Intergrative Motivation of Hong Kong Language Learners

Introduction

This study focuses on the relationship between integrative motivation and L2 achievement among Chinese L2 learners in Hong Kong.

Integrative motivation has been found to be correlated with a number of factors, such as perseverance (e.g., Clément et al., 1978; Ramage, 1990) and classroom behaviours (e.g., Gliksman et al., 1982; Naiman et al., 1978), in addition to L2 achievement (Gardner, 1985). Therefore, having a deeper understanding of the relationship between integrative motivation and L2 linguistic achievement in Hong Kong allows teachers, curriculum planners and policy makers to improve teaching practices and policies.

Since previous research has found that Chinese students in Hong Kong tend to be more instrumentally motivated (e.g., Pennington and Yue, 1994; Pierson, Fu and Lee, 1980; Richards, 1994), instrumental motivation is included in the present study. In this exploratory study, one aspect of motivation - goals of learning English as a second language - has been selected as it is the basic motive for learners to learn English.

The relationship between integrative motivation and L2 linguistic achievement of Chinese L2 learners has not been extensively studied. Gathering some preliminary findings on integrative motivation will increase our understanding of the issues specifically related to Chinese L2 learners.

Literature Review

The most extensive research on integrative motivation and L2 linguistic achievement has been done by Gardner and his colleagues (Gardner, 1996; 1985; 1980; 1979; Gardner, Ginsberg & Smythe, 1976; Gardner, Lalonde & Moorcroft, 1985; Gardner & Lambert, 1972; Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993; 1991). Gardner's studies were based on his framework which he later developed into his socio-educational model (Gardner, 1996; 1985). Gardner and his colleagues found that integrative motivation, which refers to ‘a sincere and personal interest in the people and culture represented by the other language group’ (Lambert, 1974, p.98), was a more powerful predictor of linguistic achievement as it was consistently correlated with L2 linguistic achievement. Instrumental integration, which refers to ‘the practical value and advantages of learning a new language’ (Lambert, 1974, p.98), was found to be related to L2 linguistic achievement in some studies only. Since its introduction, Gardner's model has dominated the area of language learning motivation, and a lot of evidence has confirmed the strong correlation between integrative motivation and L2 linguistic achievement (see Ellis, 1999; Laine, 1981; Kraemer, 1990, cited in Gardner and MacIntyre, 1992; Skehan, 1989; Oxford and Ehrman, 1993; Spolsky, 1989).

As far as studies on Chinese learners are concerned, Lai (1999) compared the findings of four studies conducted in 1998, 1995, 1992 and 1990 on Hong Kong secondary school students. She concludes that there is a strong instrumental, career-related motive of learners, which was previously reported by Pennington and Yue (1994); Pierson, Fu and Lee (1980); Richards (1994), Littlewood and Liu (1996), Kwok et al. (1972), Ho (1979), Lin et al. (1991), Fu (1975), Lai (1996), Walters and Balla (1998) and Shaw (1981). Among these studies, only the one by Pierson, Fu and Lee (1980) focuses on the relationship between integrative motivation and L2 linguistic achievement. In addition to confirming the findings of earlier studies that Chinese students in Hong Kong are more instrumentally motivated, they found that L2 linguistic achievement correlates more with instrumental motivation, contrary to findings reported by Gardner and his colleagues. This is in line with what Lukmani (1972) reported.

Some other studies found that instrumental motivation and other types of motivation such as manipulative motivation also affect L2 linguistic achievement (e.g., Laine, 1981; Gardner and MacIntyre, 1991; Dornyei, 1990; Lambert et al., 1968; Burstall, 1975; Gardner, 1996). Yet some studies simply failed to find any relationship between integrative motivation and L2 linguistic achievement (e.g., Oller, Baca and Vigil, 1977; Oller and Perkins, 1978; Chihara and Oller, 1978).

Teaching of English at St. Francis Xavier's College

St. Francis Xavier's College (SFXC) is a boys' school in Hong Kong with Chinese secondary students aged from 12 to 18. There are about 40 students in each class, with 5 classes in each of the 5 levels (S1 to S5). In S6 and S7, the matriculation classes, there are about 30 students in each of the 3 classes. In total there are about 1,200 students. SFXC is a Band 1 school which has the top 20% of primary school pupils in Hong Kong.

As other students in Hong Kong, students at SFXC have little or no exposure to English at home. However, unlike other schools, SFXC is an English medium school in which all subjects are taught in English.

As far as the teaching of English is concerned, in Hong Kong most schools, including SFXC, follow the communicative approach, which is prescribed in both the syllabi set by the Education Department (for S1 to S3) and the Hong Kong Examination Authority (S4 to S7).

Methods

Most studies on integrative motivation to date have been quantitative in nature (e.g., Gardner, 1989; 1989; 1975). The present study includes the collection of qualitative data with the aim of providing more details to supplement the quantitative findings.

Survey

Integrative and Instrumental Motivation

The Integrative and Instrumental Orientation scales of the original 7-point Likert Scale format of Gardner's Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMI) (Gardner, 1985) were adapted to a 5-point scale, ranged from ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly Disagree’. The AMI is reported to have good reliability and validity (Gardner, 1985; 1980; Gardner and Smythe, 1981).

Linguistic Achievement

Total marks of respondents' last term English examinations were used with the consent of the school and respondents. An item for respondents to rate their own English proficiency level was also included in the survey questionnaire to measure respondents' perceived motivation.

A sample of the questionnaire is in Appendix 1.

Questionnaires were distributed by the researcher before an English lesson to a class of 41 S4 students. Instructions and time for questions were given before the survey started. Respondents were given 5 minutes to complete the questionnaire and were informed that the information they gave would be kept confidential and be used for research purposes only.

Semi-Structured Interview

Six questions were constructed to elicit qualitative information on interviewees' goals of learning English, the importance of language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) and their perceived English proficiency. A sample of the outline of the semi-structured interview is in Appendix 2.

To avoid the same student being included in both the survey and interviews, the 10 interviewees were randomly selected from the other 4 classes of 165 students. Interviews were conducted after school and interview sessions were tape recorded with the consent of interviewees.

Findings

Survey

A total of 41 questionnaires were collected. Respondents were all male students, with a mean age of 15.4.

Integrative Motivation

The frequency distribution and mean scores of the 4 items on integrative motivation are shown in Table 1 below:

Table 1 (n=41)

Score	Q1	%	Q2	%	Q3	%	Q4	%
1	0	0	0	0	1	2	0	0
2	1	2	0	0	17	41	4	10
3	3	7	3	7	7	17	5	12
4	24	59	22	54	13	32	20	49
5	3	32	16	39	3	7	12	29
Total	41	100	41	100	41	100	41	100
Mean Score	4.2	--	4.3	--	3.0	--	4.0	--

As we can see from the Table 1 above, the mean score of the questions are 4 or above except Question 3 (‘Studying English can be important for me because it will enable me to better understand and appreciate British art and literature’). With an overall mean score of 3.9, respondents have quite high integrative motivation and in general agree that studying English can allow them to interact with other English speakers, to meet more variety of English speaking people and participate more freely activities of other cultural groups. However, they are neutral in viewing learning of English as a means to appreciate British arts and literature.

Instrumental Motivation

The frequency distribution and mean scores of the 4 items on integrative motivation are shown in Table 2 below:

Table 2 (n=41)

Score	Q5	%	Q6	%	Q7	%	Q8	%
1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
2	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	7
3	0	0	2	5	0	0	6	15
4	13	32	16	39	11	27	18	44
5	28	68	23	56	30	73	14	34
Total	41	100	41	100	41	100	41	100
Mean Score	4.7	--	4.5	--	4.7	--	4.0	--

Compared to integrative motivation, respondents have higher instrumental motivation. The mean scores for all the 4 questions are 4 or above. Worth mentioning is that the two questions which have the highest mean score of 4.7 (Question 5 and 7) concern future career (‘Studying English can be important for me because I'll need it for my future career.’) and getting a good job (‘Studying English can be important for me because I think it will someday be useful in getting a good job.’). With the overall mean score of 4.5, we can conclude that respondents have very high instrumental motivation.

Linguistic Achievement

Respondents are the top 20% of the secondary 4 level. Therefore their linguistic performance is relatively better than the rest of their counterparts of the same level. Their mean score of 85.4 compared to the mean of 75.6 of the mean of all the 5 classes of the same level.

Respondents' perceived levels of English proficiency are detailed in Table 3 below:

Table 3 (n=41)

	Rating	n	%
1	Very Bad	0	0
2	Bad	0	0
3	Average	7	17.1
4	Good	24	58.5
5	Very Good	10	24.4
	Total	41	100.0

Most respondents perceived their English proficiency to be good, with an overall mean of 4.1. This is consistent to the actual proficiency measured by their English examination results.

Semi-Structured Interview

Due to time constraint, only 8 interviews were conducted and recorded.

Reasons for Learning English

All 8 interviewees mentioned that they learn English for various practical reasons, including future career development, studying abroad in the future, travelling. One interviewee expressed that an additional reason for him to learn English is that he likes to read storybooks and one expressed he likes writing in English. Although three of them mentioned one of the reasons of learning English is that they would like to meet more English-speaking people, especially native speakers, further discussions revealed that practical reasons such as career development are more important goal to them.

When asked the reasons for other students learning English, all the interviewees think that it is for practical reasons as they mentioned.

Goals of Learning English

Most interviewees expressed that they would like to learn English up to the level that they can communicate effectively with their colleagues in their future jobs. Half of them also mentioned they would like their English level to allow them to live, study and work in English speaking countries. One of them aims at a native-speaker level.

Importance of English Skills

Generally speaking, most interviewees regard speaking and listening as more important than reading and writing, with the reason that being able to have face-to-face communication is most important in effective communication. More specifically, 4 interviewees chose listening and 3 chose speaking as the most important skills, and only 1 chose writing and none chose reading as the first priority. On the other hand, 3 chose reading and 3 chose writing as the least important skills.

Perceived English Proficiency

The mean rating of the perceived English proficiency of the 8 interviewees from a 5-point Likert Scale ranged from 1 (‘Very Bad’) to 5 (‘Very Good’) is 3.5. This means that in general all the interviewees perceived their English proficiency to be reasonably good. The interviewees view their level of English proficiency as relatively lower than their counterparts who filled in the survey questionnaires. This is natural as the interviewees were selected from classes which are academically less outstanding.

Discussion

Taken together, findings from both qualitative and quantitative data of the present study give a consistent picture that instrumental goals, especially future career development and meeting more varied people with career-related purposes are more important than integrative goals such as appreciating British arts and literature. This confirmed previous findings that Chinese people tend to be more instrumental in their motivation towards learning English as a second language (Gardner, 1985; Cook, 1996; Shaw, 1981; Lai, 1999; Pennington and Yue, 1994; Pierson, Fu and Lee, 1980; Richards, 1994). In addition to high instrumental motivation, the findings of this study show that integrative motivation is also important to respondents. Together with the rather high actual and perceived linguistic proficiency, the findings seem to support some of the earlier findings that both types of motivation contribute to linguistic achievement (Gardner and MacIntyre, 1991). However, we must bear in mind that the respondents in this study are students with better English proficiency. The high motivation, especially integrative motivation might be a result of high linguistic achievement (e.g., Burstall, 1975, cited in Skehan, 1989; Strong, 1983; 1984; Savignon, 1972; Hermann, 1980, cited in Ellis, 1999; Gardner, 1989; Au, 1988). Therefore, conclusions cannot be drawn lightly, as it is highly plausible that motivation is a result rather than a cause of language proficiency. There is another possibility that the two types of motivation are confounding concepts (e.g., Muchnick and Wolfe, 1982; Ely, 1986; Oller, 1978a; 1978b; Gardner, 1980; Clément, Smythe, and Gardner, 1978; Dornyei, 1990; Clément and Kruidenier, 1983). More research should be done in order that we can have a clearer picture towards these issues.

Similar to previous studies on attitudes, the present study only gives a cross-sectional view of motivation at a given time. As mentioned earlier, attitudes may change over time depending on a lot of factors such as temporary loss of self-esteem. It is also simplistic to assume attitudes and motivation as static concepts (Oller, 1981). An interesting study by Berwick and Ross (1989) found changes in the motivation of Japanese university students in L2 English learning. Despite low motivation at the beginning of the course, two new motivational factors, ‘support’ and ‘interest’ emerged during the course and broadened students' motivation.

Green (1999) questions the applicability of Gardner's data to society other than a close-proximity bilingual society such as Montreal. As Hong Kong is a monolingual society, Gardner's integrative and instrumental motivation might not be applicable and affect the validity of the findings of the present study.

Motivation is by no means the only factor affecting L2 achievement (Laine, 1981; Clément, 1986; Clément and Kruidenier, 1985; 1983; Ellis, 1999; 1986; Gardner and MacIntyre, 1992; Kruidenier and Clément, 1986; Ramage, 1990; Oxford and Ehrman, 1993). For example, affective, cognitive and action attitudes toward schoolwork, learners' notion of difficulty of target language study, etc. (Laine, 1981) as well as intelligence, language aptitude and language-learning strategies (Gardner and MacIntyre, 1992; Spolsky, 1989; Oxford, 1989; Skehan, 1991; 1989) were found to affect L2 linguistic achievement. Similarly, Clément (1986) and his colleagues (Clément, Gardner and Smythe, 1977; 1980; Clément, Major, Gardner and Smythe, 1977) found that self-confidence was the strongest predictor of linguistic achievement and friendship, travel, knowledge and instrumental motivation rather than integrative motivation are related to linguistic achievement too (Kruidenier and Clément, 1986). Moreover, the relationship between integrative motivation and linguistic achievement is not direct but involves other factors as well (Gliksman, Gardner and Smythe, 1982; Naiman et al., 1978; Berwick and Ross, 1989; Gardner and MacIntyre, 1992; Svanes, 1988; 1987). There is also the criticism that the dualistic conception of integrative motivation is unhelpful as it provides little information on other important variables such as the amount of effort learners put into learning (Richards, 1993). All these must be taken into consideration in interpreting the findings of the present study.

Implications for Teaching

As confirmed by the findings of the present study, Chinese learners are more instrumental in learning English. Teachers should be sensitive to learners' motives, to recognise their instrumentality, and at the same time raise their integrative motivation, as both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are required to induce people to learn (Csikszentmihaly, 1990; cited in McGroarty, 1996). Teachers should encourage a balanced development of both types of motivation especially for Chinese learners. Recognising learners' instrumental motives can be easily achieved by preparing learners for examinations and focusing more on practical skills such as how to communicate with other people when travelling abroad. On the other hand, raising their interests towards the culture of the target language (i.e., English) can be done by activities such as giving information on the lifestyle, geography, literature of the English-speaking countries through visual, written and audio forms, or even organising group-sharing for learners who have been to English speaking countries.

According to Gardner (1985; 1996), attitudes are related to motivation and can be changed (Morgan, 1993). Teachers can raise learners' integrative motivation by enhancing their positive attitudes and correcting their negative stereotypes towards English speaking countries and people as well as the English language itself. Rossier (1975) provides a more specific recommendation of providing opportunities for communication to raise learners' integrative motivation. His suggestion is supported by the findings of a study by Gardner, Ginsberg and Smythe (1976).

Apart from raising Chinese learners' level of integrative motivation, teachers can improve the contents, teaching methods, classroom activities to raises students' interests and motivation in language learning. Both Keller (1984, cited in Ellis, 1999) and McNamara (1973, cited in Ellis, 1999) suggest that increasing learners' participation is a good way to raise their interests in learning which in turn increase motivation. Similar positive findings were found in involving learners, for example, in decision making (Bachman, 1964). Learners who are able to set their own goals, evaluate their own progress were found to be more motivated (Holec, 1987; 1980; Dickinson, 1987). Crookes and Schmidt (1991) point out that motivation is the feeling nurtured primarily by the classroom teacher (Finnochiaro, 1981). Therefore, teachers should be the agent to create a friendly and enthusiastic environment. In addition to good rapport with learners, teachers can raise learners' motivation by enhancing the environment, the contents and the ways they deliver their lessons, etc. As attitude change is influenced by a number of factors, including the credibility and attractiveness of the presenter, consequences of communication, environment, involvement of learners, form and content of message (Morgan, 1993), teachers should improve these aspects to facilitate better learner motivation.

Eliciting the purpose and rationale of instruction to learners can also increase their motivation (Nunan, 1995). Nunan (1995) suggests a number of guidelines in the experiential, learning process and language content domains for teachers to increase learner motivation.

As the causal relationship between integrative motivation and classroom behaviours is unclear, encouraging positive classroom behaviours may be another option for teachers to enhance learners' positive attitudes which in turn raise motivation (Cook, 1996; 1993).

Oxford and Ehrman (1993) mention ‘teachers must do everything they can to heighten L2 learning motivation by ensuring that the materials and the tasks are communicative, non-threatening, exciting, relevant, appropriately challenging, capable of stimulating successful performance, and presented according to students' favoured need to help reverse any negative attitudes (e.g., stereotypes) that might harm student motivation’ (p.200). This is a good attitude teachers should develop.

Conclusion

Despite the unresolved theoretical and methodological issues mentioned earlier, the findings of this exploratory study show that Chinese students in Hong Kong are more inclined towards instrumental goals in their learning of English, and high motivation is related to high actual and perceived linguistic achievements. Teachers should be aware of this learner characteristic and facilitate a balanced development of the two types of motivation.

Although a lot of suggestions on how to increase motivation have been made, as Ellis (1999) points out, there has been very little systematic research on how these suggestions affects motivation. Teachers, as action researchers, should try to conduct more research in this area. Another line of further research is to focus on how motivation facilitates learning rather than whether it facilitates it (Gardner, 1996).

As mentioned in the introduction, integrative motivation is influenced by a number of factors. More research should be done on the correlates of integrative motivation, for example, ethnic identity (Lambert, 1995, 1974, cited in Gardner, 1989), cultural distance (Schumann, 1976; Schumann and Schumann, 1977; Svanes, 1988), learning strategies (Spolsky, 1989; Skehan, 1989), etc.. An example is that Flowerdew and Miller (1995) discuss the influence of Chinese Confucian culture on students' attitudes towards learning, including those of L2 learning.

In response to the criticism of the shortcoming of Gardner's dualistic conception and the validity of Gardner's data to monolingual society such as Hong Kong as mentioned earlier, Green (1999) advocates the use of other framework in the study of language learning motivation. In his study of the language learning motivation of university students of Hong Kong, he employed the developmental framework of Deci and Ryan (1985). More similar research employing other frameworks should be done in order that we know more about how other factors in addition to motivation influence linguistic achievement.