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Learning a language... and wanting to use it
In the current educational context, in which targets are set for training students to use three or more languages, it comes as something of a surprise that in educational policies, in teacher training and in schools' educational plans, more attention isn't given to the psycho-social factors that have a decisive influence on success in learning a language, and to an even greater degree on its effective use.
Any person who pays even a minimal amount of attention will have noticed that there is a significant proportion of language students who, at the end of several courses, show no predisposition to use the language they're learning, even though they have an opportunity to do so. These cases occur even more frequently in a socio-linguistic environment where more than one language is used such as ours, where favourable or adverse attitudes towards speakers of the language learnt may be decisive in activating or inhibiting its use.
From the theoretical point of view, there is an explanatory model which presents very clearly the close relationship that exists between the different aspects of learning (linguistic, psycho-social and socio-linguistic) and the use of a second language: this model, developed by Peter MacIntyre and others (1), is called Willingness to Communicate. We unhesitatingly endorse two of the model's most categorical statements: any programme which doesn't ensure that those who study a language are interested in using it is simply a failure; and, the real aim of any language course is not that the students should know the language, but that they should want to use it.
The importance of motivational strategies is even more decisive when we find ourselves in compulsory education, because in this case it's totally obvious that we can't assume that students want to learn a language in order to use it; rather, we have to identify and manage the will to communicate throughout the educational process.
One of the authors of the Willingness to Communicate model, Zoltán Dörnyei, has written a manual whose eminently practical character is teamed with a sound theoretical basis, for the benefit of language teachers: Motivational strategies in the language classroom (2). Any language teacher can find in it tens of strategies for arousing and maintaining motivation before, during and at the end of a course.
Notes:
(1) MacIntyre, Clément, Noels and Dörnyei, Conceptualizing Willingness to Communicate in a L2: A Situational Model of L2 Confidence and Affiliation. The Modern Language Journal, 82, IV (1998).
(2) Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. In 2004, HABE published it translated into Euskara as Motibazio-estrategiak hizkuntz ikasgelan. The Linguamón-UOC Chair in Multilingualism has just published it in Spanish and Catalan through the University's own publishing house (2008).
Isidor Marí
Director of the Studies of Humanities of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
