An Intellectual For Higher Education

By Dr Julius Nang Kum

This unprecedented textbook provides a comprehensive awareness of Higher Education. The book highligthat can push students into the higher education, theorigin of universities, functions of universities, skills and knowledge needed or found in universitat universities and the type of learning that is expected of students for the higher education

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Oct 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9789360490836

Book preview

Motivations Into The Higer Education Section

A

fter your success in the General Certificate of Education at the Advanced Level, (GCE A LEVEL) many things happen. Your family, your friends, your village, your country feel proud of you, and some come to thank you for a brilliant success. These special thank-you approaches that you receive might take different forms at each level. At your family level, your father, your mother, your aunts, your uncles or even your elderly ones might decide to organise a feast on your behalf, others might decide to offer special masses on your behalf, or they might decide to thank you verbally with little or no ceremony. At the village level, many villagers migth just congratulate you verbally and at the country level, your country might want to employ you or she might want you to foster your studies into the universities. If you decide to foster your studies at the university, then this study might help you in one way or the other because as we have read on the cover page, "Education without vision is waste, education without values is crime, education without mission is life burden" (UNKNOWN). This study therefore aims at introducing to you, some of the things that await you at the university. In order to achieve this aim, this study highlights many interesting things such as, motivations, the origin and the meaning of the word ‘university’, the functions of the university, the knowledge, and the skills that are expected of you for your sound university life and a successful achievement in your entire life.

1.1 Definition of Motivation

As already mentioned above, if you decide to enroll into the universities or any institution of higher learning after your ‘Advanced Level’, (A Level), then something most have motivated you to do so. We still cling to this wise saying "Education without vision is waste, education without values is crime, education without mission is life burden" (UNKNOWN). Motivation is a powerful tool that pushes people to do a thing or to do things. In a way to explain motivation, Mahadi et al (2012: 231-232) state:

Johnstone (1999, p. 146), considers motivation as a stimulant for achieving a specific target; similarly, according to Ryan & Deci (2000), to be motivated means to progress or to be in motion to do something. Crump (1995) believes that excitement, interest, keenness, and enthusiasm towards learning are the main constituents of motivation.

Based on the explanation above, we can observe that many scholars have defined the notion of motivation. However, we just have to look upon motivation as a ‘stimulant’ or something that incites us to do something. So if your family or yourself decide to send you to the university, then there is a motivation behind that move, which must be respected by you untill success embraces you in particular and then your family, your friends, your village and the whole country in general because you are a blessing to the world.

1.2 Types of Motivation

Researchers working on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) have often wanted to know why an individual or a country might decide to learn one or more languages in addition to the main language or the first language that they speak.  This type of investigation has led to the notion of motivation. The concept of motivation in this study stems from research in the Second Language Acquisition (SLA).  Talking about the types of motivation in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in particular, we will focus on five kinds: instrumental motivation, integrative motivation, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation and resultant motivation.

1.2.1 Instrumental Motivation

This is the type of motivation that pushes you to do something because you will use that thing to acheive an aim. A good case to illustrate instrumental motivation goes thus: So many years ago, our friend enrolled for the German language classes, despite the fact that she read sciences at the High School, and she was very bilingual in both English and French. When we asked for the reason behind her intensive studing of the German language for two years, she explained to us that she had to foster her studies in medicines in Germany and so she needed a solid based in the German language. This type of motivation that pushed our friend to learn the German languge is known as instrumental motivation because she had to use the German Language for her studies in Germany. Same, if a student thinks that universities certificates will offer him or her a job or a successful life in the nearest future, then he or she is driven by instrumental motivation into the university. However, more explanations on instrumental motivation can be read from Wold, (2006) thus:

Perhaps the primary type of motivation for most successful ESL learners,

instrumental motivation drives learners to succeed in order to improve their life, or to

meet their needs or goals in life. Examples of this kind of motivation include learning

English to pass an examination, such as that for U.S. citizenship, or to get a better job or to be accepted in a school or education program, or to talk to their children’s teachers.

The citation above highlights the nature of instrumental motivation at the level of learning other languages. Can we apply this in your choice of university studies? So if you decide to foster your studies at the university because you think that it’s certificates will help you to succeed in life then you have been driven by instrumental motivation.

1.2.2 Integrative Motivation

People in most cases do not do things because they might use them in order to acheive a goal. Many people do things because they want to be part or a member of those things. If someone enjoys the university community or the British culture or the Indian culture and thinks that he or she should be a member of any of them, then he or she has been pushed by integrative motivation. Talking about integrative motivation especially in learning a new language, Wold, (2006) states:

That is, integrative motivation, learning the language in order to identify with and become a part of the community that speaks the language.

In a way to reveal the scholars who identified both the instrumental and integrative motivations and their defintions in Language learning, Nurhayati, et al. (2008) narrates:

Gardner and Lambert (1972) distinguished ‗instrumental motivation, ‘ as one that arises because of the existence of the functional goals, such as job, and ‗integrative motivation‘ as one that occurs when the individual is expected to identify with the second or foreign language group‘s cultures (as cited in Ellis, 1994, p. 715).

Although the types of motivation discussed above have their roots in language learning, they still suggest something in our nature of motivation into the universities. The discussion below examines