What motivational factors facilitate or hinder student performance in Essay

What motivational factors facilitate or hinder student performance in the process of EFL learning - Essay Example The importance of the topic on determining diverse motivational factors that influence academic learning in the EFL environment is to enable educators to apply best practices in contemporary setting. Most of the studies encountered acknowledged the importance of motivation in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Some studies discussed and proposed different motivational approaches, ranging from group processes (group norms and cohesiveness); focusing on the teachers’ instructional style and the educators’ ability to creatively provide examples that are vivid and acclimatized to local settings; and also instructional interventions applied by educators in conjunction with self-regulating strategies applied by learners. There are studies that aimed to determine the effectiveness of the motivational strategies in enhancing the academic performance and understanding of ESL students. One would like to determine if these factors were effectively used by teachers in designing mot ivational strategies. If so, were performance evaluation or monitoring measures been implemented to gauge the effectiveness of these strategies in creating a conducing learning environment for ESL learners. The articles reviewed were published within the last seven years where one study, Chen, Warden, & Chang was the oldest, published in 2005; followed by Lamb’s article which was published in 2007; Guilloteaux & Dornyei in 2008; and finally, two articles that were covered in the review were published in 2010: Chang and Wong.... C. Goal of the Review The overall goal of the review, therefore, is to add new factors that have been deemed instrumental in motivating ESL learners to manifest enhanced performance within contemporary setting. From the authoritative sources that have been evaluated, one recognized the value of incorporating culture, or specifically birthplace differences (Wong, 2010); acclimatizing examples used to local settings (Lamb, 2007); and even differentiating three distinct motivation orientations (instrumental, required, and integrative) where â€Å"integration may not be a significant factor in motivating language learning effort† (Chen, Warden, & Chang, 2005, p. 622) within the Chinese cultural context. With increased universality of recognizing diversity in culture and in emphasizing the need to integrate factors that have been proven to be motivating and improving the learning environment, the current literature review would present these findings for future applicability. II. M ethod Section A. Years Covered The articles reviewed were published within the last seven years where one study, Chen, Warden, & Chang was the oldest, published in 2005; followed by Lamb’s article which was published in 2007; Guilloteaux & Dornyei in 2008; and finally, two articles that were covered in the review were published in 2010: Chang and Wong. B. Preliminary Sources Used to Locate the Studies These sources were all searched from the TESOL Quarterly (four articles) and TESOL Journal (one article). The TESOL Quarterly is explicitly described as â€Å"a refereed professional journal, fosters inquiry into English language teaching and learning by providing a forum for TESOL professionals to share their research