Louisa Kiwana chats to Dr. Claire Dembry, the Principal Research Manager in ELT at Cambridge University Press, to get to the heart of what we know about student motivation and the most effective way to help learners overcome the confidence barriers hindering their progress.
To begin, could you tell us a little about what you do?
I’m the Principal Research Manager in ELT and my work centres on research to inform our books, courses, and materials. A large part of this is language research but we also have a growing interest in pedagogical research. This includes summarising current research in the field in ways that are useful for materials development, but we also conduct empirical research on teachers and students to find out what’s happening in classrooms and what we can do better.
How much of your work includes research into speaking skills?
We work on spoken language quite a lot. One project we worked on was with Nottingham University, aimed at getting a better understanding of learner perceptions of a ‘successful’ speaker of English (role models) and how their ideas of speaking successfully could impact their motivation. This study came about after we analysed over 14,000 responses from a survey asking language learners questions about self-motivation, such as, ‘Who’s your role model and why?’ as well as questions on demotivation, such as, ‘what do you find hard?’ A large proportion said that speaking was the most difficult part of their English language learning. In fact, the combined number of other difficulties cited was fewer than the learners’ issues with speaking! So it seemed obvious further investigation into this topic was needed.
Why do you think learners find speaking so difficult? How can we support students to minimise that feeling?
While conducting the research, we found that a lot of learners were having difficulty expressing themselves. For learners, speaking is important and is often how they judge their own level or ability. We know that to get better they need to practice, but students often have reservations about speaking in English which prevents them doing so.
It can be a bit of a catch twenty-two. We therefore need to understand how we can best help students become more confident, so they can allow themselves to improve. For materials development, it’s about how we can make speaking practice feel less scary and empower students to take control of their progress. In other words, we have to help students feel safe, which will encourage them to practice more.
You also mentioned your research looked at English language role models… what does this mean?
It’s actually a theory that comes from sports psychology, where effectively, if you visualize yourself winning the race before you start, it’s been shown to have a positive outcome on your performance. We wondered whether we could apply that idea to language learning; could learner perceptions of a ‘successful’ speaker of English positively impact their motivation? This links to much of the work that people such as Zoltán Dörnyei at Nottingham University are doing, which focuses on getting learners to reflect on their goals and aims, and how they could achieve them. In essence, we wanted to find out about our learners’ ‘ideal L2 self’; who it was and what it looked like.
So, if that’s something students can do to improve speaking, what about teachers, how can they help to optimise their learners’ speaking skills?
I think that comes back to this idea of making students feel safe in the classroom, because we know that students can be afraid of speaking in front of others. Teachers could help by encouraging learners to reflect on their progress and build the idea of their ‘ideal L2 self’. Similarly, creating an environment in the classroom that makes students feel safe to try using new language. Encouraging learners to speak more, be comfortable making mistakes and to improve their speaking overall is something teachers can really impact. Also, setting aside more time for students to actually speak and use the language in the classroom could help students get closer and closer to achieving their goals.
For a further look at role models, Jade Blue provides practical advice for encouraging near-peer role models in the classroom.
These insights have been used in the development of our new American English course Evolve. Please visit the Evolve web hub for more information and resources.