Donald Keene on motivation in language learning
Don’t worry, Donald Keene isn’t a TEFL expert or new TEFL blogger who you should have heard of. I was hoping to get some interesting factlets about Japan from his autobiography for my JapanExplained blog. Couldn’t turn my TEFL brain off, though, and so underlined these two little factors that I’d never really thought of that way before:
“We studied hard at the language school, though there was no reward for proficiency. Indeed, everyone who graduated from the school was commissioned, regardless of his marks on the weekly tests. Perhaps there was an element of patriotism in performing one’s best in wartime when other young men were dying for their country, but I believe that a more important reason for diligence was the desire of each student to prove that his own university was the best” pg 34
“One of his students from Taiwan, of Japanese ancestry, had been born in America and had recently returned. Kerr intended to spend the summer at his house in the North Carolina mountains studying Japanese with his former student. He feared, however, that if he were the only one studying, he would not be very diligent. Competition would help, and therefore he was trying to find three or four others who wished to learn Japanese as well.” pg 26
February 6th, 2012 at 10:01 pm
Interesting point he makes about competition in the second post. Have you read ‘Language Play, Language Learning’ by Guy Cook, Alex? In it he draws a very useful analogy between language play and ball games, which show how both competition and collaboration combined can be of help in the classroom.
February 7th, 2012 at 4:08 am
The way I remember it, I had a flick through and decided it added nothing to what I could have come up with myself after reading the David Crystal book on the topic, but will have another look if I come across a copy again.