Why are there so many questions about motivation?

[M23]

We all have 24 hours, the demands of the body, and social demands. If I am young and have a lot of cognitive power and not many social demands then I can put time into studying a language or two. If I am young and have a lot of cognitive power but have children, school, or a society that demands a lot out of me for work then I will have less time and energy to put toward language learning. This can get completely demotivating when there are many things in one's life that demand a slice of one's cognitive reserves before one even gets to language learning. Choices have to be made because these things are limited, and accepting this helps with radical acceptance around motivation.

Pat Metheny, for example, plays guitar on a whole different level. Well, he has been working at it since he was little and was accepted to teach at a college at a prodigy age. He does this for a living, and has ample time to practice guitar and play with other high caliber musicians. Can he hack a server, or speak fluent Mandarin? No. These are separate skills that might make other professionals sink enormous amounts of time and energy into doing.

I think this question does not surface here much because most of the people on the board know how much time and effort it takes to learn a language, and know that there are no fast routes there. It is a grind, and you just need to show up for it like you would go to the gym or go to work. If we wanted something fast and quick, and were not prepared to put in the time needed, we would become YouTube personalities that learn just enough of something to fool a lay-audience.

[Le Baron]

Which brings us to those people who really don't have the time to devote to language learning, because they are really sinking most of their time into other things (by force or choice), but fall in love with the idea of learning languages. It's a recipe for disaster.

[Khayyam]

I don't think that language learning is in any way too special that it needs more motivation than some other activities. It may take longer to give you actual results,but let's take a look a sports and all the people signing up at a fitness studio at the beginning of the year. Heard often enough that in January the studios are fuller than at any other time of the year. Many people try to start, but never get into the habit of actually going regularly. Sports are also an activity that is regarded as "one should do this".

The whole habit building process is quite important. For me this is why taking courses works so well: Once I signed up for something, I don't have to motivate myself anymore to get started, a problem that I would otherwise have. I don't think it's a shame to admit, that I need an external schedule to keep me going. For me it's leading to better results than if I were trying to do it without the fixed appointment. (But I still do something in between classes, but it can happen any time until the next class.)
Since I decide myself what schedule/course is acceptable for me, it usually also means that the weekly schedule will be more or less balanced out according to my needs.

Anyway I'm not a huge fan of all the "a few bits every day" stuff one gets to hear all the time nowadays. You don't have to learn every day in order to learn a language. Regularly yes, and I would also recommend to go for at least twice a week, but every day is simply not necessary. It can put some people under too much pressure or make them feel bad, if they don't manage to do so. If it happens to be that one learns a bit every day, it's fine, but as soon as it feels like a burden, it's too much. Especially if learning the language is not mandatory to achieve something else.

Another thought: I'm a juggler and a unicyclist, and funny thing: I've never once seen anyone complain about lacking motivation in my juggling and unicycling groups. It's probably not a coincidence that there's no prestige to be gained by learning these skills.

This is now a bit offtopic: I guess those people just don't show up anymore. That's at least what I did and what I also noticed from a few others. I decided to let it more or less go, before I develop any negative feelings towards it. Every now and then I can still grab some toys and play around with them at home, but it's no active hobby anymore. (I actively juggled for about five years btw.)

Of course now I must ask: did you ever juggle while listening to stuff in foreign languages? I find that juggling is one of the best activities for occupying my body to free my mind for listening, at least if I stick to tricks that I already know well enough to execute them automatically. Hiking is #1, but of course that's less accessible than juggling, so.

[Khayyam]

Which brings us to those people who really don't have the time to devote to language learning, because they are really sinking most of their time into other things (by force or choice), but fall in love with the idea of learning languages. It's a recipe for disaster.

I wonder how many people who start out wishing for what they're not really willing to work for can be shifted into the category of "on fire, will do whatever it takes" (or at least on fire) before they're crushed by the reality of the size of the task. Ideally, the teacher would have a pretty good idea of how the student ticks and would know which aspects of learning to emphasize in the beginning to improve the odds of the student getting excited about the process. If that means their development is lopsided for a while, well, at least they're staying in the game.

[Granrey]

I have spoken about this in several treads. Motivation is important. Some people study language (s) for the sake of saying it or thinking is a cool thing, etc.

Learning a language takes a lot of time and effort and its very dificult to track progress (so you dont know if you are wasting your time). Which makes it easy for people to drop out as there are many other things who are likely cooler and probably give you more career advancement (unless you are immigrating to a place where that language is used).

For me, before deciding to study French, I had to have completed a bunch of other certifications, designations and skills more important in my career. English is my second language and is the language used at my place but during my career there have beem importan occasions in which knowing French would had helped a lot.

[Leif]

I think motivation comes when you want something so badly that you are willing to put in hard work. A few years ago I took up French again, then a year later German from zero. My German is more of a backburner project, to learn the basics over a few years, then take it seriously. I didn’t realise how much work a language would require. Yes you can get basic proficiency in a year, but to understand native speakers is tough. My goal is to understand films in French with relative ease.

I learnt to ice skate to a good standard and play ice hockey to a low standard. I have a high level in mycology, and made the first collection of several fungal species in my country. I am also very proficient in several areas of photography. I’m not trying to boast, just point out that to get competent in a hobby requires a desire to work hard for many years.

I’ve seen a lot of people dabble in ice skating, or mycology, and never progress beyond basic. I was lucky, someone told me my skating was poor, so I took lessons over two years. That helped me see that if you work, you improve. It also taught me that it’s important to know how to learn.

I think a lot of people lack confidence and don’t know how to learn. That’s why Duolingo does so well, grandiose claims, and a set path to follow. These online apps make big promises, with the lure of swanning around a foreign country, speaking with ease to the natives, but they don’t present a true picture of the amount of hard work involved in reaching an advanced level. And I think people get demotivated when after 30 minutes a day for six months they still can’t understand Johnny Foreigner.

[iguanamon]

Why anyone buys new language course textbooks is beyond me. Generally, the used course books are pristine after the first three chapters. This is a sign. Why? Because people who who want to learn a language not out of necessity have good intentions and then discover (as has been said) that there's a lot more involved in learning a language than they thought. It can be a lot more than they bargained for in time and effort. Some of it is not fun. While almost everyone can learn a language, not everyone will. Consistency, persistence, time, and effort are needed. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes something more worthy comes up... and language-learning falls by the wayside. Perhaps they discover that their initial motivation just isn't strong enough. Some people like the idea of learning a language more than the reality of it.

Self-learning a language is a slog when you're starting from scratch. A learner has to be cognizant of the fact that a language is not a "cipher-code" where each word has a static meaning corresponding to a word in L1 and all they have to do is "plug and chug". Pronunciation takes a lot of work. It isn't necessarily fun, but the payoff is huge for those who invest their time. Impatience is another filtering factor. The time it takes to get beyond the mere basics is long. Some learners want to quickly be able to watch TV and films, understand songs, travel and converse. They are sorely disappointed when this doesn't happen when they think it should. Perfectionism is another killer for some learners. It keeps them from creating momentum and benefiting from the "snowball effect".

Further de-motivation occurs when they meet a native-speaker who may not be patient and/or caring and said L2-speaker blanks them or can't understand their attempts at L2... or worse, does understand them and replies in English or their L1. This is a common occurrence, especially for native English-speakers. It can be discouraging for a learner who is not confident enough within their self about their abilities or has a somewhat fragile ego.

Since I've been on the forum, I've seen a lot of people come and go. If they make a post about lack of motivation, human nature is to have empathy and try to help them. However, in order to gain that motivation it has to come form within that learner. Life is too short to do something you really don't want to do. Quit and do something else. I know. It's harsh. Is it worth wasting time to learn a language when motivation is lacking? I think not.

The good news is that those who really have a desire to learn, they won't let themselves be de-motivated, at least not for long. They'll do what they have to do and keep moving along. They'll find support. They'll make it a habit. They will make it happen.

[leosmith]

I have a lot of sympathy for these people. They are experiencing genuine distress about their inability to commit to something they want to do, and they're often beset by self-doubt and self-criticism, taking a big hit to their self-esteem, which in turn makes it harder to find the focus for challenging but rewarding hobbies. It must be a profoundly unhappy thing to want to do something, to truly want to do it, and feel that you cannot succeed at making your brain engage with it.

This is not really a language learning issue though - it's more about mental health. There may be some mental health experts on language learning forums, but I think they'd be better off asking in a mental health forum. When it comes to "fixing" motivation, language learners are just going to give them advice like "you have to make it fun; if it's not fun 100% of the time, you will fail". Or maybe "have you tried learning by using children's books/songs/duolingo/rosetta stone"? An another personal fav "You have to have passion for the language. Just liking it isn't enough." And "you just have to buckle down/commit/set goals". Oh, and how about "Your motivation is wrong! How dare you be attracted to the TL speakers in that way. It's immoral and creepy!" This type of advice may actually do more damage than good.

[dubendorf]

Agnes Callard is a philosopher who wrote a book called Aspiration: the Agency of Becoming about this topic of overcoming motivation to become something you aspire to. Aspiration (the book) is a bit of a slog, but the other articles and interviews she's done around it are pretty fascinating. It's an interesting question: If you want to learn a language, then, by definition, you are not a language learner right now. Then, how do you become someone who is a language learner? And how do you know that's really who you want to be?

I used to be a musician and I practiced every day for 1-2 hours. I didn't need motivation to do this, it intrinsically brought me joy, just turning the metronome down to 25% of the speed that I wanted to attain and drilling through lines in a piece of music over and over. I did this because I enjoyed it, because I had a concrete goal (a performance in so many weeks), and I identified as a "musician," not just someone who plays music. Now I feel the same way about languages: I look forward to spending 40 minutes working through a Linguaphone lesson for the intrinsic joy of practicing, not just because of the abstract idea of wanting to speak a language someday. However, a year ago I was not doing that; so how did I get here?

It's possible that, like OP said, if someone isn't intrinsically motivated to learn a language then they don't actually want to be a language learner. That's totally okay! However, if they really want to become a language learner, I think maybe they have to start to identify themselves as a "language learner" and not just someone who is learning a language because they want to or have to. And then find a technique to language learning that they enjoy for the sake of doing it, not just for the hypothetical outcome. I am not sure how one bridges the gap between those two states of being, though.

[Le Baron]

I look forward to spending 40 minutes working through a Linguaphone lesson for the intrinsic joy of practicing, not just because of the abstract idea of wanting to speak a language someday. However, a year ago I was not doing that; so how did I get here?

This is fine advice, it's pretty much how I approach learning. One brick on top of another, concentrate on each brick and eventually you get a wall. Though you do have to step back from time to time and take stock. And not to get too relaxed.

The core principle of this way of learning is to stop looking into the far future (which is unattainable right now) and instead look where you are now, each day. A form of what they nowadays call 'mindfulness'.

This is okay if the person learning has no pressing urgency. It's this urgency (and impatience and sometimes lack of foresight) which is behind a lot of the difficulty.