Английский язык учебник

Motivation	251

6.It is inevitable that there will be _____ in any nor mal learning or working experience.

7.Individual_____ can be stressful for people who are not very good at the subject.

8.In any area where we are hoping to self improve, both _____ and _____ goals are needed.

9.We may enhance a sense of pride and satisfaction by explicit praise approval or by some _____.

10._____ _____ can be over used or misused if people are obeying commands without any awareness of objectives.

Exercise 6. Find words in the text that mean:
– a continuing impulse toward an activity or goal	(par. 1)
– the end toward which effort is directed	(par. 2)
– making even the best or most persistent
efforts vain and ineffectual	(par. 3)
– something that stands in the way or opposes	(par. 4)
– to cause physical or mental damage	(par. 4)
– to make an effort, to try	(par. 9)
– an often threatening or provocative
summons or invitation to compete	(par. 10)
– accomplishment, the attaining of a goal	(par. 17)

Exercise 7. Complete the vocabulary network with the words from the text.

belief

Keys

to motivation

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SPEAKING AND DISCUSSION

Exercise 1. Answer the following questions to the text.

1.What does motivation comprise?

2.Why are some people usually calmer, healthier and less stressed?

3.What goals are needed when we are hoping to self improve?

4.What are the most important elements of the pro cess of motivation?

5.How do two types of individuals vary in their achievement motivation?

6.How can our achievement motivation be divided into?

7.What is the difference between these two types of motivation?

8.What are the main sources of extrinsic motivation?

9.What rewards can be used to raise extrinsic moti vation?

10.Why can individual competition be stressful for people?

11.Is it enough to have intelligence, knowledge, skills, diligence in order to succeed?

Exercise 2. Discuss the following statements with your group mates making use of the ex pressions below.

I agree strongly on the whole…

I believe that…

It depends…

Iagree…

Idisagree strongly… In my opinion…

From my point of view… It goes without saying…

Ithink so too…

Ihardly think so…

Idon’t doubt that in the least…

Motivation	253

1.There seem to be certain life goals that harm our mental health.

2.We waste quite a bit of our life doing things that are unimportant and not urgent, such as reading trash novels, watching mindless TV, etc.

3.If you are dedicated to hard work you will win in the end.

4.Achievement oriented individuals have a stronger hope for success than a fear of failure, are mode rate rather than high or low risk takers.

5.People who have succeeded in past tasks will be more willing to engage with the next one.

6.Failure in any sense is generally regarded as some thing to be avoided.

7.If individual competition is overused, it eventually affects negatively persons’ willingness to coope rate and help each other.

Exercise 3. Retell the text dwelling on the following points:

–goals of motivation

–the main keys of motivation

–types of motivation

Exercise 4. Tell us about one of your academic perfor mances in which you have been successful and one in which you have not been suc cessful.

For each of these reflect on:

–what you attribute your success or failure to

–how much efforts you expended

–what your attitude and desire were

Exercise 5. Scan the text and do the tasks below.

STUDENT MOTIVATION TO LEARN

Infants and young children appear to be propelled by curiosity, driven by an intense need to explore, interact

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with, and make sense of their environment. As one au thor puts it, “Rarely does one hear parents complain that their preschooler is unmotivated” (James Raffini, 1993).

Unfortunately, as children grow, their passion for learning frequently seems to shrink. Learning often becomes associated with drudgery instead of delight. A large number of students – more than one in four – leave school before graduating. Many more are physi cally present in the classroom but largely mentally ab sent; they fail to invest themselves fully in the experi ence of learning.

Student motivation naturally has to do with stu dents’ desire to participate in the learning process. But it also concerns the reasons or goals that underlie their involvement or noninvolvement in academic activities. Although students may be equally motivated to per form a task, the sources of motivation may differ.

A student who is INTRINSICALLY motivated un dertakes an activity “for its own sake, for the enjoy ment it provides, the learning it permits, or the feel ings of accomplishment it evokes” (Mark Lepper). An EXTRINSICALLY motivated student performs in or der to obtain some reward or avoid some punishment external to the activity itself, such as grades, stickers or teacher approval.

The term MOTIVATION TO LEARN has a slightly different meaning. It is defined by one psychologist as “the meaningfulness, value, and benefits of academic tasks to the learner regardless of whether or not they are intrinsically interesting” (Hermine Marshall, 1987). Other psychologists note that motivation to learn is characterized by long term, quality involve ment in learning and commitment to the process of learning. Motivation to learn is a competence acquired through general experience but stimulated most di rectly through modeling, communication of expecta tions and direct instruction of socialization by signifi cant others (especially parents and teachers).

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Children’s home environment shapes the initial constellation of attitudes they develop toward learn ing. When parents nurture their children’s natural cu riosity about the world by welcoming their questions, encouraging exploration, and familiarizing them with resources that can enlarge their world, they are giving their children the message that learning is worthwhile and frequently fun and satisfying.

When children are raised in a home that nurtures a sense of self worth, competence, autonomy and self ef ficacy, they will be more apt to accept the risks inhe rent in learning. Conversely, when children do not view themselves as basically competent and able, their freedom to engage in academically challenging pur suits and capacity to tolerate and cope with failure are greatly diminished.

Once children start school, they begin forming be liefs about their school related successes and failures. The sources to which children attribute their successes (commonly effort, ability, luck, or level of task diffi culty) and failures (often lack of ability or lack of ef fort) have important implications for how they ap proach and cope with learning situations.

The beliefs teachers themselves have about teach ing and learning and the nature of the expectations they hold for students also exert a powerful influence. To a very large degree, students expect to learn if their teachers expect them to learn.

Schoolwide goals, policies, and procedures also in teract with classroom climate and practices to affirm or alter students’ increasingly complex learning rela ted attitudes and beliefs.

And developmental changes comprise one more strand of the motivational web. For example, although young children tend to maintain high expectations for success even in the face of repeated failure, older stu dents do not. And although young children tend to see effort as uniformly positive, older children view it as a

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“double edged sword” (Ames). To them, failure follow ing high effort appears to carry more negative implica tions especially for their self concept of ability than failure that results from minimal or no effort.

It should be noted that it really matters whether students are primarily intrinsically or extrinsically oriented toward learning. When intrinsically motiva ted, students tend to employ strategies that demand more effort and that enable them to process informa tion more deeply. It was found that when students were confronted with complex intellectual tasks, those with an intrinsic orientation used more logical infor mation – gathering and decision making strategies than did students who were extrinsically oriented.

Students with an intrinsic orientation also tend to prefer tasks that are moderately challenging, whereas extrinsically oriented students gravitate toward tasks that are low in degree of difficulty. Extrinsically orient ed students are inclined to put forth the minimal amount of effort necessary to get the maximal reward. Although every educational activity cannot, and perhaps should not, be intrinsically motivating, these findings suggest that when teachers can capitalize on existing intrinsic motivation, there are several potential benefits.

Although students’ motivational histories accompany them into each new classroom setting, it is essential for teachers to view themselves as active socialization agents capable of stimulating student motivation to learn.

In the process of learning classroom climate is very important. If students experience the classroom as a car ing, supportive place where there is a sense of belonging and everyone is valued and respected, they will tend to participate more fully in the process of learning.

Various task dimensions can also foster motivation to learn. Ideally, tasks should be challenging but achievable. Relevance also promotes motivation, as does “contextualizing” learning, that is, helping stu dents to see how skills can be applied in the real world.

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Tasks that involve a moderate amount of discrepancy or incongruity are beneficial because they stimulate students’ curiosity.

In addition, defining tasks in terms of specific, short term goals can assist students to associate effort with suc cess. Verbally noting the purposes of specific tasks when introducing them to students is also beneficial.

Extrinsic rewards, on the other hand, should be used with caution, for they have the potential for de creasing existing intrinsic motivation.

To support motivation to learn, school level poli cies and practices should stress learning task mastery and effort rather than relative performance and com petition.

A first step is for educators to recognize that even when students use strategies that are ultimately self defeating (such as withholding effort, cheating, pro crastination and so forth), their goal is actually to pro tect their sense of self worth.

A process called ATTRIBUTION RETRAINING, which involves modeling, socialization and practice exercises, is sometimes used with discouraged students. The goals of attribution retraining are to help students to (1) concentrate on the tasks rather than becoming distracted by fear of failure: (2) respond to frustration by retracing their steps to find mistakes or figuring out alternative ways of approaching a problem instead of giving up, and (3) attribute their failures to insuffi cient effort, lack of information, or reliance on inef fective strategies rather than to lack of ability.

Because the potential payoff – having students who value learning for its own sake – is priceless, it is crucial for parents, teachers, and school leaders to de vote themselves fully to engendering and rekindling students’ motivation to learn.

Stipek, Deborak Motivation to learn “From theory to prac

tice”. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersy, Prentice Hall, 1988

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Unit VIII

Task 1. Say whether these statements are true

(T) or false (F), and if they are false, say why.

T F	1.	As children grow, their passion for lear
		ning seems to increase.
T F	2.	An intrinsically motivated student per
		forms in order to obtain some reward or
		avoid some punishment.
T F	3.	Motivation to learn is a competence ac
		quired through general experience but
		stimulated most directly through mode
		ling, communication of expectations or
		direct instruction by significant others.
T F	4.	When children view themselves as basi
		cally competent and able, their capacity
		to tolerate and cope with failure is
		greatly diminished.
T F	5.	Children raised in a home that nurtures
		a sense of self worth, competence and
		self efficacy will be more apt to accept
		the risks inherent in learning.
T F	6.	To older children failure following high
		efforts appears to carry more negative
		implications than failure that results
		from minimal efforts.
T F	7.	Students with an extrinsic orientation
		tend to prefer tasks that are moderately
		challenging.
T F	8.	In the process of learning classroom cli
		mate is not very important.
T F	9.	Various task dimensions also foster mo
		tivation to learn.
T F 10.		One of the goals of attribution retrain
		ing is to help students to concentrate on

the tasks rather than becoming dis tracted by fear of failure.

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Task 2. Ask your group mate a few questions to the text.

Task 3. Study the table for exactly two minutes, then close your book and see how many words and word combinations you can write down from memory.

Memory test

involvement in learning	teacher approval	incongruity
challenging pursuits	general experience	rekindling
achievable	classroom setting	frustration
commitment to the process	autonomy	insufficient effort
repertory failure	socialization	self efficacy
procrastination	attribution retraining	task mastery
value	complex intellectual tasks	competition
lack of ability	direct instruction	engender
withholding	discrepancy	constellation of attitudes
competence	task dimensions	to encourage exploration
negative implications	natural curiosity	capacity to tolerate

Task 4. Match each definition with the appropri ate word.

1. Motivation	a__ Loosely, any pleasur
	able or satisfying event or
	thing that is obtained when
	some	requisite task	has
	been carried out.
2. Competence	b__ A term used safely ap
	plicable as a synonym for
	action,	movement,	beha
	viour, mental process, phy
	siological functions and etc.

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3. Reward	c__ An intervening process
	or an internal state of an
	organism		that	impels	or
	drives it to action.
4. Self efficacy	d__ The motivation for any
	behaviour that is depen
	dent on factors that are in
	ternal in origin. It usually
	derives	from		feelings	of
	satisfaction, not from ex
	ternal rewards.
5. Extrinsic	e__ Generally, ability to
motivation	perform some task or ac
	complish smth.
6. Procrastination	f__ The term for individu
	als’ sense of their abilities,
	of their capacity to deal
	with the particular sets of
	conditions that life puts be
	fore them.
7. Punishment	g__ Generally, the process
	whereby an individual ac
	quires the knowledge, va
	lues, facility with language,
	social skills and social sen
	sitivity that enable him or
	her to	become		integrated
	into and behave adaptively
	within a society.
8. Activity	h__ Postponing something
	supposed to be done.
9. Socialization	i__ Motivation that origi
	nates	in	factors outside
	the individual. Behaviour
	that is motivated by re
	wards or punishments ad
	ministered by outside for
	ces.