Can You Motivate The Unmotivated Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words - 1

Can You Motivate The Unmotivated - Essay Example Jenkins emphasizes that restricting the use of L1 does not help develop the positive attitude towards L2. In fact, flexibility to use L1 can motivate the students and provide the necessary foundation on which to build. Dà ¶rnyei (2001) agrees that facilitation, not control can motivate humans. Jenkins asserts that restricting the use of L1 is monolingualism and this practice is ineffective in low-level homogenous EFL settings. This is because languages have strong, inseparable and complex ties to culture and insisting on monolingualism is to exert pressure on the students to check their identities. The question then arises whether restricting the use of L1 assists in or inhibits the proper acquisition and learning of the second language, in short, whether it is an asset or a liability. This paper sheds some light on motivation theories and their application with respect to EFL. This would help the teaching fraternity as well as help students in developing a positive attitude towards the target language, thereby enabling them to lay a firm foundation for speaking and writing in L2. In order to evaluate the issue under consideration, I will look at the recent research works and studies on L2 motivation as a second language (in a foreign environment) or foreign language (in a native English-speaking country). For the analysis of the problem, I have selected a few relevant documents to accumulate knowledge and to establish well-grounded theoretical context and conceptual framework for the paper. So this assignment can also serve as a comprehensive summary of the relevant studies which comprise, for example, Clà ©ment and Gardne, (2001), Dà ¶rnyei (2001a, 2001c) and MacIntyre (2002).