CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
A. Psychological Factors in Learning Process
3. Motivation
Motivation is an essential component not only of the teaching learning process, but of all of the actions human beings perform daily and throughout their lives. Motivation or lack of motivation is what explains why some students are more efficient, pay more attention, or turn in their homework and projects on time and with high quality while others do not. So it’s not surprising to analyze the teachers, and parents trying to find effective methods to motivate their workers,
students and children. Child (1986) defines it as internal processes which spur on us to satisfy some need.
Pintrich & Schunk (1996) defines it as the process whereby goal directed activity is instigated and sustained. According to them, motivation is a process which cannot be observed directly, but can be inferred by behaviors as choice of tasks, effort, persistence, and verbalizations. They explain that motivation involves goals that provide impetus for and direction to action and that motivation requires physical or mental activity geared towards attaining goals. However, they suggest that motivational processes are critical to sustaining action More recently, Dornyei and Otto (1998) identified motivation as the dynamically changing cumulative arousal in a person that initiates, directs, coordinates, amplifies, terminates, and evaluates the cognitive and motor processes whereby initial wishes and desires are selected, prioritized, operationalized and successfully or not. More recently, Dornyei (2001) accounts for the difficulty that defining this term entails. He writes that the term motivation‘ was a real mystery but that researchers generally agreed that motivation concerns the direction and magnitude of human behavior.
The researcher may conclude that motivation is responsible for why the people decide to do something, how long they are willing to sustain the activity, and how hard they are going to pursue it. Similarly, Gardner (2010) explains that motivation is a construct that is difficult to define, but he identifies characteristics that motivated individuals display. According to him, motivated individuals express effort in attaining a goal, show persistence, attend to the tasks that are
necessary to achieve the goals, have a strong desire to attain their goal, enjoy the activities necessary to achieve their goal, are aroused in seeking their goals, have expectancies about their successes and failures. Mentioned in Pintrich & Schunk, 1996) believed that instincts could provide a base upon which experience builds by developing habits, behavior as instinctive. This perspective, however, was also seen as faulty since it did not provide scientific support either. Child (1986) mentions that the three broad lines of development regarding motivation.
a. Behavioral Pattern of Motivation
According to Dornyei (2001), explain that do not feature strongly in current motivational thinking, motivation which were related to behaviorist psychology, with a great deal of research focusing on how stimuli and responses interplayed in forming habits. Much of the acquired knowledge is still relevant for the understanding of issues like the role of practice and, drilling, positive and negative reinforcement, or punishment and praise in learning. Behaviorists assumed that human beings had basic psychological needs like hunger, thirst or shelter that trigger our motivation. Thus, according to the behavioral view, humans are motivated to behave as we do to gain reinforcers. For example, if students are praised or rewarded for participating orally in their second language class, contains aspects of both the behaviorist and the cognitive points of view.
several sources of motivation one of these sources consisted of thoughts and projections about possible outcomes of behavior. This is, people imagine consequences based upon past experiences, the consequences of those experiences, and their observations of others. These projections are also affected
by people‘s sense of self efficacy, an aspect that refers to our beliefs about our personal competence in a given area. The other source of motivation is the active setting of goals which become people‘s standards for evaluating performance. Our sense of efficacy, Bandura (1986) says, comes into play here as well, influencing the goals that we will attempt to reach. As we work toward those goals, we imagine the positive outcomes of succeeding and the negative outcomes of failing.
Then, people tend to persist in their efforts until the standards they have set are met. Upon reaching our goals, we may be satisfied for a short time but then tend to raise our standards and set new goals.
Instrumental orientation is a construct related to the motivation to learn another language not for the social implications but rather for some practical gain (Gardner 2010). Two of the major conclusions in this study were that the five classes of variables are all positively related to achievement in a second language and that motivation is more highly related to second language achievement than the other four variables. instrumental orientation predicted the motivation to learn English and that motivation was a positive predictor of English achievement, whereas attitudes toward the learning situation and language anxiety were negative predictors of English achievement. The study also yielded that the motivation towards a specific language can be related to the sociopolitical context.
They also found that the participants valued foreign languages according to their integrativeness, instrumentality, attitudes towards the L2 (second language) community and their language, as well as interest in the L2 community‘s culture and the Gardner explains that integrativeness and attitudes toward the learning
situation are seen as supporters of motivation, but that it is motivation that is responsible for achievement in the second language. He also mentions that each construct in his Socioeducational model shows clearly defined operational definitions and that the main focus of this model is on motivation which is supported by integrativeness and attitudes towards the learning situation.
According to Johnstone (1999) considers motivation as a stimulant for achieving a specific target. similarly, In another hand Ryan & Deci (2000), explain that To be motivated means to progress or to be in motion to do something. Motivation and reasons for learning English are very important issues to address to enable one to design better curriculum materials or teaching strategies to stimulate students’ motivation in learning science in the new curriculum reform movement. There is a need to consider students’ motivation within the subject content and the classroom contexts of curriculum, instruction, and teachers. Many students get lessons in a passive way, without reflecting much about what they are hearing. They work on assignments mostly just to get them over with rather than to learn something from them. Even if they are concerned about meeting the class requirements and getting acceptable grades, many students lack interest in the content they are learning. They see it as a material to be learned in order to pass tests or complete assignments, but not as an input that can enrich the quality of their lives or help them understand and respond to present and potential challenges in daily living. Students who approach a task with motivation to learn think about the meanings and implications of the task and not just about meeting its requirements.
B . External Versus Internal Motivation
External motivation generally consists of recognition and praise for good work. For college students, it can also be continuing eligibility for scholarships, loans, or promotions at work. An extrinsically motivated student seeks approval and external signs of worth (Sansone & Smith, 2000). Colleges traditionally give students grades as a validation that they have achieved the course objectives.
Grades, however, are not the only or best motivation for student learning. College students in their late teens and early twenties had higher extrinsic goal orientation.
This means that traditional age students are generally more motivated to learn by grades than older students. The downside of this is that external motivators, such as grades and rewards, can undermine intrinsic motivation for a task (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999). Too much emphasis on grades and rewards could destroy a student’s interest in learning.
Intrinsic motivation generally consists of an internal desire to learn about a specific topic. Matos, & Lacante (2004) demonstrated that students with intrinsic motivation processed reading material more deeply, achieved higher grades, and showed more persistence than students with extrinsic motivation. Interest and intrinsic motivation predicted positive affect. They recruited students from a traditional.