REFLECTION PAPER

Brown’s Principles of Intrinsic

Motivation, Language Ego & Self-
Confidence
 Introduction
As an IELTS teacher specializing in speaking skills, I have the opportunity to work
with several medium-sized classes (up to 15 students). Most of them are high schoolers or
university students, ranging from pre-intermediate to intermediate levels; which is why most
of the teaching principles I strictly adhere to, as well as my teaching philosophy largely
depends on the experience I have accumulated upon teaching these groups of learners.
In this reflection paper, I wish to take a closer look at the teaching principles
developed by Brown (2007). Specifically, there will be mentions of the Intrinsic Motivation
Principle of the cognitive domain (with some reference to learner autonomy), and the
Language Ego as well as the Self-confidence Principle of the affective domain (with some
mentions of language anxiety) from which I would reach a conclusion regarding my current
teaching philosophy.

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 I. Principle 4: Intrinsic Motivation
Motivation is defined as an internalized need that drives people towards achieving a
goal (Harmer, 2007). With this in mind, intrinsic motivation refers to the motivation that
arises within the learners and leads them to self-rewarding behaviors, as opposed to extrinsic
motivation which is born from the anticipation of reward (as mentioned in Principle 3,
Brown, 2007). In terms of their significance, a large proportion of researchers have agreed on
the superior importance of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation for long-term
success in second language acquisition.
It is also worth noting that during Brown’s presentation of the intrinsically motivated
techniques, there was one aspect that seemed to be dominant above all and was brought up
several times, which was learner autonomy.
Learner autonomy was first defined by Holec (1981) as “the ability to take charge of
one’s own learning” and later Benson (2001) changed the word “ability” into “capacity” to
further emphasize the varying degree of autonomy that each learner possesses. Learner
autonomy is considered one important implication in promoting intrinsic motivation. This is
because intrinsically motivated learners have the inner drive that pushes them to learn outside
the classroom (also known as self-directed learning), leading to lifelong language learning.
In other words, it can be said that promoting learner autonomy is an important objective that
teachers should bear in mind when designing any intrinsically motivating classroom
activities.

II. Principle 6 & 7: Language Ego & Self-confidence

Language ego was first described by Guiora (1972) as the identity a person develops
in relation to the language he or she speaks. Brown (2007) further emphasized that the new
ego of the second language can get in the way of the language learners, arousing in them a
sense of fragility which raises their inhibition when exposed to the content of the second
language. Therefore, teachers’ job is to lower this inhibition by treating the learners with
patience and empathy as well as understanding the states of their language ego to organize
the lesson accordingly.
An interrelated concept with language ego is self-confidence or self-esteem. By
definition, Brown (2007) described these two interchangeable terms as “learners’ belief” in
their capability to carry out a task successfully. While learners’ lack of self-confidence can
also lead to an increase in inhibition, they are generally aware of their level of confidence,

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 unlike language ego. Bearing that in mind, teachers should design the lesson in a way that can
build up learners’ self-confidence.
The reason why I decided to put these two principles together is that I believe the two
affective factors share the same manifestation that the language teachers often witness in the
classroom – language anxiety. MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) suggested that language
anxiety was the feelings of tension and apprehension specifically associated with the second
language learning context. Although anxiety is widely seen as debilitating, researchers have
suggested there is a ‘helpful’ side to anxiety, which is the facilitative anxiety, as opposed to
the debilitative anxiety.

III. Personal Reflection

As IELTS courses are a kind of test prep programs, where most students come to class
driven by their extrinsic-instrumental motivation – to get an acceptable IELTS score for
scholarship or study abroad application, for career purposes, or university graduation
requirements. This gives rise to a concern that the moment the learners achieve the scores
they need, they may no longer feel that internal drive to continue their lifelong language
learning, which is why I feel obliged to bring up learner autonomy in this paper. More
importantly, learners also need to be intrinsically motivated in the classroom for the success
of each lesson, which can eventually lead to a desirable and tangible result, in this case, a
satisfactory IELTS score.
I also feel the need to mention language ego into this reflection paper due to an
incident with a pre-intermediate student in my class. Initially, I was her speaking teacher as
well as the one to correct her weekly writing homework on the center’s online system. My
impression of her in each speaking lesson was that of a friendly and outgoing student.
However, towards the end of the course, I realized she had not submitted her writing
homework for a long time. When being questioned about, she confessed that she was afraid
to be ‘corrected’ when she saw the large number of mistakes she made. From that moment, I
learned that not every mistake should be corrected, especially if they are not related to the
course and the lesson objectives. (At her level, only certain aspects of grammatical mistakes
should be corrected, while those regarding advanced coherence and cohesion should be
ignored.)
Furthermore, the focus of my teaching is on the speaking skills, which notoriously
cause a high degree of anxiety in learners, hence the reference to language anxiety.

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IV. Teaching philosophy
Below are some teaching implications I would like to follow in a strict manner in
order to instill intrinsic motivation and create an environment that facilitates language
learning.
First, teachers should place learners at the heart of every activity and technique.
At the beginning of the course, the teacher should have students complete a questionnaire or a
personal interview to find out who their learners really are (age, gender, culture, learning
styles, personality, etc.) and what may motivate or demotivate them from learning the target
language. The teacher can then use this information to design classroom activities that meet
the students’ needs and preferences (learning styles) as well as incorporating techniques that
help to develop their intrinsic motivation.
Reflection: This is something I have managed to do with my current classes. In the
IELTS speaking classes, the topics are varied for each lesson. For example, with the
speaking topic of sports, male students generally feel more engaged than their female
counterparts. However, it has not become a problem for the female students because I often
lead the class to talk about more familiar aspects of sports such as the Vietnam national
football team or well-known athletes in Vietnam.
On top of that, classroom activities should also conform to the students’ proficiency
level and Krashen’s (1982) Comprehensible Input i + 1.
Second, teachers need to make sure learners understand what they are doing. To
be specific, students need to be well-informed of the objectives of the lesson and the purposes
of each task in the lesson. By doing so, students have a sense of purpose in what they are
doing, which makes the learning process more meaningful and motivating to them on a task
level.
Reflection: This is something I have tried to practice doing these days which can help
me avoid the potential mismatch between my teaching methods and techniques and the
students’ expectation. In the case of my speaking classes, I often ask students to perform the
same speaking task twice. In the past, they seemed to be very reluctant to speak the same
thing for the second time and even complained ‘Again?’. From then on, I had realized that
there needed to be some changes in giving instructions. In their first performance, I told them
to focus on their fluency, then focus on their accuracy the second time (their partners will
help them check some of the mistakes regarding grammar and vocabulary). By informing
students of the purposes and benefits they can reap from each task, I can see that the students
have become more cooperative in doing classroom activities.
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 Third, teachers need to be sensitive in teacher-student interactions and student
feedback. To do this, the teachers first have to be aware of the types of learners they have in
the class as well as the course objectives which should be in accordance with the learners’
proficiency levels and needs. Using these pieces of information can help teachers to know
whom to call on or how to group students in collaborative activities. With regard to giving
feedback, teachers can decide which groups of students need detailed feedback and
corrections and tolerate students’ mistakes when necessary.
Reflection: At my center, IELTS students who aim to achieve an overall score of 5.0-
6.0 do not need to be aware of every coherence and cohesion mistakes they made in their
writing, while an exhaustive list of these mistakes would greatly benefit the students aiming
for a 6.5+ and above.
Finally, teachers should help learners to foster autonomy and gradually become
less dependent on them. This can be done by giving students more choices and decision-
making opportunities in their own learning. For example, with the speaking topic of
‘Describing a software’, students can be encouraged to talk about their favorite software
instead of being assigned to describe a random one. Additionally, the teacher needs to make
sure students are aware of their learning styles (through questionnaires, checklists, etc.) and
give them advice on learning strategies both inside and outside the classroom.
In conclusion, the twelve teaching principles provided by Brown (2007) are the
perfect guidelines for pre-service and in-service teachers to rely on when designing lessons.
However, the three principles mentioned in my reflection paper are what I consider most
influential and meaningful in my current teaching practices. As for the future, it is of my
interest to examine further the implementation of other principles in the classroom.

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 References
Benson, P. (2001). Teaching and Researching Autonomy in Language Learning. Longman.
Brown, H. D. (2007). Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language
Pedagogy. Pearson Education.
Guiora, A. Z., Beit-Hallahmi, B., Brannon, R. C. L., Dull, C. Y., & Scovel, T. (1972). The
effects of experimentally induced changes in ego states on pronunciation ability in a
second language: An exploratory study. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 13(5), 421–428.
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-440X(72)90083-1
Harmer, J. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman.
Holec, H. (1981). Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning.
Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Prentice-
Hall.
MacIntyre, P. D., & Gardner, R. C. (1994). The Subtle Effects of Language Anxiety on
Cognitive Processing in the Second Language. Language Learning, 44(2), 283–305.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1994.tb01103.x