ADULT LANGUAGE LEARNERS' BELIEFS ABOUT THE CONSTITUENTS OF MOTIVATION
5. Discussion 1. Motivation
The beliefs this group of learners held about the necessary constituents of successful learning are the three characteristics of motivated learner behaviour: goals, effort and persistence (DÖRNYEI 2005). The aim of this research was not to bring one more evidence to the motivational theory, but to follow the qualitative tradition of studies (USHIODA 2001) by exploring patterns of thinking and the nature of beliefs held by some learners who have only a few common features: they attend the same language course and attribute crucial importance to persistence, apart from these, their qualities, strategies, educational background show diversity.
5.2. The value of persistence
There are four reasons why I think it was a beneficiary change for these learners' belief system to rate persistence highly.
1. Language learning is a long process – this is a fact that should be accepted by all learners.
Acquiring a complex system, i.e. a language takes patience, practice, resilience and time.
2. You need to enjoy the process, not only the goal. This may sound like a popular psychological statement, but actually most teachers are concerned about making their classes enjoyable, and tend to tailor their course material to their learners' needs, because they are aware of the fact that the goal (e.g. an exam) may be years afar, but their learners need to enjoy the small steps in order to reach the main goal. Learners enjoying learning for its own sake, being able to see it as a form of recreation or personality-enhancing activity may stand better chance of higher and less stressful performance than those who focus exclusively on reaching their goal.
3. Short-term trainings tend to be counterproductive not only because they are unable to yield the results they promise, but also because learners tend to become frustrated after their nth course, textbook, teacher... A disillusioned learner is someone who is the most resistant to changing their beliefs about learning, therefore the most rigid in his way of thinking. This disillusionment can be cured by learning persistently in a well-operating learning group.
4. If a learner stays, he will always have a chance to get remotivated. There is a lifecycle of motivation (DÖRNYEI 2005) - nearly all learners feel highly motivated at the beginning of their language course, after a time they may lose their interest, and get demotivated, but in an ideal case they manage to regain what is lost, that is to get remotivated. Experiencing remotivation is even more rewarding than being motivated at the outset, because it enhances one's self-esteem, self-efficacy being the indicator of persistence.
6. Conclusion
Beliefs are important because they form the learner's reality which may exist parallel to the teacher's. They may not influence achievements measurably but still, in the long run have decisive role in maintaining (preserving) or losing motivation. They also have a role in defining what learners attribute their success to – e.g. if one says persistence is the key to success (a controllable attribute) – then he will invest more time, energy into learning, but if
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one believes it is language aptitude (uncontrollable), he will give up when faced with slow progress.
Beliefs can determine how much effort one puts into learning, how long they are willing to learn. As we could see from the findings of this research, learners emphasised the importance of persistence, which can be seen as a token of their future achievements, 'success requires sustained effort' (BANDURA 1997: 3).
The beliefs a learner has can never be ignored, because in the long run they will decide whether one achieves what they aimed for or not. Several successful sportsmen admittedly had very clear beliefs about them achieving the set goal. I firmly believe that some beliefs have direct, decisive role in language learning, not just somewhat indirect effects. A strong belief in the importance of persistence could easily work as a safety net (as the respondents saw it after four months of learning), which may turn into a real life-saving device (as the respondents reflected on it after a year). I think the research has a very strong pedagogical implication as well: teachers should promote persistence in their learners, and value it highly as it can be a token for successful learning, because persistence is a controllable, unstable attribute (WEINER 1985) - achievable for all learners.
From andragogical point of view, there is another lesson here, namely, experiencing persistence, and consequently success, in one area (learning English) may trigger ambitions in other areas of life, with improved self-efficacy beliefs.
Persistence has a high esteem not only in the field of education, but in other walks of life. The famous American businessman, David Sarnoff said: “The will to preserve is often the difference between failure and success.”
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The quote by David Sarnoff was retrieved from: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/4341/David-Sarnoff-Quotes.html, 20 April, 2015.
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Robin Lee Nagano & Edit Spiczéné Bukovszki University of Miskolc
nyerobin@uni-miskolc.hu, iokspedi@uni-miskolc.hu
TEACHING TEACHERS TO TEACH IN ENGLISH: A PILOT COURSE