Psychology of Language Learning
How to Use Motivation To Make Learning Languages Easier!
Rewards and Punishments can help pull and push you to study more often and enjoy learning more!
Motivation in language learning is so important that it’s the most studied factor that affects your language improvement. If you understand motivation better, you can use it to help you to study more often and more effectively than ever before! So, let’s take a look at how motivation works, and how we can apply it to our language learning and teaching.
There Are Two Types Of Motivation: Internal And External
Internal Motivation:
Think of Internal Motivation as the kind that comes from inside you! This can include things that pull you towards your goals, like your desire to be able to speak to people from around the world; to enjoy your trips to other countries more by being able to speak to the local people and make new friends; to improve your mind like a muscle by using it to learn; to develop personally by opening up your world to new cultures and ways of thinking; or just to do well in a test! In each case, your desire pulls you towards your goal, and because the goals requires language skill in the second language, you’ll be motivated to study it.
External Motivation:
Then there’s External Motivation, that comes from outside of yourself — from professional and educational institutions; companies; career pressures; maybe your parents want you to learn a particular language because they believe it will help you progress better in life; maybe your chosen career path requires that you have a high proficiency in a second language to get an important certificate; or a second language course is one of your university course requirements. These factors all have a ‘pull’ effect, different from the ‘push’ effect of the Internal motivators.
Help Yourself!
Knowing all of this can help you in your language learning by allowing you to focus on the type of motivating factors that are most effective for you! You see, some people are more motivated by the Internal factors, and others are more motivated by the External factors. You should find out which way works best for you.
Then, you can make a list of the motivators in your language learning, and on those days when you feel a little lazy, or you realize that you haven’t studied in such a long time, then you can take out the list and remind yourself why you are studying. This will renew your enthusiasm, give you a little boost and put you back into your ‘study mode’ so that you can start fresh and give your language study more effort again!
The Carrot and the Stick (or Reward and Punishment)
This is another way to look at motivation, where the carrot is a reward for studying, and the stick is punishment for not studying! The phrase comes from the two methods for making a donkey move. One method is to put a carrot in from of the donkey. The donkey sees the carrot and moves towards it because it wants that carrot! The second method is to hit the donkey with a stick. The donkey will want to escape the pain of the stick, so it will move away from it! For language learners, things are a little different.
Thankfully, the days of teachers waving sticks at students are gone, and most learners might not think of a carrot as a treat! But the idea is the same! If you want to motivate yourself to learn more, you can try this: give yourself a little treat when you do something good. This will motivate you to do more of the good thing! At the same time, you can give yourself a little punishment when you do something bad, like skipping an exercise or ‘forgetting’ to learn that new vocabulary! That should help you to avoid that behavior in the future.
How Can You Make This Work For You?
Reward:
A reward could be anything that you like, that makes you feel good! So for example, you could say to yourself, “I’m gonna study English for 30 minutes, and when I finish, I’ll have a coffee and one of those chocolates!” This is the carrot at work, rewarding your good effort and motivating you to do more good things.
Punishment:
If you skip a study period that you had scheduled, you can punish yourself by denying yourself something you enjoy, like time on a social media platform or favorite game, or by giving some money to your little brother! There are so many ways you can punish yourself so be creative! Find what best works for you, and try not to be too hard on yourself! 😄
One More Motivation Technique:
One of the best ways for language learners to stay motivated is by seeing proof of our own progress that we worked so hard to achieve. It feels so good to know that we are better now than we were a few weeks or months ago. At designerenglish.com, I use this technique to motivate my students by testing their English level and finding areas in which they need to improve. Then we work on those areas, after which the students do the test again, and usually they get a higher score than the first time! It seems simple, but this is a really powerful way for students to see the results of their study and get a feeling of real achievement. I call it the FEEDBACK Method, because when the teacher FEEDs a student’s motivation, they will come BACK to study more and more!
The reward and punishment idea is one of the basic laws of human behavior. Put it to use and watch your language skills improve!
