Find Motivation x Realize Motivation

I was reading an interesting document on good language learners this week, trying to find a way to tell my students how they can become ‘good language learners’ and consequently boost their learning process. I’ve become interested in understanding why some people manage to learn a second language so quickly, whereas others struggle to make progress.

The quickest conclusion I’ve heard people say is related to intelligence: “my brother is so smart, he never does his homework, but he only gets straight As and speaks with a very good pronunciation”. The second argument is aptitude, I’ve found myself saying many times “some people are good with languages, others with mathematics”.

Ok, fair enough. Let’s suppose the statements above are true, then what to do if your IQ is not the highest one in class? Or if you realise that languages are not exactly your cup of tea? Give up the idea of learning a second language? Don’t think so, right?

In my opinion, and I’m a hundred percent sure I’m not alone, motivation is a key aspect to be considered, but it is a rather subjective concept, difficult to be applied in practice. What can I say to a student: “Find motivation to improve your results?”.

So I’ve tried to be practical, and came up with some interesting thoughts (interesting for me, at least!). If we use our first example, the brother who’s really good at languages without studying, we might find out that he spends a lot of his time in front of a computer playing online games. And guess what? He must chat in English when he plays.

If we investigate the second example a little bit further, we might find out that someone who shows great aptitude for learning English is crazy about the Beatles.

We might come to a rather obvious and common place solution: language is only relevant if it’s used. There’s no purpose in learning a language that you won’t use. So it’s not a matter of finding the motivation to study a language that really matters. It’s probably just as difficult as trying to find a meaning to our lives or the Holy Grail (pardon the cliché exaggeration).

Instead, for me it’s a lot easier if ask yourself one question: What are my favourite hobbies? What do I really love doing? Not so difficult to find some answers. If you know what you like to do to have fun, then the next step is asking yourself if you can do it in a second language. Of course, if your favourite leisure activity is playing football, it you’ll be weird to see you celebrating your goal in a different language, but you can still find matches to watch on TV or youtube in virtually any language.

But if you try to make a short list of things you like doing, I’m sure you’ll find something useful. For example:

·        Cooking? What about trying out new recipes in a different language?

·         Reading books? No need to comment here.

·         Reading the newspaper? Plenty of free options out there.

·         Jogging? Choosing a good soundtrack might help.

·         Mobile phone games? Have you tried scrabble?

I could go on forever, from the most obvious ones (movies, songs, books, newspapers, online news, magazines, podcasts,…) to the not so obvious (recipes, manuals, martial arts lessons on youtube, online chatting, horoscope,…)

When you change perspective and first focus on what you like doing, the association with language learning becomes a pleasant one, as you’re doing what you like rather than learning a new language. It just so happens that your interests now come in a different format.

You don’t have to necessarily find motivation. It’s a lot easier to use the motivations you already have.