Attitudes and Motivation in Second-Language Learning

Gardner, Robert C. And Wallace E. Lambert. 1972. Attitudes and Motivation in Second-Language Learning. Massachusetts: Newbury House.

“How is it that some people can learn a foreign language quickly and expertly while others, given the same opportunities to learn, are utter failures?”
(p. 1)

“Our interest has centered on this matter of individual differrences in skill with foreign languages, and in order to keep as many other influences as possible under control we have so far dealt mainly with adolescents in school settings learning one of the two most prestigious languages in the world, French and English.”
(p.1)

“When then is it to have a knack for learning a foreign language?”

“We have approached this absorbing question not as linguists or language teachers but as behavioral scientist—in particular, social psychologists—interested in the matter of learning. When looked at from a sociopsychological perspective the process of learning a second language takes on a special significance. Over and above aptitude, one would then anticipate that a really serious student of a foreign or second language who has an open, inquisitive, and unprejudiced orientation toward the learning task might very likely find himself becoming an acculturated member of a new linguistic and cultural community as he develops a mastery of that other group’s language.”
(p.2)

“Advancing towards biculturality in this manner could have various effects on different language learners. For some,the experience might be seen as enjoyable and broadening. For others, especially minority group members, it could be taken as an imposition, and learning the language would be accompanied by resentment and ill feeling.”
(p.2)

“A series of studies carried out by a small group of us at McGill University and University of Western Ontario over the past twelve years has been concerned with such topics, and the findings of these investigations have gradually permitted us to construct the beginnings of sociopsychological theory of second or foreign-language learing. This theory, in brief, maintains that the successful learner of a second language must be psychologically prepared to adopt various aspects of behavior which characterize members of another linguistic-cultural group. The learner’s ethnocentric tendencies and his attitudes toward the members of the other group are believed to determine how successful he will be, relatively, in learning the new language. His motivation to learn is thought to be determined by his attitudes toward the other group in particular and toward foreign people in general and by his orientation toward the learning task itself. The orientation is said to be instrumental in form if the purposes of language study reflect the more utilitarian value of lingustic achievement, such as getting ahead in one’s occupation. In contrast, the orientation is integrative if the student wishes to learn more about the other cultural community because he is interested in it in an open-minded way, to the point of eventually being accepted as a member of that other group. Variance in outlooks is recognized: some may be anxious to learn another language as a means of being accepted in another ethnolinguistic group because of dissatisfactions experienced in their own culture, while others may be as interested, in a friendly and inquisitive way, in the other culture as they are in their own. However, the more proficient one becomes in a second language, the more he may find his place in his original membership group modified since the new linguistic-culture group is likely to become for him something more than a mere reference group. It may, in fact, become for him something more than a mere reference group. It may, in fact, become a second membership group for him. Depending upon how he makes his adjustment to the two cultures, he may experience feelings of chagrin or regret as he loses ties in one group, mixed with the fearful anticipation of entering a new and somewhat strange group. Thus feeling of social uncertaintu or dissatisfaction which often characterize the immigrant and the bilingual may also, we believe, affect the serious student of a second language. “
(p.3)