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Motivation : Beyond the Intrinsic / Extrinsic Dichotomy
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | P erhaps two of the most frustrating questions for writing teachers to hear are "So what do I have to do to get an 'A' on this paper?" and "Can't you just tell me what you want?" As frustrating as these questions are, they are valid ques tions for students who lack intrinsic motivation when attempting to complete the assignments we give them. Yet so often these questions seem to be invalid ques tions because they miss more important elements of education in composition classrooms: to be immersed in writing tasks which teach students about them selves and the world around them, all the while enabling them to think critically and write clearly. For many teachers, our assignments elicit respect, effort, stress and sometimes even intimidation and frustration. Yet how often are these reac tions accompanied by (or overshadowed by) enthusiasm and interest in meeting the rhetorical challenges we set before our students? The primary goal of this article is to articulate and develop a much needed theory of writer motivation which can be applied to a broad range of composition courses. In the process of doing this, I will offer an expanded vocabulary with which to name and understand the many factors that contribute to motivating and demotivating students' desires to learn and write. How, I will ask, can we nurture in our students rhetorically-based intrinsic motivations? I hope to begin resolv ing the tension between the fact that essays are indeed required by teachers and the fact that those teachers desire for students to momentarily forget about such mandates in order to become immersed in the excitement and challenge of writ ing. Ultimately this essay is for teachers who want their students to be more con cerned with audience than with grades, more concerned with communicating ideas than perfecting commas, more concerned with the transformation of ideas than the propagation of ideas. Although I wil l draw extensively upon the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, my primary purpose is to show that such a distinction is an inadequate dichotomy from which to view writer motivation. While intrinsic motivations are certainly beneficial to learning, we all know that students can be thoroughly immersed in writing tasks (because of intrinsic interest in a topic), but can have little sense of rhetorical purpose or audience and thus fail miserably at the task of communicating. While the development of intrinsic motivation is an important goal for teachers, we must consider that a student writer can be very |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1068&context=jaepl&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
