One of the most significant factors in the teaching and learning of language which is often left neglected is motivation.

From a students perspective, it is the aspect that contributes to my attention in class. Ever since I was a primary school student, English language learning has always captivated me and reading Andrew Littlejohns article entitled Motivation: Where Does it Come From, Where Does it Go? enabled me to relate some of my experiences as a student to it. Several of Littlejohns ideas that appealed to me include his thoughts on the declining level of motivation, external sources affecting motivation, and the use of the reward system in language learning. The level of motivation tends to decline as students grow older. This is quite an interesting discovery by Littlejohn and starts to occur mostly to secondary school students. I only agree to his view on this matter to a certain extent. I can relate to this experience as a student when my personal liking towards English gradually lessened through the years as I entered high school. However, it used to be quite the opposite back in primary school. My level of interest in the language actually increased throughout the six years that I spent there. I had the chance to participate in various English related competitions (i.e. storytelling, essay writing, and public speaking), which indirectly motivated me to learn the language. That helped to increase my natural liking towards English. In Littlejohns words, this is known as intrinsic satisfaction (Littlejohn, 2001). It was a different picture in high school though. Part of the reason my motivation seemed to wan is because the language started to become more complicated and less fun compared to what it originally was. There were also more competitors for me within the classroom and in effect, I was no longer the centre of attention in English lessons. As I recall, English lessons were practically about analyzing poems and short stories, which actually made it more of a tedious thing to learn instead of being enjoyable. As Littlejohn points out:In general, then, the students natural interest is not something which we can rely on to generate sustained motivation in language learning. (2001: 6).

Student motivation to learn English is also influenced by external factors that lie outside the confinement of a classroom. A teacher could provide the best lesson and classroom climate for her students, but eventually it boils down to the students current condition in the classroom, which is normally affected by external factors. Factors affecting motivation that lie outside the classroom includes home background and personal life issues. (Littlejohn 2001). Another author on motivation, Rost, points out several contributing conditions that influences language acquisition such as the low level of English input in the environment, few opportunities for interactions with native English speakers, and the meager level of social acceptance at the idea of being proficient in the English language within the society.(Rost 2004) Thus, he highlights that a student would need an impeccable level of motivation to successfully learn English. One of my best English lessons was during form 2, during which I had a very great English teacher. Her lessons would usually keep us engaged as she had an interesting character and many life experiences to share. Even with that credibility, she could not keep all the students in the classroom motivated to learn at times. This as I later found out had nothing to do with her lessons, but instead was due to the personal issues and some of the aforementioned conditions that my peers were facing at that time. The reward system in language learning can function both ways; to either motivate or demotivate the students. To motivate students, teachers would choose to give good recognition to better performing students while the weaker ones are often left out, and in certain cases, even punished for underperforming. (Littlejohn 2001). When this occurs, it creates a separation between the bright and weak students within the classroom. In the long run, this can lead to the deteriorating level of motivation to continue learning the language particularly among the weaker student. In a related sense, it also affects the students self-esteem, where rewarding the brighter students increases their confidence level and at the same time lowers that of the weaker students who are subjected to punishments. As a student who performed considerably well in English back in school, I used to receive good grades and be referred to by the teacher during lessons, while some of my peers who were weaker at the language were punished by having to do corrections repeatedly, which often leads to them being frustrated and eventually caused them to start hating being in English lessons. Nevertheless, there

were a couple of weaker students who continually strived to make themselves better to get into the league of good students and receive rewards despite having to face punishments in the initial stages, which points out to another benefit of using the reward system in a different manner to motivate students. In retrospect, it would not be too farfetched to say that we should not underplay motivation as an important factor to achieve success in language teaching and learning. As Rost deliberately points out, there will be no pulse or life to the classroom without the presence of student motivation (Rost 2004). Motivation covers a wide array of areas, where it has the tendency to decline among students if left unchecked, while also being affected by external factors and is one of the desirable outcomes when used with the reward system. Therefore, it should be used extensively as part of a teachers lesson plan as well as in creating a positive classroom atmosphere where the students would readily want to learn and be proficient in English.

List of References:

Littlejohn, A. (2001) Motivation: Where does it come from? Where does it go? English Teaching Professional Issue 19. April 2001 Rost M. (2006) Generating Student Motivation [online] Available from:

http://www.pearsonlongman.com/ae/worldview/motivation.pdf. Accessed 16 October 2009