A Study of Motives and Types of Talk in Learning ESL

People are motivated to improve their communication skills for many purposes; learning and socializing. The different motives for learning can prompt language learners to push themselves to succeed in learning. Secondly, the need to use their talk for interaction pushes the learners to focus on language use. Finally, sometimes, using talk as performance encourages the learner to focus on fluency. This pilot study is done to explore the motives, and challenges faced for different types of talks. The quantitative study is done using questionnaire as the instrument. The questionnaire has 4 sections. The first section is the demographic profile. The next section looks at motives. Motives encompasses the learners push to learn amidst the challenges faced. The next section explores talks as interaction and the last section explore stalk as performance. The findings reveal that there are several driving factors that motivate and demotivate learners to learn a language. On one continuum, learners are motivated by their internal drive to use the language and on the other end of the continuum, learners can be demotivated by the challenges they face as they strive to be better at communication in the target language. Findings also reveal that speakers need to pronounce words properly. They also need to use proper rules and patterns of the language. These skills allow them to express their views and ideas well. The results of this study also bear interesting implications in the teaching and learning of different types of talks for communication.