Plenary session by Ema Ushioda [audio starts after 04:15]

Ema Ushioda is an associate professor in ELT and applied linguistics at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, where she teaches MA courses to pre- and post-experience English language teachers and is in charge of the Doctorate in Education programme. She has been working in language education since 1982 and obtained her PhD in 1996 from Trinity College, Dublin. During the 1990s, she was involved in running institution-wide language programmes at Trinity College, and in designing and evaluating a version of the Council of Europe’s European Language Portfolio for use in Irish secondary schools, before moving to the UK in 2002. Her main research interests are language motivation, learner autonomy, sociocultural theory and teacher development, and she has given numerous talks, in-service courses and workshops for language teachers from different parts of the world. She has also published widely, particularly on the topics of motivation and autonomy. Book publications include Learner Autonomy 5: The Role of Motivation (Authentik, 1996), and Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self (co-edited with Zoltán Dörnyei, Multilingual Matters, 2009). She is currently working on a revised edition of Teaching and Researching Motivation (co-authored with Zoltán Dörnyei, Pearson Education).

Socialising students’ motivation and autonomy in the English language classroom

Motivation has traditionally been regarded as something that teachers ‘do’ or ‘give’ to learners through a variety of motivational techniques or strategies. However, current theory and research suggest that for effective and autonomous language learning and language use to take place, motivation needs to come from within and be internally regulated, rather than externally regulated by teachers, parents or other social forces. Yet, social processes are pivotal in mediating the healthy internal growth and self-regulation of motivation. Understanding this complex relationship between social and internal processes is vitally important if we want to develop our students’ motivation from within, and enable them to sustain and regulate their own motivation. In this talk I will explore the nature of this relationship and analyse its practical implications for the classroom. In particular, I will draw on recent developments in educational psychology where there is increasing recognition that motivation is not necessarily achievement-oriented but value-based and identity-oriented, as reflected in a growing literature on motivation and identity. I will link these developments to current theories of autonomy in language learning, and discuss how classroom practices that promote autonomy can contribute to socialising adaptive values, identities and motivational trajectories in our students, as they engage in the sustained process of learning and using English.