Hand-Raising in the Second Language Classroom: The Contribution of Interaction to Learner Motivation

Preston, A

Hand-Raising in the Second Language Classroom: The Contribution of Interaction to Learner Motivation

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Abstract

Motivation is an area of language learning where researchers and practitioners share a vested interest. A major question arising out of second language learning motivation research in recent years is how to conceptualise and measure its situated dimensions. A lack of development in methodological approaches and conceptualisations which continue to treat motivation as a cognitive and unobservable construct mean that addressing such issues is not straightforward. The study reported in this book investigates how second language learning motivation is collaboratively achieved in the moment-to-moment dynamics of second language learning and teaching practices. It takes situated classroom interaction as its focus. It uses Conversation Analysis as a methodological tool to document a range of interactional practices, centring on hand-raising, so as to engage with motivational processes in and across time. The empirical setting is a Year 9 (young people aged 13 – 14 years old) French classroom in the UK which offers a distinctive and discrete location for the research, and is the subject of a year-long case study. Through an inductive analytical framework, motivation is conceptualised as a characteristic of context. The notion of participation is used as a way of aligning motivation and interaction, in which L2 motivation is treated as both the product and the process of motivational experience. Findings reveal how motivation in the language classroom develops through individual orientations to the nature of learning tasks through interaction. These learning tasks foster specific social displays of motivational states which have a role in promoting motivational development for some students but not, it is suggested, for others. This study contributes to increased understandings about the development of motivation and second language learning motivation more specifically by stretching the boundaries of methodological and theoretical treatments in the field to incorporate localised formations of motivation experience. It also provides new insights into the role of hand-raising in the language classroom and into general motivational issues in Foreign Language teaching practices.