Understanding and Fostering Learner Motivation

Posted on Jul 25, 2025 in Primary Education

Understanding Motivation

Motivation is the extent to which you make choices about goals to pursue and the effort you will devote to that pursuit.

Behavioral Definition of Motivation

According to Skinner and Watson, the role of reward is crucial. Reward serves to reinforce behavior. A behaviorist would define motivation as the anticipation of reinforcement; what we do is motivated by an anticipated reward.

Cognitive Definition of Motivation

While rewards are a significant part of the picture, the difference lies in the sources of motivation and the power of self-reward.

Key Motivation Theories

  • Drive Theory: Motivation stems from basic innate drives. David Ausubel identified drives such as exploration, manipulation, activity, stimulation, knowledge, and ego enhancement. These include the desire to probe the unknown, control our environment, be physically active, be receptive to mental, emotional, or physical stimulation, yearn for answers, and build self-esteem.
  • Hierarchy of Needs Theory: Abraham Maslow proposed a system of needs within each human being that propels us toward higher attainment. This progresses from satisfying physical needs, through safety and belonging, to esteem needs, and finally to self-actualization—reaching our fullest potential.
  • Self-Control Theory: Individuals make their own choices about what to pursue. In a cooperative learning context, this fulfills the need for autonomy.

Intrinsic Motivation in the Second Language Classroom

Consider these activities that capitalize on intrinsic motivation by appealing to learners’ self-determination and autonomy:

  • Teaching writing as a thinking process where learners develop their own ideas freely and openly.
  • Showing learners reading strategies that enable them to bring their own information to the written word.
  • Using language experience approaches where students create their own reading material for others.
  • Implementing oral fluency exercises where learners discuss topics that interest them.
  • Having students listen to academic lectures in their field of study for specific information that fills a knowledge gap.
  • Employing communicative language teaching, where language is taught to enable learners to accomplish specific functions.
  • Providing grammatical explanations if learners perceive them as a means to increase their autonomy in a second language.

Eight Strategies to Foster Intrinsic Motivation

Here are eight strategies focusing on what teachers can do to initiate the process of creating intrinsic motivation:

  1. Demonstrate and discuss your own enthusiasm for the course material and how it affects you personally.
  2. Take your students’ learning very seriously.
  3. Develop a personal relationship with your students.
  4. Develop a collaborative relationship with students’ parents.
  5. Create a pleasant and supportive atmosphere in the class.
  6. Promote the development of group cohesiveness.
  7. Formulate group norms explicitly, and have them discussed and accepted by the learners.
  8. Ensure group norms are consistently observed.

Maintain these intrinsically motivating factors at an underlying level of awareness whenever and wherever learners are placed under your tutelage.