, p. 261).

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CLASSROOM INTERVENTIONS USING L2MSS Creating the vision (construction of the Ideal

L2 Self) Strengthening the vision (imagery

enhancement) Substantiating the vision (making the Ideal

L2 Self plausible) Operationalizing the vision (developing an

action plan) Counterbalancing the vision (considering

failure)

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RATIONALE FOR L2 SELF INTERVENTION

“Although research suggests that aptitude explains a relatively large portion of variability among learners, other IDs such as motivation, which are more susceptible to teacher intervention, may ultimately result in being much more robust explanatory variables in TL learning (Juffs & Harrington, 2011). In other words, a highly motivated, self-confident learner who may have a dispositional tendency toward low cognitive abilities still has a fighting chance to acquire high proficiency in a TL” (Gregersen and MacIntyre, 2014, p. 78).

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CLASSROOM INTERVENTION 1

Describe your future, ideal L2 self.

Reflection essay

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CLASSROOM INTERVENTION 1

Recurring qualities of students’ ideal L2 self

travel family history family future career leisure activities love

with class discussion of these ideal L2 selves

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CLASSROOM INTERVENTION 2

Problems with the Monolingual View of Bilingualism:A person cannot become a native speaker of another language. A native speaker is born into the community in which the language is used.Most people are incapable of achieving native-like speech (pronunciation, idiomatic oral proficiency, etc.) in a second language.Finally, the native speaker is only an abstraction.

(Cook & Singleton, 2013)

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CLASSROOM INTERVENTION 3

Identify a positive L2 role model whose language learning trajectory you would like to emulate. Identify a negative L2 role model whose language learning trajectory you would NOT like to emulate.

Class discussion: What can we learn from these L2 users?

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SAMPLE POSITIVE L2 ROLE MODELS

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SAMPLE NEGATIVE L2 ROLE MODELS

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SAMPLE POSITIVE L2 ROLE MODELS

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SAMPLE NEGATIVE L2 ROLE MODELS

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SAMPLE POSITIVE L2 ROLE MODELS

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SAMPLE NEGATIVE L2 ROLE MODELS

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Junior and Senior year:

Volunteer at medical

clinic serving

immigrants and

refugees

Sophomore year:Enroll in Medical French Course

In 3 years:Start medical

school

In 3 years:Spend a year volunteering abroad at a Francophone

medical clinic

(alternate routes)

Timeline to ideal L2 self

CLASSROOM INTERVENTION 4

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SAMPLE TIMELINES Beyond the L2 of the course

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RESEARCHING L2 MOTIVATION

“Are students aware that motivation is dynamic? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? We’re not researching just for our purposes but also to help our students” (Ushioda, 2014, August).

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RESEARCHING L2 MOTIVATION “Current quantitative methods of SLA inquiry are ill-equipped to investigate these more complex, process-oriented, and contextual perspectives, since such methods typically rely on superficial snapshot measures at an arbitrary point in time, seek to generalize on the basis of statistically representative patterns in the data, and are not sensitive to the particularities of evolving motivational experiences or individual-contextual interactions. Within the last decade or so, more qualitative methods of inquiry have gradually begun to complement the dominant quantitative paradigm, in an effort to address the dynamic and situated complexity of L2 motivation, and also mirroring a general trend in SLA research” (Ushioda and Dörnyei, 2013, pp. 401-402).

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RESEARCHING L2 MOTIVATION

Intervention Data collected

1: Description of future L2 self Written response, class discussion with observation

2: Confronting learner beliefs Written response to metaphor prompt, class discussion with observation

3: L2 role models Written response, class discussion with observation

4: Timeline to ideal L2 self Written response, class discussion with observation

Pilot Study

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FUTURE RESEARCH

“… [T]here is increasing recognition that mixed methods approaches can help to capture more of the complexity of the issues under investigation … In particular, with current moves toward more socio-dynamic perspectives on motivation, the investigation of contextual factors and individual-contextual interactions is likely to entail triangulation of multiple forms of data from diverse points of view … in order to obtain a rich holistic analysis of motivation-in-context, rather than relying (as traditionally) on a single set of self-report measures…” (Ushioda and Dörnyei, 2013, p. 402).

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REFERENCESByram, M. (2012). Language Awareness and (Critical) Cultural Awareness: Relationships, Comparisons and Contrasts. Language Awareness 21(1-2): 5–13.

Cohen, A.D. & Macaro, E. (Eds.) (2007). Language learner strategies: Thirty years of research and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cook, V. & Singleton, D. (Eds.) (2014). Key topics in second language acquisition. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The Psychology of the Language Learner. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Dörnyei, Z. (2010). The Relationship between Language Aptitude and Language Learning Motivation: Individual differences from a dynamic systems perspective’. In E. Macaro (Ed.), The Continuum Companion to Second Language Acquisition (pp. 247-267). London: Continuum

Dörnyei, Z. & Ushioda, E. (Eds.) (2009). Motivation, language identity and the L2 self. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Dornyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (2011). Teaching and researching motivation. London: Longman

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Garrett, P. & C. James. (2000). Language Awareness. In M. Byram (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge, 2000.

Gregersen, T. & MacIntyre, P.D. (Eds.) (2014). Capitalizing on language learners’ individuality: From premise to practice. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Hadfield, J., & Dörnyei, Z. (2014). From theory to practice: Motivation and the ideal language self. London, UK: Longman.

Higgins, E.T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect. Psychological review 94, 319-340.

Higgins, E.T. (1996). The ‘self-digest’: Self-knowledge serving self-regulatory functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71(6), 1062-1083.

Macaro, E. (2003). Teaching and learning a second language: A guide to recent research. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

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Markus, H.R. & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves: Personalized representations of goals. In L.A. Pervin (Ed.), Goal concepts in personality and social psychology (pp. 211-241). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Norton, B., & Toohey, K. (2002). Identity and language learning. In R. B. Kaplan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 115-123). New York, Oxford: Oxford UP.

Scott, V.M. (2010). Double Talk: Deconstructing Monolingualism in Classroom Second Language Learning. Upper Saddle River, NY: Pearson.

Scott, V.M., Dessein, E., Ledford, J. & Joseph-Gabriel, A. (2013). Language Awareness in the French Classroom. The French Review 86(6): 90-102.

Svalberg, A. M-L. (2007). Language Awareness and Language Learning. Language Teaching 40(4): 287–308.

Ushioda, E. (2014, August). Researching L2 motivation among persons-in-contexts: Approaches and challenges. Paper presented at the International Conference on Motivational Dynamics and Second Language Acquisition