Article published in:

Motivation and Foreign Language Learning: From theory to practice
Edited by David Lasagabaster, Aintzane Doiz and Juan Manuel Sierra
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 40] 2014
► pp. 157–174

Visible learning and visible motivation

Exploring challenging goals and feedback in language education

Vera Busse | Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Germany

The chapter approaches motivation from a practitioners’ perspective and tries to illustrate how motivational theories can help language teachers working in higher education to gain deeper insights into students’ learning behavior. Particular attention is paid to the importance of setting challenging short-term goals and providing ample opportunities for practice and feedback, in combination with nourishing long-term language goals in students’ ideal self-beliefs. The chapter points towards the potential of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in this respect, cautioning, however, that feedback becomes even more important when such a challenging teaching approach is chosen. The chapter concludes by introducing a question cycle that encourages teachers to explore their students’ motivation and to identify possible motivational trouble zones.

Keywords: motivation, goal-setting, task-challenge, feedback, CLIL

Published online: 31 July 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.40.08bus

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