Topic Avoidance COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
study was a student aged 13 years old. He was a student of a homeschooling program in Malang. His level of education was junior high level. He was in the first grade. This
student showed active participation all the learning activities, especially in speaking session with his teacher. The unique characteristic of this student that showed hyperactive
actions. This particular student was talkative in every teaching and learning and presented eagerness in learning English. The researcher was excited to know the motivation and
language environment that affected this student in learning English.
Learning English needed a motivation. Motivation was a thing which encouraged the students, whether it came from the inside or outside the learner themselves. According
to Maehr and Meyer 1997, motivation was defined as a word that is a part of the popular culture as few other psychological concepts. Ellis had other way to describe the motivation.
Motivation was simply as an interest, curiosity, or a desire to achieve, Ellis, 2008. Motivation involved the attitudes and affective actions that influenced the degree of effort
that the students made to learn a second language L2. In relation to L2 learning, motivation was a complex phenomenon. It has been defined in terms of two factors:
students communicative needs, and, on the other, their attitudes towards the second language community
There are two big groups of motivations: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Brown, 2007. Intrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from inside the learner without
expecting reward from other people. Intrinsically motivated activities are ones for which there is no apparent reward except the activity itself. People seem to engage in the
activities for their own sake and not because they lead to an extrinsic reward. Intrinsically motivated behaviors are aimed at bringing about certain internally rewarding
consequences, namely feelings of competence and self-determination Brown, 2007. Extrinsic motivation is motivation influenced by outside factors or other people. It is
related to rewards. Extrinsically motivated behaviors, on the other hand, are carried out in anticipation of a reward from outside and beyond the self Brown, 2007. Typical extrinsic
rewards are money, prizes, grades, and even certain types of positive feedback. Behaviors initiated solely to avoid punishment re also extrinsically motivated, even though
numerous intrinsic benefits can ultimately accrue to those who, instead, view punishment avoidance as a challenge that can build their sense of competence and self-determination.
Ellis categorized those motivations into smaller categories of motivations, namely instrumental, integrative, resultative, and, she kept the same name as Brown for the last
category, the intrinsic motivation 1997. Instrumental motivation was the force for someone to do something, in this study it is the learning the language. This motivation
came from the awareness that something that was not very welcome would happen when they failed their task. According to Ellis, instrumental motivation was the major force
which determined success in second language L2 learning. Another variation of motivation was the integrative motivation which often described the reason of the second
language success since the students were really into the language they learned. Their fond toward the people andor the culture language represented made them kept learning the
language no matter the situations they faced. The other definition about the two previous motivations came from Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert 1972 who coined the term
integrative motivation
to refer to language learning for personal growth and cultural enrichment, and instrumental motivation for language learning for more immediate or
practical goals. When the students experienced the success in learning something and then they liked to learn it even more, that spirit was called the resultative motivation. Ellis
shared the same idea with Brown about the intrinsic motivation.
For several decades, research on motivation in the field of second language acquisition research had been strongly influenced by the work of Robert Gardner and his
KONFERENSI NASIONAL SASTRA, BAHASA BUDAYA KS2B 2016 | 147
associates Gardner, 1985; Gardner Lambert, 1972; Gardner MacIntyre, 1991 1993; Gardner Tremblay, 1994. Those research got findings about motivation influences the
second language acquisition.
The existence of motivation influenced learning English skills. There were four skills to complete communication such as Writing, Speaking, Listening, and Reading.
Besides that, there were also the elements of English given in classroom like grammar, vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation. Those elements were supposed to support the
mastery and the development of the four skills above. All these language skills and elements are related to each other.
A solid view of first language acquisition focused on the role of the linguistic environment in interaction with the child’s innate capacities in determining language
development. The interactionist’ position was that language developed as a result of the complex interplay between the uniquely human characteristics of the child and the
environment in which the child developed. Interactionists attributed considerably more importance to the environment than the innatist did. For example, unlike the innatists,
most interactionists claimed that language which was the level of junior modified to suit the case.
The research could not indicate precisely how motivation was related to learning. As indicated before, we do not know whether it was the motivation that produced
successful learning that enhanced the motivation in learning, or whether both were affected by other factors. Depending on the learner’s attitudes, learning a second language
could be a source of enrichment or a source of resentment. One factor which often affected motivation was the social dynamic or power relationship between the languages.