Integrative motivation and second language acquisition

This talk discusses integrative motivation from the perspective of the socio-educational model of second language acquisition, and will focus on six topics. The first concerns the concept of motivation which can be shown to comprise at least 10 cognitive, affective and conative components. The second topic is the socio-educational model of second language acquisition. It is presented in two forms. One is the fundamental model which proposes that two major factors, ability and motivation, interact with language acquisition contexts to produce linguistic and nonlinguistic outcomes. It is assumed that the educational setting and the cultural context influence motivation. The other shows the relationships among ability, attitude, motivation, language anxiety and language achievement variables. The third topic is the Attitude Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) in which the components of the model and their assessment are presented. The fourth topic focusses on a brief review of some empirical findings based on our research. The rest of the discussion deals with two issues that I believe are important for this area of research. Topic five concerns the distinction between motivation and motivating. In our research, we have demonstrated how the issue of motivating can be studied based on our model. For example, we have found that, predictably, attitudes toward the learning situation vary significantly among classes at the end of the academic year in university classes in French in Canada, while significant class differences in integrativeness, motivation and attitudes toward the learning situation were obtained for children learning English in Spain. We also found that over the course of the year, some significant changes were obtained which varied on the basis of the grade obtained at the end of the year. The sixth topic deals with the generalizability of the socio-educational model and the AMTB. There has been the view expressed that they may not be appropriate to settings where the focus is on foreign language learning. Our research in four countries shows that the scales of the AMTB produce internal consistency reliability coefficients and correlations of the major constructs with final grades in English comparable to those obtained in our Canadian studies. In this talk, I have attempted to review the concept of integrative motivation. It is my view that the concept has been defined in many different, but related, ways by some researchers but that from the perspective of the socio-educational model of second language acquisition, it has a very definite and predictable meaning which is applicable equally to situations involving second and foreign language acquisition. Integrative motivation and second language acquisition Robert C. Gardner Department of Psychology The University of Western Ontario London, Canada When I began preparing this talk, I googled the internet for the term “integrative motivation”, and much to my surprise I obtained 591 hits. This may not be a particularly large number in the grand scheme of things, but I was impressed. There is a fair amount of interest in the topic. Reading some of the files, however, I found that many people have different conceptualizations of the term. Most of them overlap the concept of integrative motivation that I have been discussing for a number of years but not completely. For example, I found one that defined integrative motivation as “when students want to learn a language to become part of a speech community”. In another, I read that “integrative motivation is characterised by the learner’s positive attitudes toward the target language group and the desire to integrate into the target language community’”. These two definitions include some of the elements of integrative motivation as we typically refer to it, but not all. In 1985, I discussed the concepts of motivation and integrative orientation, and then concluded that “The concept of the integrative motive includes not only the orientation but also the motivation (i.e., attitudes toward learning the language, plus desire plus motivational intensity) and a number of other attitude variables involving the other language community, out-groups in general and the language learning context” (Gardner, 1985, p.54). To me, this characterization is much broader than those often given by other researchers. I also don’t believe that integrative motivation to learn French, for example, is characterized by statements like “Studying French is important to me because it will enable me to better understand and appreciate French Canadian art and literature” or that “Studying French can be important for me because it will allow me to meet and converse with more and varied people”. Admittedly, these are items from our 1985 Integrative Orientation Scale, but they reflect an orientation, not necessarily a motivation. Individuals might well agree whole-heartedly with these types of items, but may or may not be motivated to learn the language. In 1991, Crookes and Schmidt called for what they termed a reopening of the research agenda. Personally, I am all in favour of new approaches and research agendas, and was at the time. Unfortunately, in calling for this new agenda, I believe they misrepresented what they termed the old one. They referred to the initial article by Gardner and Lambert (1959), implying that we distinguished between integrative and instrumental motivation. But we didn’t even use those terms in that article. They stated “Motivation is identified primarily with the learner’s orientation toward the goal of learning a second language. Integrative motivation is identified with positive attitudes toward the target language group and the potential for integrating into that group, or at least an interest in meeting and interacting with members of the target language group” (Crookes & Schmidt, pp 471-472). This, it should be noted is their definition, not mine. In fact, they even noted that it wasn’t mine. They state “What is not noticed or commented upon, however, is that the “integrative motive” in Gardner’s more recent model (Gardner, 1985, 1988) is no longer equivalent to attitudes toward the target language community and is not equivalent to a score on the integrative orientation subscale of the AMTB or any other subscale of the AMTB” (p. 475). But, the simple truth is, it