A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Languages
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for different purposes, in different contexts. Furthermore, a learning approach can be
strongly affected by such factors as assessment.
While style classifications can help explain elements of student behaviour that may
otherwise remain perplexing, research suggests it is impossible to effect any significant
change in students’ learning styles. When confronted with a group of students who evince
different learning styles, language tutors can therefore at best ensure that learning
activities both in and out of the classroom are varied, so that all styles are accommodated
for at least some of the time. (For a list of helpful ideas, see Littlemore, 2002: 13.3.4.)
3 Understanding the role of affective factors
Important though learning styles are, students’ motivation is ultimately the major factor
in successful language learning (Dörnyei and Csizer, 1998; Dörnyei, 2001; see also Chapter
3). Lambert and Gardner (1972) distinguish ‘integrative’ from ‘instrumental’ motivation;
the former indicates a genuine interest in the foreign country and the speakers of L2,
while the latter denotes greater concern for the practical benefits of learning the language,
such as gaining a qualification or using it to further one’s career. Integrative motivation
and close identification with the target culture seem to be more successful in motivating
learners to persist with the long, demanding process of L2 learning. The further students
move towards the integrative end of this continuum, the more likely they are to succeed.
However, the importance in HE of ‘resultative’ motivation should also not be forgotten:
self-reinforcing successes and achievements are often a key motivator for advanced
learners, suggesting that motivation often derives from successful language learning
rather than being at the root of it and that the cause/effect model is thus often more
blurred than many assume.
Unlike other disciplines, language learning requires students to forsake part of their
own identity: their sense of self as defined by their relation to a particular language
community. They also have to adopt once more the uncertain role of the imperfect speaker
with its inevitable sense of insecurity and anxiety (see Oxford, 1999). Success will depend
to a considerable extent on how they cope with these two factors.
Teachers need to be sensitive to all these motivational issues, both in the image they
present of the foreign country and its people, and in the way they structure classroom
activities to handle students’ uncertainties.
4 Being involved in shaping the course
Involving students in the organisation of the course implies some or all of the following:
• seeking student preferences as to topics
• allowing students some say in the choice of materials
• engaging students in independent information-gathering