Response paper

Motivation is very obviously a really important part to learning any new skill, especially language. I have noticed within my own learning that motivation plays a huge role in how well I learn and retain information. For instance I really struggled to continue learning Spanish during quarantine of the spring last year because I had no motivation to do my school work. I think that this was probably a very common trend during that time. I think that the main difference, as I noticed in the text, was the difference in attitude between Richard and Alice. Yes, they were both very motivated to learn the language, but Alice enjoyed learning the language and gained enjoyment from it. Richard however, was more so determined to learn the language out of pride and was trying to prove himself. This is a huge difference in attitude and was a factor in why Richard could not learn French as efficiently as Alice was able to.

The other motivational factors listed in the text were also very interesting. I had not considered confidence before when reflecting on my language abilities. However, now that I have thought about it, confidence can play a very big role in actually using the language and participation during class. I have found that it is often the most confident students who participate and speak the most in language classes. This leads to them also performing better and gaining an overall better knowledge of the language. I think that learning this and applying it in future L2 classroom setting will help me to further grasp onto my L2 language. I think that confidence could have also been one of the reasons that Richard struggled to learn French, as was previously said in text, when Richard tried to speak French in Paris he was told to speak English. This could have hurt his confidence on his speaking abilities and made him less motivated to continue trying to learn French. With Alice, because she began speaking French much younger than Richard, she probably has a lot more confidence in her speaking abilities.

I thought that this topic was really interesting and I am intrigued to see what future research is done covering motivation. I think that it plays a huge factor in many more aspects of life than language learning, but as we have seen, motivation can be detrimental to learning and being successful in an L2 language.