In language learning process is the reward, that sense of achievement,
that sense of, wow, I understand things that I didn't understand before.
All of these things can give us a sense of enjoyment.
Is motivation a myth in language learning or is it a necessary condition of success?
That's what I'm gonna talk about today with reference to the
Motivation Myth by Jeff Haden,
a popular book.
Obviously motivation is a key to language learning success: motivation, and time
spent with the language, I often say that.
What does it mean?
Motivation is not just saying, I am motivated to learn a language,
I am motivated to become fluent, uh, I am motivated to make money.
You don't get there by being motivated
by the final goal, motivation is something that feeds on itself.
It feeds on a sense of achievement, a sense of success, a sense of reward, and
I'm gonna talk about some of these things.
I'm gonna talk about seven key factors in acquiring motivation and maintaining
motivation in language learning.
You know, I was struck by the fact that here in Vancouver, not many
people learn foreign languages.
In fact, very often if I speak to someone whom I come across in a store
or somewhere in, you know, Chinese, Persian, Spanish, whatever, people
will often ask me, where are you from?
Because the average person here in this English speaking environment, in
fact, doesn't speak foreign languages.
They aren't motivated to learn foreign languages.
A big part of the reason is that the experience in school with French learning
is very unmotivating or demotivating.
However, there are exceptions to this.
Every time I meet someone here, a young person who has been through
the French immersion program, they are motivated to use their French.
When they hear that I'm interested in languages, they will immediately
start speaking to me in French, even though very often the French level of
french immersion, you know, graduates isn't that high.
Why is that?
Because they have a sense of achievement, a sense of confidence,
a sense of knowing something.
They want to use it because they feel confident.
This is a part of who they are.
So how do we get people started so that they are less
concerned about the obstacles?
A person living in Vancouver, you could argue, has no need for
French, and therefore they're not motivated to learn French.
However, those kids who have been through French immersion are motivated because
they have achieved some level of success.
They have had a reward from their language learning or from their exposure with
another language, in this case French.
I think the same thing is true in Sweden where kids in early childhood are exposed
to English language television, or even people in general in areas where there are
opportunities to hear other languages, be it in Singapore or in countries in Europe,
so they have a greater sense of confidence in their ability to acquire that language.
So less resistance, less concerned about how difficult the task is, and more
realization that in fact, learning another language can be a rewarding activity.
So if the first point is that motivation is that sense of enjoyment, that
sense of power, that feeling that this is something that you can do and
therefore you're motivated to do it,
we like doing things that we're good at, or at least have some sense that we can
succeed at, the second point is that, as Jeff Haden points out, motivation is
not a matter of reaching for the sky.
Motivation is a matter of process, establishing certain habits, certain
activities where methodically we move forward and by moving forward
methodically, we start to achieve that sense of we can accomplish this task,
as I mentioned in in the first point, as the people like the French immersion
kids here in Vancouver who have a sense that they can do this thing, which
helps them not only in their French, using their French, but also I think
gives them a more positive attitude, greater sense of motivation when it
comes to learning other languages.
I'm reminded of the example that I heard in the podcast that I'm listening
to, Parseh by Abbas Seyedin of the likelihood of someone, let's say,
who is in a room where they have, let's say, a limited amount of time
to crack the combination, 10 -digit combination in order to get outta
this room before they run out of air.
And if they run through all the possible combinations, it will take them
forever and they will eventually die.
However, if every time they choose a number randomly, which is a correct
number, they get a positive feedback.
So now instead of 10 digits, then they're dealing with only nine digits.
And if they get another positive feedback, it's eight digits.
And in this way now it becomes practical for that person to crack
the code and get outta the room.
The point is, as Heraclitus or however he's pronounced said, we
never step in the same river twice.
So when we're learning a language, we are in fact accumulating
expertise, we are changing ourselves,
we are becoming more confident, we are becoming more expert.
We are acquiring a better and better sense of the patterns and the words
that are necessary for that language.
And so we need to, in terms of motivation, recognize that however
much, it's frustrating at times that we keep forgetting and we
keep being unable to recall,
in fact, we are not that same person.
We are gradually increasing our grasp of the language, and that
should be a source of motivation.
So if we can accept that we are improving simply by being in the
river, by being engaged with the language we're building on what we
know, then the next thing is how can we in fact, make sure we stay on task.
So we have to accept that we're constantly improving, even if
we're not aware of our improvement.
But we also, and this is the third point, we need to have habits.
This gets back to Atomic Habits, a book that I've mentioned before, and
it's part of Jeff Haden's message.
We have to have not reach for the sky, ambitious, you know,
motives or objectives, we need to have specific habits.
For example, I have been in the habit of getting up in the morning and listening
to the language that I'm learning.
I am in the habit of listening When I'm in the car, I have habits, for
example, of making sure that I spend half an hour or so on LingQ on my
iPad, so I have certain habits that keep me going, even if my intrinsic
motivation towards the language may sag,
I have habits that keep me going.
Of course, if we have these habits and the habits enable us to achieve slowly
success in the language, this reinforces our motivation because motivation,
as Haden points out, it's largely a matter of success and reinforcing
that sense of achievement that makes us motivated in many languages.
There is a saying that the first step is the job half done.
In other words, it's very important to just even get going, get started,
even if you may not be tremendously motivated to learn the language or
you're concerned that you won't succeed if you can at least get started.
Take that first step and keep moving forward in small steps,
atomic steps, small steps.
Gradually you will build up that sense of achievement or enjoyment.
As I've said before, the French expression, the
appetite comes with the eating.
You will build up that sense of achievement and confidence, which
is in itself very motivating.
Now the next point is that there are other ways that we can maintain our
motivation, to call it external factors.
And these are, for example, nudges from goals or milestones, and that's what
our statistics at LingQ are all about.
Before I went to Turkey, I had six months.
I said, I'm going to increase my known word total from, I think it was 8,000
words to 15,000 words, leaving aside what the actual meaning of known words
might be, which depends on the language.
However, it was an objective goal that I set myself, and so I made sure that
every day I achieved enough of a sort of increase in my known words, total, so that
eventually I would reach, actually I went to 35,000 known words, and that was a very
sort of objective goal, external goal.
But the net result was that when I went to Turkey, I was
able to communicate in Turkish.
So the sort of external milestone, nudging goal pushed me, motivated me
to achieve what I wanted to achieve, and that was a sufficient improvement
in my Turkish so that I could be effective when I was in the country.
Now.
Another thing with regard to motivation is motivation can come from any source.
It can be a relative, it can be a romantic involvement, it can be a trip
to the country, or it can be these small steps of a sense of achievement,
but we have to be open or I try to be open to these sources of inspiration.
For example, I was cleaning up my library here, putting some order into my library.
And of course I have a lot of books in many different languages, some of which I
have read, some of which I have not read.
So I found this book here,
Herman Lindqvist in Swedish on Napoleon.
I got into Napoleon because I was listening to Parseh podcast about
Napoleon's conquest of Egypt, and that got me interested in Napoleon,
and so I'm reading some books on Napoleon, then I find this Swedish book.
Then I go to my Swedish audiobook ebook website called Bokon.
Unfortunately, there's no ebook there, but there is an audiobook, so I downloaded
it and I've been listening to it.
So I'm exposing myself to this opportunity of enjoyment with the language, which
I think is important because I have books, I have the opportunity to do the
same thing in a number of languages.
In other words, getting involved with languages has opened me up to a variety
of sources of enjoyment, rewards in my language learning activities, and you have
to work your way through to get there.
But the other interesting thing is that I find now having been in Persian
and other languages, having not done much with Swedish for a long,
long time, I find that I understand
this book, whether reading it or listening to it better than I think I
was able to understand Swedish before, so I just mentioned that in passing.
But I mentioned it also because we have to be open to different things that
can give us a bit of a dopamine kick.
It might be a new interest, it might be going back to material that's easy
and doing that for a while before going forward into more difficult material.
But we have to be open to the possibility that these language
activities can give us a sense of reward and in language learning.
As I've said before, the process is the reward.
In other words, that sense of achievement, that sense of accessing other culture,
that sense of, wow, I understand things that I didn't understand before,
all of these things can give us a sense of enjoyment.
And those steps along the way at different stages of our learning
are what keeps us motivated or at least what keeps me motivated.
And I guess that's the sort of overarching point that I wanted to make.
And that is, in language learning, the motivation is varied.
The motivation can be something intrinsic in terms of an interest
in the language, it can be external things that nudge us forward, it
can be an accidental encounter.
If I'm in a store and I see someone who's a Farsi speaker, Persian
speaker, and we have a conversation, and I do better than I thought I
was going to do in the language, have a great feeling of achievement.
The motivation, things that trigger our motivation can be any number of
things, but we have to be open to these things and we have to be prepared to
accept small victories along the way rather than thinking that motivation
has to be in terms of, I wanna be fluent, I wanna make a million
dollars, that sort of long term goal
shouldn't be the motivation.
Rather, it should be that willingness to engage, to set up procedures, processes,
habits that keep us moving along in the direction of eventually getting to
some degree of fluency, but an openness to all of the different things that
can motivate us and keep us going.
So I don't think motivation is a myth.
But the motivation has to be along the lines of what Jeff Haden says
in his book: it's a series of habits, it's processes, it's giving
yourself credit for what you achieve.
And in that way, motivation can be a powerful force for
language learning success.
Oh, and by the way, what's this t-shirt?
So one of my activities or activities over the course of my career has been in lumber
marketing, lumber, but also we developed a, um, ERP system for sawmills and for
companies in, uh, lumber distribution.
So I thought I would do some cross marketing here.
So, Woodmart, Woodhub, these are those, the systems that we have sold in various
overseas countries and here in Canada.
Thank you for listening.
