A Short Bibliography on Motivation and Language Learning

Motivation and Language Immersion Camp

Motivating campers to stay in the target language at camp can be difficult! They want to make new friends easily. They get excited about sports and art activities. They don’t have vocabulary to make themselves clear. There are many reasons that this is a challenge, but there are some solutions. The tools below[1] can encourage learners to voluntarily stay in the target language.

Language Hero. At breakfast each day, campers can take a language pledge. They promise to speak only the target language until evening. They get a special nametag that says “Language Hero.” At the end of the day, if they are successful, they get a special bead. The camper with the most beads at the end gets a “Language Super Hero” award.

Language tables. At mealtimes, campers can choose to sit at a table where everyone agrees to speak only the target language. It can be a requirement for the campers to do some number of language table meals or it can be a choice. To support very different proficiency levels, students can be divided between two tables. At one, a patient counselor actively supports lower-level campers to participate in simple conversations. At the other, more advanced students can debate world politics, analyze their favorite movies, or trade strategy tips for playing video games.

Language cabin. This is like the language table, but for a longer time. Campers elect to live for a day or longer in a cabin (or room or tent) where only the target language will be used. Like language tables, this can be made a requirement for a class.

Authentic communicative needs. The camp store sells candy, toys, and t-shirts from the target country. To buy things, campers must speak the target language to the cashier. At the beginning of the session, counselors teach the campers how to ask for things very simply. During the session, the cashier should also engage more advanced campers in longer conversation. In order to go to the store, the campers first go to the bank to get out camp money, and they must ask for that money in the target language as well. A similar approach is a café. Again, it requires target language for purchase. Campers who want to do art in the art room during free time should also ask for paintbrushes and paint in the target language, as well. Of course, the counselors are very patient and helpful. They don’t insist that novice campers use the language independently before giving them art supplies. They do have them repeat, however. Then, as the campers are working, counselors will ask them questions about their art to practice the new words.

1) Behavior beads: Every counselor has two small bags of beads. At the beginning of the day, the white bag is full of beads. Every time a counselor hears a camper speaking the target language, they take a bead and move it from the white bag to the red bag. (Of course, they tell the camper. They praise them and make it a celebration.) At the end of each day, at the closing campfire, there is a short ceremony. The counselors pour the beads from their red bags into a large vase. When the vase is full, the whole camp gets ice cream.

A Short Bibliography on Motivation and Language Learning

Below are links to resources on motivation, most of which focus on motivating learners to use the target language. They all assume a classroom context, rather than a camp, but many of the ideas can be translated to a camp context.

These two readings provide a very basic overview of motivation and motivational strategies:

Motivation and Language Learning by Joshua Kraut

Motivation in Language Learning by FluentU

These readings provide many interesting and specific strategies for motivating students to use the target language:

5 Ways to Get Your Students Speaking in Spanish by Sherry Schermerhorn

20 Ways to Get Your Students Speaking in the Target Language, Part 1 and Part 2 by Sherry Schermerhorn

Why I Stopped Trying So Hard to Get My Students to Speak Spanish by Spanish Mama

[1] All tools are used by Concordia Language Villages in their language immersion programming.

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