This research-based article explores the benefits of a motivational framework for culturally responsive teaching in higher education. To support her study, the author explains how she has experimented and utilized a motivational framework in her classes while teaching English as a second language (ESL) to her students from diverse cultural backgrounds.
The author highlights the four different aspects of a motivational framework: inclusion, attitude, meaning, and competence. She also highlights different strategies and activities that she has used in her own classes based on a motivational framework.
This article, through a deep, classroom-driven research project, explores the benefits of four aspects of a motivational framework: inclusion, attitude, meaning, and competence. The most interesting part about this article is that, while utilizing the concept of a motivational framework in her classes; the author converted her experiences into a proposal for the SSTESOL 2017 Annual Conference.
What is Motivation?
Motivation is a concept that is intended to explain one of life’s most elusive questions: why do we do what we do? Implicit in seeking to answer this question is the intention that educators might better understand motivation to encourage student learning (Ginsberg, 2005). Defining motivation as the natural human capacity to direct energy in the pursuit of goals, an undergirding assumption is that human beings are purposeful, and we direct our energy through attention, concentration, and imagination to make sense of our world (Ginsberg, 2005).
Therefore, motivation plays a significant role in defining who we are and what we are. It helps us make our dreams come true and strengthens our existence. It also helps us in building our personality to achieve what we aspire and want to. Motivation helps us in achieving second- language acquisition as well.
What is Culture?
Culture can be defined as the webs of significance we spin as human beings: Who we are and how we interact with the world is an intriguing intersection of language, values, beliefs, and behaviors that pervade every aspect of a person’s life, while continually changing and evolving (Ginsberg, 2005). Culture can also be defined more broadly in terms of acquisition of a second language where the term cultural becomes “intercultural.”
How we view cultural understanding within the language class has evolved from an understanding of the “target culture” toward an understanding of how two different cultures are related (Fenner, 2008). When students internalize a new language and its new culture, they do not work in a vacuum. Indeed, their beliefs, values, and assumptions shape their understanding of themselves and their understanding of others (Kourova & Modianos, 2013).
How Cultural Proficiency Enhances Motivation in ESL Learners
Cultural awareness and respect for cultural diversity always enhance motivation in ESL learners. Language learning is a case of learning symbols and systems of codes but is also a matter of developing cultural knowledge and competence. In fact, culture can be viewed as being a feature of language itself (Kramsch, 1993, cited in Fenner, 2008).
In terms of cultural proficiency, motivation plays an essential part in enhancing students’ foreign or English as a second language learning skills. Motivation arouses students’ interest in learning of a foreign language as they relate often abstract sounds of foreign language to real people and places (Fenner, 2008). Therefore, by applying a motivational framework in second- language teaching, we can certainly enhance the language learning and motivate second- language learners for a positive learning outcome.
What is a Motivational Framework?
A motivational framework integrates vital constructs of motivation from many disciplines. The central tenet of this conceptual framework is that, to support the motivation of all learners, it is necessary to address essential knowledge and skills within a culturally responsive, and intrinsically motivating, pedagogy (Ginsberg, 2005, p. 219). In addition, the