Motivation and Motivating in the Foreign Language Classroom

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: The study of motivation to learn a L2 is a thoroughly discussed and researched subject in the field of L2 acquisition. Nevertheless questions like 'What is motivation? How do humans get motivated? What specifies motivation in language learning?' (Nakata 2006, p. 23) are very difficult, maybe even impossible, to answer entirely. So the aim of the following investigation should not be to give a complete picture of research on L2 motivation but to explore special parts of this extensive topic more precisely and to find out what exactly a teacher can contribute to a motivational teaching in the L2 classroom. To show how to enhance students' motivational intensity, it is necessary to know what motivation is. Therefore the complex theoretical concept of motivation itself will be dealt with at first in this paper. Furthermore there are various kinds of motivation which have been identified by researchers. Some of them will be presented in connection with their theoretical concepts and with reference to this it should be discussed if there is a type of motivation being most effective in terms of L2 learning. In a further step the factors of L2 motivation influencing the level of L2 learning motivation will be investigated in more detail. Having dealt with the nature of motivation itself and its factors the research will have a more practical orientation to the foreign language classroom. For that the point of view will be directed towards teachers and their possibilities of using motivational strategies and techniques in the foreign language classroom. The question how students' motivation can be increased should be the issue to discuss in this place.