[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 6 | March 3, 2014]

This paper is written in response to several requests for self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2000) based lesson plans / tasks that can be used in a communicative language teaching (CLT) class. The theoretical basis for the task presented herein can be found in research results published previously in The School House (Ockert, 2013). First, it must be noted that “(r)ecent studies on SDT-based motives have shown that games are primarily motivating to the extent that players experience autonomy, competence and relatedness while playing” (Ryan, Rigby, & Przybylski, 2006, p. 2). The authors investigated the impact of game play on participant psychological well-being based on these three basic psychological needs, which games are presumed to satisfy. Second, the “results show that SDT’s theorized needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness independently predict enjoyment and future game play” (p. 1). While some educators may argue against the use of the term ‘game’ for an in-class exercise, the terms ‘activity’ or ‘task’, as in task-based language teaching (TBLT), will be used in this paper. (more…)

[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 5 | February 24, 2014]

There are several types of motivational theories and much has been written on various theories of EFL learner motivation (e.g., Dörnyei, 2009a; Dornyei, 1998; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009; Gardner, 2001; Oxford, 1994; Oxford & Shearin, 1994). Ur (1996) proposed a distinction of two types of motivation for the EFL context. She describes intrinsically motivated learners are “willing or even eager to invest effort in learning activities and to progress” (p. 175) where the extrinsically motivated ones are engaged in the activities due to “the influence of some kind of external incentive” (p. 277) – in other words, the desire to please parents, teachers, friends, or to succeed on tests such as the TOEIC® or TOEFL® tests. Furthermore, according to Amibile (1989) in regards to children, intrinsic motivation has four parts: 1) having love for and even an obsession with the task at hand, 2) a sense of dedication to the work over time, 3) a view of the project as combining work and play, and 4) a concentration on the activity itself. Her research gives us an even deeper understanding of how persons who are intrinsically motivated feel when engaged in a task. They see the activity as both work and play, and they have a love for the task at hand in addition to concentrating on the task itself.

Self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985) has been used in a variety of fields over the past twenty five years with consistent results. Within our field, much of the research has consistently pointed to the importance of motivation from within (Deci & Flaste, 1996), whether defined in terms of intrinsic or integrative motivation (as opposed to an extrinsic or instrumental motivation). This motivation from within is believed to sustain the learning process more effectively than motivation that is externally regulated or controlled by the teacher and the research evidence thus far supports this view (e.g. Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Ryan & Deci, 2000), and the message for educators clearly shows that in order to help our students, we need to find ways of finding, supporting and maintaining students’ own motivation to learn (Ushioda, 2006). In addition, recent research to recast the integrative and instrumental orientations (Gardner & Lambert, 1959, 1972) by Noels et al. into the self-determination motivation framework has helped to “organize systematically many of the reasons for learning a L2” (p. 24).  (more…)