Beyond materials, techniques and linguistic analyses: the role of motivation, beliefs and identity

Abstract

There is general agreement among language teaching methodologists and practitioners alike that there are no easy answers to the question of what it is that determines success in the foreign language class. Earl Stevick claims that "success depends less on materials, techniques and linguistic analyses, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom" (1980: 4). This implies that there is a wide range of factors that influence the outcomes of the teaching / learning process. Whereas Stevick does not maintain that materials and the skills and techniques that teacher training generally tends to focus on are insignificant, he stresses the even greater importance of less obvious processes in language learning. In this paper, it is these less obvious processes that I am mainly going to look at. l will stress the focal role in these processes of the positive and negative beliefs of both learners and teachers, and I will discuss the significant influence that higher order beliefs, beliefs about capabilities and beliefs about identity, have on the students' learning outcomes, and in particular in determining their motivation and influencing their self esteem.