Group versus Individual : Motivational Drivers in the EDC Learning Context

It is well known that motivation can have a positive effect on language-learning outcomes and one way to drive motivation is to encourage learners to set goals. In Japan, the emphasis on group harmony, which pervades many aspects of professional and social life, may also theoretically have some effect on the language-learning process. This study investigated the differential effects of goal-setting at the individual level and at the group level on students’ motivation to perform a group discussion. While the majority of students surveyed (91%) reported that both activities motivated them to perform better in the next discussion, the number of students who felt more motivated by setting group goals (57%) was slightly higher than the number who were more motivated by setting individual goals (43%). While further studies need to be conducted using a larger sample, this study suggests that setting group goals may have promising motivational benefits for Japanese students in a language-learning context. INTRODUCTION Many teachers, SLA researchers, and students would probably agree that motivation is a crucial factor for facilitating and often enhancing learning and development. Learning a foreign or second language is indeed challenging and without some form of motivation, whether it be intrinsic, extrinsic, or instrumental in nature, the task may sometimes seem like an uphill battle for the learner. Many researchers have investigated the causes and drivers of motivation and have faced many challenges in finding ways in which it can be measured accurately as it remains an internal and invisible factor, not immediately ‘accessible’ to anyone except the learner him/herself. One of the most common ways of measuring and assessing motivation is the use of self-reports from study participants themselves, a technique used by Gardner (1985), one of the earliest researchers in this field, and one adopted for the purposes of this investigation. This study aimed to shed light on one particular aspect of motivation in the languagelearning classroom: the setting of goals at the individual level and at the group level. Within Japanese society, citizens are expected, and sometimes even pressured, to conform to group goals, norms or expectations for the sake of overall harmony or what Japanese people often refer to as wa, an aspect which pervades many professional and social situations and settings in Japan. This deeply-rooted social pressure can be traced back to Confucian beliefs, long held in Japan and, under Gardner’s (1985) socio-educational model, would fit under the aspect of “social and cultural milieu” (Ellis, 2008, p. 330), one of the four interrelating aspects of this construct. As paraphrased by Ellis (2008), “the social and cultural milieu in which learners grow up determines their beliefs about language and culture” (p. 330). Therefore, in terms of the EDC teaching context, I endeavored to find out from students whether individual goals or group goals, set after Discussion 1, would motivate them more to perform better in the following discussion (Discussion 2). I believe group motivation is an aspect of language learning which deserves a closer look because “students will be less competitive when working in groups and are more likely to encourage each other” (Jacobs, as cited in Ellis, 2008, p. 814). In reference to an interesting study conducted by Berwick and Ross (1989), which looks at the dynamic and resultative aspects of motivation, Ellis (2008) also says, “perceived success in