R. C. Gardner

An Instrumental Motivation in Language Study: Who Says It Isn't Effective?.

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of integrative motivation and instrumental motivation on the learning of French/English vocabulary. Integrative motivation was defined in terms of a median split on scores obtained on subtests from the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery, while instrumental motivation was situationally determined in terms of monetary reward for doing well. The results demonstrated that both integrative motivation and instrumental motivation facilitated learning. Other results indicated that instrumentally motivated students studied longer than noninstrumentally motivated students when there was an opportunity to profit from learning, but this distinction disappeared when the incentive was removed. Both integratively and instrumentally motivated students spent more time thinking about the correct answer than those not so motivated, suggesting that both elements have an energizing effect. A secondary purpose of this study was to assess the consequences of computer administration of the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery. In this respect the results were most encouraging. Computer administration appeared not to detract from the internal consistency reliability of the subscales used, and moreover there was an indication that an index of reaction time to individual items might provide a way of identifying social desirability responding

Attitudes and Motivation.

The notion that attitudes and motivation would be implicated in second language acquisition is not a new one. As early as 1941, Jordan investigated the relation between attitudes toward a number of school subjects and grades in those subjects, and found the relationships for French to be among the highest. A number of later studies by other researches also showed relationships between attitudes towards learning languages and proficiency in the language (see Gardner 1985 for a review). The first reference to a possible relationship between attitudes toward the other language community and achievement in that language, however, appears to have been made by Arsenian (1945). One of the many relevant questions he raised, for example, was, “In what way do affective factors, such as social prestige, assumed superiority, or—contrariwise—assumed inferiority, or enforcement of a language by a hated nation affect language learning in a child?” (Arsenian 1945:85).

Type I Error Rate Comparisons of Post Hoc Procedures for I j Chi-Square Tables:

The authors used Monte Carlo methods to assess the per-contrast and experimentwise Type I error rates of two post hoc tests of cellwise residuals and four post hoc tests of pairwise contrasts in 3 4 chi-square contingency tables. The six post hoc procedures were evaluated under three sample sizes and under the null hypotheses of independence and homogeneity. Results of the study indicate that the cellwise adjusted residual method provided adequate experimentwise Type I error rate control when appropriate adjustments to the alpha level were made, and the Gardner pairwise post hoc procedure provided several advantages over the other pairwise procedures. This was true for both the independence and homogeneity models.

The Effects of Induced Anxiety on Three Stages of Cognitive Processing in Computerized Vocabulary Learning

Language anxiety is a prevalent phenomenon in second language learning. This experiment examines the arousal of anxiety caused by the introduction of a video camera at various points in a vocabulary learning task. Seventy-two students of 1st-year university French were randomly assigned to one of four groups: (a) one group who had anxiety aroused during their initial exposure to the stimuli, (b) a second group who had anxiety aroused when they began to learn the meanings of the words, (c) a third group who had anxiety aroused when they were asked to produce the French word (when prompted with the English), and (d) a control group who did not experience anxiety arousal. Significant increases in state anxiety were reported in all three groups when the video camera was introduced, and concomitant deficits in vocabulary acquisition were observed. It is concluded that the stage at which anxiety arises has implications for any remedial action taken to reduce the effects of language anxiety.

SECOND LANGUAGE ATTRITION: THE ROLE OF MOTIVATION AND USE'

This study investigated the nature of second language (French) skills lost by grade 12 students over the course of the summer vacation, and the role played by attitudes and motivation in promoting language achievement and language maintenance. The results demonstrated that students rated many of their skills somewhat weaker after the summer vacation, but these effects were more general for items dealing with understanding skills than for speaking skills, and somewhat intermediate for reading and writing skills. Comparisons on objective assessments appeared to indicate improvement over the summer months on some skills, except for grammatical accuracy, that decreased, but these were interpreted as quite probably reflecting measurement artifacts. Although the attitude and motivation measures correlated quite meaningfully with the various measures of French proficiency, they did not correlate with loss of skill as indexed by simple change scores. A causal modelling analysis indicated nonetheless that attitudes and motivation were implicated in second language acquisition and retention, the latter primarily because motivational variables determine the extent to which individuals will make use of the second language during the summer period.

Integrative Motivation, Induced Anxiety, and Language Learning in a Controlled Environment.

This study examines the effects of both integrative motivation and anxiety on computerized vocabulary acquisition using a laboratory analog procedure as a microcosm of second language learning. An attempt was made to induce anxiety in one group of subjects by videotaping them while learning. Individual differences in integrative motivation were measured by aggregating relevant scales. Subjects higher in integrative motivation showed superior vocabulary acquisition and tended to initiate a translation more quickly than did those lower in integrative motivation. The anxiety manipulation did not appear to influence behavior during the learning trials. A second set of analyses revealed that subjects with more positive attitudes tended to respond more quickly and consistently to the attitude items. The results are discussed in terms of the operational definition of integrative motivation and its relation to anxiety.

Home Background Characteristics and Second Language Learning

Some researchers investigating second language acquisition argue that the sociocultural milieu of the learner influences individual difference variables involved in learning a second language. This study investigated this link by assessing the linguistic nature of the home community, respondents’ recollections of early experiences in second language learning, and their current attitudes and beliefs about language learning and bilingualism. The sample consisted of 109 1st-year university students enrolled in an introductory psychology course. Support was found for a causal model that indicated that early sociocultural experiences, as reflected in respondents’ recollections, influence their current cultural attitudes, motivation to learn a second language, and self-perceptions of second language proficiency.

Motivation and Attitudes Towards Learning Languages in Multicultural Classrooms

This study investigated the effect of the cultural background of immigrant children on affective variables in learning three different languages. Participants were students in secondary multicultural classrooms in Spain. A total of 114 students, aged 12 to 16, answered a questionnaire based on Gardners Attitude = Motivation Test Battery assessing their attitudes, motivation and anxiety towards learning Catalan, Spanish and English. In addition, the students also completed self-ratings of their language achievement in each of the three languages. The results demonstrated that there were few differences attributable to cultural background. Asian students were lower in instrumental orientation than African students, and had more positive attitudes towards learning the languages than Spanish students. There were many more differences attributable to the language being studied. Overall, affective variables were more positive for both Spanish and English than for Catalan, with little difference between Spanish and English. Cultural background interacted with language studied to influence scores on the measures of parental encouragement and self-ratings of language proficiency. A factor analysis demonstrated that integrative motivation was generally language specific (i.e. three distinct factors were obtained, one for each language), but that orientations, language anxiety and parental encouragement tended to apply generally to the three languages, forming three distinct factors. The results are discussed in terms of the specificity vs generality of some variables to the language being studied, as well as the relative significance of the three languages to the students in this study.

The Socio-Educational Model of Second Language Acquisition: an Investigation Using Lisrel Causal Modeling

Linear Structural Relations analysis (LISREL) was used to examine the adequacy of a causal model of second language acquisition. A total of 18 variables were investigated using 140 students enrolled in one of two first year university French courses in a unilingual anglophone city. The model under investigation linked cultural beliefs, attitudes, motivation, situational anxiety, and prior achievement to proficiency in a second language. The results supported a socio-educational model of second language acquisition where proficiency in a second language was seen to be caused directly by prior achievement and motivation. Motivation was found to be caused by attitudinal variables which, in turn, were influenced by cultural beliefs. Individual differences in situational anxiety were determined by both prior achievement and motivation.

On the growth of structural equation modeling in psychological journals

This study investigates the distribution of technical and substantive structural equation modeling articles (SEM) that were published in psychological journals from 1987 to 1994. An inspection of more than 1050 abstracts on PsycLit 1987–1995 (PsycINFO, 1973–1995) revealed a number of clear trends: (a) an increase by year of articles concerned with SEM, (b) an increase in the number of journals that publish structural equation modeling articles, (c) a relatively stable output of technical articles across years, and (d) an increase of substantive articles across years. Furthermore, when the substantive articles are classified as either causal models or confirmatory factor analyses, a similar “growth” trend across years occurs for both categories. We further inspected the growth trend by considering the ratio of SEM articles to the total number of psychology articles and by comparing these results to distributions of analysis of variance, multivariate analysis of variance, regression, and factor analyses art...