Autonomy and motivation: which comes first?

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DOI: 10.1191/1362168802lr106oa 2002; 6; 245 Language Teaching Research

Mary Spratt, Gillian Humphreys and Victoria Chan Autonomy and motivation: which comes first?

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Autonomy and motivation: whichcomes first?Mary Spratt, Gillian Humphreys and Victoria ChanHong Kong Polytechnic University

When motivation has been discussed in relation to autonomy inlanguage learning, it has often been put forward as a product ofautonomy. This paper suggests a more complex relationship in whichmotivation in many cases precedes autonomy. It discusses some of therelevant literature and presents results from a large-scale study of HongKong tertiary students.

The study aimed to assess students’ readiness for learner autonomyin language learning by examining their views of their responsibilitiesand those of their teachers’, their confidence in their ability to operateautonomously and their assessment of their level of motivation to learnEnglish. It also investigated their actual practice of autonomouslearning in the form of both outside and inside class activities. Resultsindicated that motivation played a key role in this readiness, and thisled the authors to look at the relationship between autonomy andmotivation as revealed in the study and in the literature.

The findings lead the authors to conclude that motivation is a keyfactor that influences the extent to which learners are ready to learnautonomously, and that teachers might therefore endeavour to ensuremotivation before they train students to become autonomous.

I Introduction

This paper sets out to examine the relationship between autonomyand motivation in language learning. Does autonomy precedemotivation, does motivation precede autonomy, or does therelationship work in both directions? To examine this relationshipthe paper looks at the relevant literature and also reports on astudy that was carried out in Hong Kong. This study set out to

© Arnold 2002 10.1191/1362168802lr106oa

Address for correspondence: Mary Spratt, English Language Centre, Hong KongPolytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong; e-mail: [email protected]

Language Teaching Research 6,3 (2002); pp. 245–266




gauge students’ readiness for learner autonomy but the results alsogave indications as to the possible direction of this relationship.This direction is important to teachers, as it may well affect howthey choose to teach and where they choose to place their teachingpriorities.

Many writers have concluded that it is autonomy that leads tomotivation. Deci and Ryan, for example, state in their 1985 workon intrinsic motivation that ‘intrinsic motivation will be operativewhen action is experienced as autonomous’ (p. 29). They also saythat an autonomy-supporting learning context provides conditionsfor the development of intrinsic motivation, and that self-determination leads to intrinsic motivation. Similarly, Dickinson inhis 1995 review article on autonomy and motivation concludesthat:

. . . there is substantial evidence from cognitive motivational studies thatlearning success and enhanced motivation is conditional on learners takingresponsibility for their own learning, being able to control their own learningand perceiving that their learning successes or failures are to be attributed totheir own efforts and strategies rather than to factors outside their control.Each of these conditions is a characteristic of learner autonomy as it isdescribed in applied linguistics.

(p. 174)

In the same article Dickinson makes mention of attribution theory.According to this theory, learners’ perceptions of the causes oftheir success or failure influence their future performance. Theperceived causes can be either external or internal to the learner.External causes are those outside the learner’s control, e.g., luck,ability and task difficulty. However, effort is an internal cause andis within the learner’s control. Dickinson says:

Success in learning appears to lead to greater motivation . . . for those studentswho accept responsibility for their learning success – personal effort is withinthe control of the learner.

(p. 171)

Here too, motivation is seen as a result of taking responsibility forlearning outcomes.

The ‘ten commandments’ for motivating language learnersproposed by Dörnyei and Csizér (1998) also imply that motivationis a result of learner autonomy, since their seventh ‘commandment’

246 Autonomy and motivation: which comes first?




to teachers seeking to motivate students is to promote learnerautonomy.

For these writers, autonomy leads to motivation, which in turnleads to greater success in language learning. Many languageteachers, meanwhile, believing in the importance of autonomouslearning, have paid attention to the role they can play in trainingthe learner to be autonomous. This involves engaging in suchclassroom practices as teaching study skills, training learningstrategies, building up students’ awareness of available languagelearning resources and inviting students to make pedagogicalchoices about their own learning.

The study we carried out in Hong Kong suggests, however, thatthe relationship between autonomy and motivation may not alwaysbe in the direction proposed above. As stated previously,motivation was not the main focus of this study but its constantoccurrence in the results led to it becoming a significant factor intheir interpretation. We will now report those results of the studythat cast light on the importance of the role played in it bymotivation.

The background to the study was the following: first, Hong Konghad seen much academic discussion promoting autonomouslearning in language teaching, e.g., Nunan 1997, Pemberton et al.,1996, Benson and Voller, 1997, Gardner and Miller, 1997. Inaddition, self-access centres had been set up in Hong Konguniversities with money provided by the government for languageenhancement. A further impetus for the study was a series ofinitiatives within our university which called for more autonomousbehaviour on the part of the student, in that they all involved somedegree of teacher support being withdrawn and/or beingunavailable (e.g., larger class sizes, fewer hours devoted to Englishlanguage teaching, and a general move towards web-based andself-access learning facilities). This withdrawal of classroomsupport has been a common feature of university life, not only inHong Kong, in recent years.

The research question the study aimed to investigate waswhether students at our institution, the Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity, were ready to take on the autonomous roles they werebeing encouraged and expected to take on.

The students taking part in the study were all taking English

Mary Spratt, Gillian Humphreys and Victoria Chan 247




language courses as a mandatory component of their studyprogramme regardless of what their programme major was. Somewere also taking additional English courses as part of a languagedegree. There was no component training autonomous learning intheir English language curriculum, but there were (and are)various independent learning facilities on campus, e.g., a self-accesscentre, a guided learning programme, a Writing AssistanceProgramme, and a home-grown English language web-page (theVirtual Language Centre).

II Method

1 Participants

The population sample for the study is shown in Table 1. The 508participants came from nine different parent departments:

� Building and Real Estate� Chinese and Bilingual Studies*� Civil and Structural Engineering� Electrical Engineering� English*� Hotel and Tourism Management� Management� Maritime Studies� Mechanical Engineering

* = language major programmes


Table 1 Study sample

Total population 508

Degree students 421Higher diploma students 87

Year of study1 2412 1353 132

Females 356Males 135Unidentified gender 17




2 Instrument

The data were collected through a questionnaire (see Appendix),which had four sections:

� Section 1 focused on whose responsibility (the teacher’s or thestudents’) students believed various aspects of learning insideand outside class should be.

� Section 2 focused on students’ views of their abilities to managethese same aspects of learning inside and outside the classroom.

� Section 3 aimed to gauge levels of student motivation.� Section 4 explored the actual activities students engaged in

inside or outside the classroom which could be thought of asmanifestations of autonomous language learning behaviour.

Respondents were required to fill in answers on a Likert scale.The questionnaire design was strongly influenced by Holec’s

(1981: 3) definition of autonomy: ‘the ability to take charge of one’sown learning’ where ‘to take charge of one’s learning is to haveand to hold the responsibility for all the decisions concerning allaspects of this learning’. He sees ability and responsibility asoperating in five main areas: determining objectives, definingcontents and progressions, selecting methods and techniques to beused, monitoring the procedure of acquisition, and evaluating whathas happened. We attempted to incorporate these notions of abilityand responsibility in the five areas into the questionnaire.

We included an item on motivation in the questionnaire becauseof Deci and Ryan’s (1985) belief in the relationship betweenautonomy and intrinsic motivation, and our interest in the linkbetween the two. But, as stated previously, motivation was not themain focus of the study.

The autonomous learning activities listed in Section 4 were thefruit of a brainstorming session by a focus group of students on allthe activities they thought they could carry out that might helpthem learn English independently of their teacher. Thisbrainstorming took place at the design stage of the questionnaireand the results were then incorporated into it.





3 Procedure

The questionnaire was compiled then piloted. After this, it wasamended in the light of feedback, then administered in class timeto the 508 participants. Respondents were allowed to asksupervisors for clarification of items and procedures, but not toconfer with one another. They were given 20 minutes to respond.The questionnaire data were then collated and analysed, andresults interpreted. At this stage, to help in the interpretationprocess, a list of questions on areas requiring clarification wascompiled. Small group interviews (3–5 students per group) of 5 percent of the population were held. The resulting data were thentranscribed and recurring themes identified.

4 Data analysis

The results were analysed using SPSS. Percentages of responses foreach Likert point were calculated for each item, and crosstabulations run between corresponding items in Sections 1 and 2,and between reported levels of motivation (Section 3) andfrequency of engagement in outside class activities (Section 4). Chi-square tests were then carried out to determine the relationshipbetween the differing frequencies of response with regard to:

1. students’ perceptions of their teachers’ responsibilities andtheir own responsibilities for various aspects of their Englishlearning;

2. students’ perceptions of their own responsibilities for and theirown abilities in various aspects of their English learning;

3. students’ views of their motivation and their frequency ofengaging in outside class learning activities.

The relationship was regarded as statistically significant when theP value was <0.01.

III Results

In this paper we will present only those results that relate mostdirectly to the relationship between autonomy and motivation.





1 Results for Sections One and Two: The relationship betweenstudents’ perceptions of their teachers’ and their ownresponsibilities

In this section, students were asked ‘whose responsibility (yours oryour teacher’s) should it be to . . . X?’ Our expectations, based onexperience of working with these students and others on the samecourses, were that respondents would give more responsibility tothe teacher.

The relationship between students’ perceptions of their teachers’and their own responsibilities is shown in Table 2. To aidinterpretation, the ‘not at all’ and ‘a little’ categories have beencombined in the table below and similarly the ‘mainly’ and‘completely’ categories.

As can be seen, in 11 out of 13 cases there is a significantrelationship between students’ perceptions of their own and theirteacher’s responsibilities. In 8 out of these 11 cases students weregiving more responsibility to their teacher than to themselves. Inthree, however, ‘make you work harder’, ‘decide what you shouldlearn outside class’ and ‘make sure you make progress outsideclass’, students gave themselves more responsibility than theteacher. In the two cases in which there was no significantrelationship, items 1 and 3 (‘make sure you make progress duringlessons’ and ‘stimulate your interest in learning English’), studentsseemed unsure where to place responsibility.

These results indicate that the respondents see the teacher asmore responsible for decisions relating to formal languageinstruction, while taking greater responsibility for what happensoutside the classroom and for their own effort. However, for thesestudents giving more responsibility to one party does not meantaking it away from the other correspondingly. The respondentsseem to have a notion of shared responsibility while maintaininga clear view of their teacher’s responsibility and a less clear oneof their own. Their definite idea of the teacher’s role andexpectations of the teacher were confirmed in the interviews, inwhich the interviewees said that it was the teachers’ job to teachand that any teacher handing over responsibility formethodological areas would be ‘lazy’ or even ‘crazy’. These arestudent expectations that teachers need to address when they seekto change traditional classroom roles.





252 Autonomy and motivation: which comes first?Ta

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2 The relationship between students’ perception of theirresponsibilities and abilities

Table 3 shows the relationship between respondents’ perceptionsof their responsibilities and their corresponding abilities. It givespercentages of responses on the Likert scale to items in Sections1 and 2 that focus on the same areas. For ease of interpretation,for Section 1, ‘Responsibility’, the ‘not at all’ and ‘a little’ categorieshave been combined and similarly the ‘mainly’ and ‘completely’categories. For Section 2, ‘Ability’, the ‘very poor’ and ‘poor’categories have been combined and also the ‘good’ and ‘very good’.The chi-square results comparing responses on the correspondingitems from Sections 1 and 2 are also shown.

The students’ responses clustered in the ‘OK’ category. However,the responses generally skew to the right, with more studentschoosing the ‘good’ and ‘very good’ categories than the ‘poor’ and‘very poor’ categories for all activities except ‘Deciding what youshould learn next in your English lessons’ and ‘Choosing learningmaterials in class’. In the interviews, students were asked whetherthey had interpreted ‘OK’ as positive or neutral. Their responseindicated that they perceived this as a weak positive category. Itappears that the students generally felt more positive than negativeabout their abilities, and somewhat more confident of their abilityto identify their weaknesses and make decisions about outside classactivities.

Chi-square was used to see if there was any relationship betweenstudents’ perceptions of their decision-making ability and theirperceptions of their responsibility for the corresponding area inthe first section of the questionnaire. Our expectation, again arisingfrom working with these and similar students, was that there wouldbe a relationship between how students perceived their ability andtheir responsibility, with perceptions of greater ability correlatingwith perceptions of greater responsibility.

However, at the <0.01 significance level, only one pair of itemsshowed a significant relationship, ‘decide what you learn outsideclass’/ ‘choosing learning objectives outside class’. Three other pairsof items showed significance at the <0.05 level. These were‘choosing what activities to use to learn English in your Englishlessons’ /‘choosing learning activities in class’, ‘decide how long tospend on each activity’ /‘deciding how long to spend on each





254 Autonomy and motivation: which comes first?Ta

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activity’ and ‘evaluate your course’/ ‘evaluating the course’. Theother five items show no significant relationship. Unlike for theresults for Section 1, here where there is a relationship betweenitems, there is no pattern suggesting how to interpret thatrelationship. Generally speaking, across all items students do notseem to have a clear picture of their own responsibilities andabilities, whereas they do of their teacher’s responsibilities. Ourexpectations were not strongly supported by the results of the chi-square.

In the follow-up interviews, students suggested that there werea number of factors that influenced how they perceived theirdecision-making abilities. These included whether there was thenecessity and/or opportunity to make such decisions, priorexperience of such decision-making, level of confidence and, inparticular, motivation. They indicated that a motivated studentwould have a greater interest in what was to be learnt and thus bemore ready and able to take on responsibilities in the languagelearning process.

From the results for these two sections and the interviews, theemerging picture was one of students with some limited dispositiontowards autonomous behaviour outside class, possibly dependingon their motivation.

3 Results for Section Three: Students’ perception of theirmotivation

In the third section of the questionnaire, students were asked togive a very simple measure of their level of motivation as learnersof the English language. The results are shown in Table 4 and forma bell-curve with the peak occupied by ‘motivated’.

However, unlike for the other sections, there was a fairly highpercentage of missing responses for this one (14 per cent). Whenasked about this in the interviews, some students attributed this tooversight, whilst others suggested it was due to students’ beingunwilling to display their lack of motivation. The relationshipbetween reported levels of motivation and engagement in a rangeof autonomous learning activities is discussed below.





4 Results for Section Four: Outside class activities

Section 4 of the questionnaire sought to gauge the frequency ofstudents’ engagement in specific activities inside and outside class,since we regarded these as possible manifestations of autonomouslanguage learning behaviour. The question asked was: ‘In this lastacademic year, how often have you . . . ?’ The descriptive resultsfor the outside-class activities are shown in Table 5.

The table shows that of the 22 activities, there were 10 thatappeared to be widely practised, in that the majority of studentssaid they engaged in them ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’. All of these, withthe exception of ‘Noting down new words and their meanings’,could be more related to communication and entertainmentthrough English (English is widely available for these purposes inHong Kong). Twelve out of the 22 activities however appeared tobe less widely practised, and all these seem more related to studyor more formal learning of English. Overall, the results from thissection suggest that teachers seeking to promote autonomousbehaviour in the form of outside-class activities may have moreimmediate success if they build on those that students alreadyengage in, rather than on those activities which would requirestudents to change their attitudes or behaviour.

The interviews attempted to find reasons for the low uptake ofmany activities. Those suggested by the respondents included lackof motivation and lack of time, but especially the former. In thesestudents’ eyes, motivation would appear to precede autonomy. Asone student said, ‘Teachers can provide more interesting teaching,not just grammar exercises. The teacher has a responsibility tomotivate students, then they will do more outside class.’ Lowmotivation, we were told, discouraged the pursuit of autonomousactivities.


Table 4 Students’ views of their level of motivation

Level %

Highly motivated 5.0Well-motivated 29.7Motivated 42.2Slightly motivated 21.5Not at all motivated 1.6




The results of the chi-square comparison between Section 3,‘Level of motivation’ and Section 4, ‘Frequency of engagement inoutside class activities’ bear out what the interviewees said andwhat we expected. These are shown in Table 6.

As can be seen in the table, the frequency of 20 out of the 22activities correlated positively at <0.01 with reported levels ofmotivation, i.e., the higher the level of motivation the greater thefrequency of engagement in them. The two exceptions were ‘Doneself-study in a group’, which was unpopular with all studentsregardless of their level of motivation, and ‘Used the Internet’,which was frequently engaged in by all respondents. This latter is


Table 5 Frequency of students engaging in outside class learning activities – %of respondents

Item Never Rarely Sometimes Often

26. Read grammar books on own 10.2 51.2 36.0 2.6

27. Done non-compulsory assignments 23.8 50.5 23.0 2.6

28. Noted down new words/meanings 7.3 25.3 48.2 19.7

29. Written English letters to penpals 22.1 30.3 29.3 18.2

30. Read English notices around you 1.0 17.3 50.6 31.0

31. Read newspapers in English 3.6 30.8 52.6 13.0

32. Sent e-mails in English 4.1 16.7 25.6 53.5

33. Read books/magazines in English 2.6 22.8 53.1 21.5

34. Watched English TV programmes 1.6 19.1 53.6 25.6

35. Listened to English radio 18.2 50.4 23.6 7.7

36. Listened to English songs 1.6 15.8 46.3 36.3

37. Talked to foreigners 4.7 38.7 42.2 14.4

38. Practised using English with friends 14.0 48.3 32.9 4.7

39. Done English self-study in a group 34.3 51.5 13.0 1.2

40. Done grammar exercises 25.7 52.0 17.8 4.6

41. Watched English movies 2.4 11.0 40.0 46.6

42. Written a diary in English 51.9 28.9 15.3 4.0

43. Used the Internet in English 5.8 13.0 33.5 47.8

44. Done revision not required byteacher 19.1 47.6 28.0 5.1

45. Attended a self-study centre 33.5 38.6 20.2 7.7

46. Collected texts in English 16.9 42.1 30.0 11.0

47. Gone to see teacher about work 18.5 48.6 29.3 3.5

Key: shaded areas = categories with highest score





Tab

le 6

Rel

atio

nsh

ip b

etw

een

rep

ort

ed l

evel

s o

f m

oti

vati

on

an

d f

req

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f en

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t in

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tsid

e cl

ass

acti

viti

es –

cro

ss-

tab

ula

tio

n a

nd

ch

i-sq

uar

e

Item

No

t at

all

Slig

htl

yW

ell

Hig

hly

Ch

i-sq

uar

eP

mo

tiva

ted

mo

tiva

ted

mo

tiva

ted

mo

tiva

ted

(c2 )

26.

Rea

d g

ram

mar

bo

oks

Nev

erR

arel

yS

om

etim

esS

om

etim

es33

.20

<0.

001

on

yo

ur

ow

n27

. D

on

e as

sig

nm

ents

wh

ich

N

ever

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

16.2

7<

0.0

01ar

e n

ot

com

pu

lso

ry28

. N

ote

d d

ow

n n

ew w

ord

sR

arel

yS

om

etim

esS

om

etim

esO

ften

19.1

4<

0.0

01an

d t

hei

r m

ean

ing

s29

. Wri

tten

En

glis

h l

ette

rsR

arel

y/N

ever

So

met

imes

Oft

en11

.35

<0.

01to

pen

pal

sso

met

imes

30.

Rea

d E

ng

lish

no

tice

sR

arel

yS

om

etim

esS

om

etim

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ften

15.1

6<

0.01

aro

un

d y

ou

31.

Rea

d n

ewsp

aper

s in

Nev

er/

Rar

ely

So

met

imes

Oft

en28

.39

<0.

001

En

glis

hra

rely

/so

met

imes

32.

Sen

t e-

mai

ls i

n E

ng

lish

So

met

imes

Rar

ely

Oft

enO

ften

19.2

1<

0.0

0133

. R

ead

bo

oks

or

So

met

imes

So

met

imes

So

met

imes

Oft

en14

.15

<0.

01m

agaz

ines

in

En

glis

h34

. Wat

ched

En

glis

h T

VN

ever

/S

om

etim

esS

om

etim

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ften

17.9

7<

0.0

01p

rog

ram

mes

rare

ly/

som

etim

es35

. Li

sten

ed t

o E

ng

lish

rad

ioN

ever

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ely

Rar

ely

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met

imes

19.4

0<

0.0

0136

. Li

sten

ed t

o E

ng

lish

so

ng

sS

om

etim

es/

So

met

imes

Oft

enO

ften

8.49

<0.

05o

ften





. Tal

ked

to

fo

reig

ner

s in

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

So

met

imes

So

met

imes

15.7

0<

0.0

01E

ng

lish

38.

Pra

ctis

ed u

sin

g E

ng

lish

So

met

imes

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

So

met

imes

19.3

7<

0.0

01w

ith

fri

end

s39

. D

on

e E

ng

lish

sel

f-st

ud

y in

Nev

erN

ever

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

7.54

>0.

05a

gro

up

40.

Do

ne

gra

mm

ar e

xerc

ises

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

Rar

ely/

14.1

9<

0.01

som

etim

es41

. W

atch

ed E

ng

lish

mo

vies

Oft

enS

om

etim

esO

ften

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en14

.11

<0.

0142

. Wri

tten

a d

iary

in

En

glis

hN

ever

Nev

erN

ever

Rar

ely/

17.5

9<

0.0

01so

met

imes

43.

Use

d I

nte

rnet

in

En

glis

hO

ften

Oft

enO

ften

Oft

en7.

54>

0.05

44.

Do

ne

revi

sio

n n

ot

req

uir

edN

ever

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

So

met

imes

15.1

4<

0.01

by

the

teac

her

45.

Att

end

ed a

sel

f-st

ud

yR

arel

yN

ever

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

10.6

2<

0.05

cen

tre

(e.g

., C

ILL)

46.

Co

llect

ed t

exts

in

En

glis

hN

ever

Rar

ely

So

met

imes

So

met

imes

18.8

7<

0.0

01(e

.g.,

arti

cles

, b

roch

ure

s,la

bel

s, e

tc.)

47.

Go

ne

to s

ee y

ou

r te

ach

erN

ever

Rar

ely

Rar

ely

So

met

imes

39.0

3<

0.0

01ab

ou

t yo

ur

wo

rk




probably due to the limited choice of language on the Internet.Twelve out of the 20 activities in fact showed a particularly highlysignificant relationship at <0.001. Six had a P value of <0.01 andtwo of <0.05. The latter two items were ‘Listening to English songs’and ‘Attending a self-study centre’. The weak relationship in thefirst case probably results from the popularity of English languagesongs regardless of level of motivation. In the other case theinterviews confirmed that even the more highly motivated studentstended not to make use of self-access facilities because of theirdisinclination to work alone, which they saw self-access asinvolving.

The recurring leitmotif of motivation in the student interviewscoupled with the results showing a strong relationship betweenmotivation and frequency of engagement in autonomous learningactivities outside the classroom led the project team to go back tothe literature to see what support there was for the view thatmotivation might precede autonomy.

First, Spolsky (1989) regards motivation as one of the conditionsfor learners to be willing to invest the time necessary to learn alanguage. Secondly, Skehan (1989), in his review of individualdifferences in second language learning, and when discussingwhether motivation promotes successful learning or successfullearning promotes motivation, concludes that the quality ofresearch evidence is slightly in support of the causal interpretationof motivation, i.e., that motivation causes successful learning. BothSpolsky and Skehan are referring to language learning in generalrather than to autonomous learning. Many learners, of course, are,initially at least, learners rather than autonomous learners.

Littlewood (1996) refers directly to autonomy. He states that heconsiders learners’ ability and willingness to assume responsibilityfor their learning to be ‘at the core of the notion of autonomy’ (p.427) and that ‘Willingness depends both on the motivation and theconfidence to take responsibility for the choices required’ (p. 428).In his view, attitudes translate into practice, and motivation is anecessary precursor of autonomy. Littlewood’s thesis seems to besupported by the results of other studies of Hong Kongstudents by Ho and Crookall (1995) and Lee (1998). These indicatethat Hong Kong students can work successfully in an autonomousway when given a framework in which they can see the point of,





and learn to apply, the required means and strategies. Leeconcludes:

It would seem, somewhat paradoxically, that teachers and course directorsoffering programmes in self-directed learning need to think very carefullyabout how the necessary supportive circumstances and contexts can beprovided to help learners develop the necessary capacity and willingness totake on more responsibility for their learning.

(p. 288)

This, of course, is the notion at the heart of Littlewood’s (1999)concept of reactive autonomy, whereby learners engage in fruitfulindependent study once given a direction to follow and a reasonfor following it.

In his discussion of what predisposes Asian learners toautonomy, Littlewood (1999) mentions the Confucian belief in theefficacy of effort in helping learners achieve their goals. Hesuggests that ‘such beliefs are an important foundation formotivation’ (p. 82) in accordance with attribution theory. However,in view of the fact that prior individual success is not a conditionfor these beliefs, they may be better viewed as a manifestation ofself-efficacy rather than attribution theory. Self-efficacy refers to‘an individual’s beliefs that he or she has the capacity to reach acertain level of performance and achievement’ (Tremblay andGardner, 1995: 507). In the same paper, Tremblay and Gardnerpropose that self-efficacy is a motivational antecedent, and efforta component, of motivational behaviour. In this case, self-efficacyand effort, both part of a motivational construct, would predisposelearners to autonomous behaviour, and therefore precede it.

Cotterall (1999) also focuses on ‘self-efficacy’, giving support tothe idea that motivation can be a precursor of successfulautonomous learning. To her, self-efficacy involves ‘the learners’confidence in their overall ability to learn the language, as well astheir ability to achieve more specific language goals’ (p. 502). Sheconcludes that ‘providing teachers with a means of identifying andsupporting individual learners who need to develop their sense ofself-efficacy before (our emphasis) they engage in learning tasksmay lead to a crucial intervention in the language learningexperience of such learners’ (p. 509).





IV Discussion

The results from the study and from reading the literature giveindications that motivation may lead to autonomy or be aprecondition for it. The interview data from the study referred toabove certainly indicated that for the participants, absence ofmotivation seemed to inhibit practice of learner autonomy. Theremay well be an inhibiting or enabling role played by motivation inrelation to practising autonomy that has not been sufficientlyrecognized to date.

In saying this we acknowledge that the results of the study arebased on self-report and that the study did not focus mainly onthe relationship between autonomy and motivation. Therelationship needs further direct investigation using othermethodologies. However, lack of motivation as an explanation forlack of autonomous action recurred as a theme in the interviews,there was a strong relationship between higher levels of motivationand greater engagement in outside class activities, and thesuggestion that motivation leads to autonomy does find theoreticalsupport.

It may of course be that the relationship between motivationand autonomy works in both directions, changing in direction withdifferent stages in a learner’s progress and in learners’ lives ingeneral. It has recently been proposed (Ushioda, 1996, Green,1999) that motivation itself is dynamic and that it can alter in typeand intensity over the course of a learner’s studies. We have alsoseen recently the appearance of rich multi-faceted models ofmotivation (e.g., Tremblay and Gardner, 1995; Dörnyei, 1994).These depart from the bipolar models of integrative/instrumentalor intrinsic/extrinsic. They also contain certain components, e.g.,effort, goals, self-determination, which are commonly regarded aspart of autonomy. The relationship between motivation andautonomy could also be dynamic and operate in differentdirections depending on the kind of motivation involved. Wecannot assume that the relationship between autonomy andmotivation is always one in which autonomy leads to motivation.

With this in mind, teachers in the classroom may wish to re-examine their approaches to teaching autonomous practices. Thisis not to say that learner autonomy should no longer be a goal of





teaching. In a learning context that necessitates life-long learningand increasingly calls for distance learning, autonomy must surelyremain an important aim. However, one way to encourageautonomy may be to develop students’ motivation to learn. Thismay particularly be the case in situations where there is learnerresistance to engaging in autonomous practices, or evidence inlearners of ‘rejection or avoidance of learning opportunity’ (Green,1999). Rather than engaging directly in autonomy training or infurther autonomy training when confronted by this kind ofsituation, the teacher may be better advised to begin by developingstudent motivation. The teacher could focus on developing intrinsicmotivation and on helping students to believe in the effectivenessof their own efforts, as these would seem to be areas where theteacher can make an impact. This would mean devoting more timeto engaging in activities and working with materials and syllabuseswhich learners wish to engage in for their own sake. It could alsoinvolve the teacher in introducing into the classroom the kinds ofmotivating activities in which learner-centredness as a precursor tolearner autonomy can be integrated. Recognition of the diversityof learning styles and learner preferences for ways of learningwould give the teacher a wide gamut of activities to choose from.Nor should we forget the very important point made by Dörnyeiand Csizér (1998), i.e., that one of the main ways in which teacherscan motivate their students is by being models of motivationthemselves.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for their contributionto this paper: Mr William Littlewood, a member of the project teamin its initial stages; Professors Alan Davies and Liz Hamp-Lyonsfor their advice in the later stages; Mr Ronald Chan, the project’sresearch assistant; staff and students who took part in the study;and finally, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for funding theresearch.

V References

Benson, P. and Voller P., editors, 1997: Autonomy and independence inlanguage learning. Longman: London.





Cotterall, S. 1999: Key variables in language learning: what the learnersbelieve about them. System 27(4): 493–513.

Deci, E.L. and Flaste, R. 1995: Why we do what we do: the dynamics ofpersonal autonomy. Putnam’s Sons: New York.

Deci, E.L. and Ryan, R.M. 1985: Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behaviour. New York: Plenum.

Dickinson, L. 1995: Autonomy and motivation: a literature review. System23(2): 165–74.

Dörnyei, Z. 1994: Motivation and motivating in the foreign languageclassroom. Modern Language Journal 78(3): 273–84.

Dörnyei, Z. and Csizér, K. 1998: Ten commandments for motivatinglanguage learners: results of an empirical study. Language TeachingResearch 2(3): 203–29.

Gardner, D. and Miller, L. 1997: A study of tertiary level self-accessfacilities in Hong Kong. City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Green, C. 1999: Categorising motivational desires in second languageacquisition. Language, Culture and Curriculum 12(3): 265–79.

Ho, J. and Crookall, D. 1995: Breaking with Chinese cultural traditions:learner autonomy in English language teaching. System 23(2):235–43.

Holec, H. 1981: Autonomy in Foreign Language Learning. Oxford:Pergamon.

Lee, I. 1998: Supporting greater autonomy in language learning. ELTJournal 52(4): 282–89.

Littlewood, W. 1996: ‘Autonomy’: an anatomy and a framework. System24(4): 427–35.

–––– 1999: Defining and developing autonomy in East Asian contexts.Applied Linguistics 20(1): 71–94.

Nunan, D. 1997: Strategy training in the language classroom: an empiricalinvestigation. RELC Journal 28(2): 56–81.

Pemberton, R., Li, E.S.L., Or, W. and Pierson H., editors, 1996: Takingcontrol: autonomy in language learning. Hong Kong UniversityPress: Hong Kong.

Skehan, P. 1989: Individual difference in second language learning. EdwardArnold: London.

Spolsky, B. 1989: Conditions for second language learning. OxfordUniversity Press: Oxford.

Tremblay, P.F. and Gardner, R.C. 1995: Expanding the motivationconstruct in language learning. Modern Language Journal 79:505–20.

Ushioda, E. 1996: Developing a dynamic concept of L2 motivation. InHickey, T. and Williams, J., editors, Language, education and societyin a changing world, Dublin IRAAL, Clevedon, UK andPhiladelphia, PA: Multilingual Matters, 239–45.






Appendix A

The roles of learners and teachers




Autonomy and motivation: which comes first?

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