Literature Review
1. 1. General Background on Motivation
Over the past three decades, a considerable body of research has been, directed toward the role of such affective variables as attitudes, motivation and anxiety (Gardner, Day and MacIntyre, 1992: 197). Learners’ motivation unflaggingly stands out as an important subject that receives much attention for its resilience in teaching/ learning enterprise. Relating to this, numerous studies (e.g. Clement, Dornyei and Noels, 1994) come a surge in interest on the role of motivation in this area. Hence, findings have demonstrated that achievement in language learning is related to measures of attitudes and motivation (Clèment, Gardner, and Smythe 1977, 1980; Gardner and Lambert 1959,1972; Gardner and Smythe 1981; Gliksman 1981) (Cited in Upshur, 1985). However, all the great deal of research done on the subject field of motivation, still debates in delimiting a short-cut definition are on. This is because the concept of motivation is a mystifying and a multifactorial one. Lamberth, McCullers and Mellgren (1976: 243) spell out that some psychologists have called for the deletion of the term motivation from the psychological literature. In the coming paragraphs, we, at least provide the reader with a trial of defining it as provided by authors in the field though the task seems difficult.
To begin with, motivation is an internal state i.e. a want or a need that causes us to act, or it is a condition that activates behaviour and gives it direction as Franken (1994) defines it as: “The arousal, direction, and persistence of behaviour”(In Brown, 1994). Further, one of the definitions of motivation in language learning describes it in terms of the learner’s overall goal or orientation. There is what we call task motivation where the interest felt by the learner in performing different learning tasks (Ellis, 1999: 300g). Moreover, motivation has four major characteristics: what directs our actions, initiation of taking action, pursuing the actions intently, and persisting longer in those things that causes it (Sternberg, 1995).
For the reader not to be much confused and to gain more insight into the concern of the present article, we consider it convenient to point out that motivation can be interpreted in terms of negative or positive emotions. In other words, if negative feelings and emotions are more likely to prevail on the learning experience, we say that a lack or an absence of motivation might exist; a problematic case which we intend to investigate in our present study. Contrariwise, if positive feelings and emotions characterise the learning experience, a high motivation is more likely to be generated. Our focus is to tackle this possibly occurring negative feeling with a another variable; that is classroom interaction. Taking the previous Sternberg’s view, we can relate the four characteristics of motivation to interaction. This phenomenon can direct our actions (whether to get integrated in the group or not), interaction can help the learner whether to initiate the action or not (depending if it is positive or negative), it can also lead either to pursue the action or stop it, and finally it may lead the learner carry on taking the same action. Arnold and Brown state that a foreign language learner is motivated to avoid pain generated by such negative emotions as anger, sadness, disgust, shame, anxiety, stress and depression on the one hand, and to seek out pleasure brought about by positive emotions like high self-esteem, enjoyment, love, surprise and empathy on the other. Such feelings and emotions are more likely to emerge from the classroom interaction. They also determine the kind of the classroom climate or environment. For more clarification, motivation is attributed to interaction and teaching methods; things that constitute the core of our coming sub-section.