Introduction
Creating a language-rich environment is a complex process that requires significant effort at each stage. To study a foreign language, a student must put forth the effort, so having the desire and knowledge of why they are doing it is crucial. When it comes to school-age students, it is essential to understand the child’s psychology and be prepared that mere rational arguments may not have the desired effect. The school must provide a range of factors that will contribute to the child’s learning, which include the correct selection of educational materials, curriculum, technical support, and teacher training (Law et al., 2019). In addition to the above aspects, such two components as lack of motivation among students and a washback effect of examinations significantly impact the creation of a language-rich environment in Hong Kong.
Motivation in second language acquisition (SLA) is essential for success in learning languages. This is the main driving force that ensures the student’s involvement in work in the classroom. First, motivation is characterized by students’ interest in the subject being taught and their desire and readiness to study it. Interest contributes to the concentration of attention, enhances the impressions received during the lesson, and enriches students’ extralinguistic knowledge, thereby contributing to the formation of their general competence (Zainuddin, 2018). When there is no student motivation, it is impossible to create a language-rich environment, so low motivation is chosen as one of the main barriers for Hong Kong schools.
Another problem is the washback effect of examinations, making it challenging to create a language-rich environment. Assessment and testing of students significantly change the approach to teaching a foreign language; for example, teachers begin to purposefully prepare for test tasks, focusing not on developing skills but on the aspects that will be tested or assessed (Naveed-Ur-Rehman Khattak & Sohaib Sultan, 2022). This is extremely bad for the educational trajectory of students, and often all language skills suffer. As a result, students can complete the test but refrain from using the language in real communication situations.
Low Motivation and Washback Effect of Examinations as Teaching Challenges
English language teachers are constantly faced with the question of how to encourage students to learn a language and how to keep and maintain it for a long time. The same motivation problem is common among teachers in Hong Kong secondary schools. It should be noticed that learning motivation is closely related to social factors since many factors that affect learning motivation are formed under the influence of society. Motivation is an internal impulse to action that helps us to finish what we started. Along with language aptitude, motivation is critical in predicting success when learning a language in a classroom context (Gardner, 2001). It is at the heart of almost any measure and promotes and directs this action.
SLA motivation is the launching pad of any action and occupies a leading place in its structure. The level of motivation depends on the formation of needs, motives, interests, goals, and other components. Needs are fundamental components of the student’s motivation. In some cases, the cognitive condition can be satisfied when getting good grades, and in others – with properly organized learning activities (Law et al., 2019). Hong Kong schools typically need more student motivation, which makes it challenging to create a language-rich environment for their students.
Learning a foreign language is a long and complex process that requires significant effort and self-control. SLA motivation is formed within each person individually and throughout the study and must be continuously fed by various external and internal factors. A person is motivated by specific needs based on the values that have already been formed or are still being formed, inducing them to activity (Zainuddin, 2018). It results in the satisfaction of these needs and values. It can be material goods, spiritual matters, ideals, aspirations, and beliefs.
Studies show that the initial stage of learning origin languages during preschool educational institutions, elementary education in secondary school is characterized by a high motivation to understand language. In Hong Kong secondary schools, pupils desire to use a foreign language for communication and conversation. It is enough for them that a tempting prospect is to learn to read about the culture and history of other countries in the original language and watch short educational videos about interesting events without translation. As time passes, students change their attitude toward this subject. Many of them need help understanding new material, which becomes more complicated and saturated, leading to decreased motivation to learn a foreign language.
External motivation is not directly related to the subject’s content but is due to external circumstances. It can be an achievement motive caused by a person’s desire to achieve success and high results in any activity, including learning a foreign language. Pupils can have SLA motivation for excellent grades, graduation, or the motive of self-affirmation – the desire to obtain other people’s approval. An effective L2 motivation construct will inevitably be eclectic, incorporating elements from several psychology disciplines (Dörnyei, 1994). Internal motivation is not directly connected with external circumstances but with the subject itself. The action of external motives can enhance internal stimulation, but they are not directly related to the content and process of training.
The formation of motivation for learning a second language at school age is one of the central and fundamental problems of the modern school. Attitude and motivation were considered by Gardner and Lambert (1972) as a set of variables influencing L2 achievement. At the same time, the teacher should stimulate the development of a system of psychologically thought-out techniques. Motives for learning English often change with the age of the students. Most primary school students in Hong Kong need English, mainly to go abroad to communicate with foreigners. Then, in the middle level, they begin to think about their future profession, and they realize that they need the language for further study and work and that an educated person needs knowledge of the English language.
From my experience as a teacher, I cannot create the ideal learning environment because of the low student interest in learning English. Unmotivated children not only study without desire but also openly demonstrate how they are not interested in all this. When I draw their attention to a small mistake, they furiously cross out the entire line, throwing the pen. They write so casually that they often cannot understand what they have written. It often turns out that they have not done their homework for a long time but find a solution book on the Internet and cheat.
The immediate impact of the washback effect on education and learning is the potential effects that the content of an English exam may have on students’ language proficiency. According to the ELT literature, a test’s potential impact on students, teachers, educational systems in general, and society has been termed washback or backwash (Shih, 2009). Through the reverse effect, the test can steer the curriculum in one direction or another, both at will and against the desire of education administrators, educators, students, and their parents. Both professors and students naturally desire to adapt their class activities to the exam requirements, especially when the test is crucial to the student’s future.
A severe problem for several researchers is when teaching to the test becomes a learning strategy. This means that the training program turns into preparation for a standardized test. Tests with high stakes, crucial to a test taker’s future, are frequently criticized for damaging learning. In Hong Kong, specific washback effects are anticipated anytime language exams are imposed (Cheng, 1999). The first is that when learning English for a test, there is a removal or narrowing of those sections and skills not tested in the exam. Another impact that hinders the creation of a language-rich environment is allocating too much study time to prepare for the test, that is, specific methods and test execution strategies, instead of actual learning.
The washback effect certainly influences my practice’s learning processes and foreign language teaching. One of my tasks as a teacher is to check, test, and control the skills and knowledge of students in such a way that it motivates them to make more efforts, become better, and grow. Control work should be subordinated to the tasks and goals of the educational material rather than vice versa (Toti, 2022). All studies in my lessons are aimed at developing language skills and not at preparing for a test or exam. In no case did I, as a teacher, abandon the practical educational goals in favor of preparing for the test. However, parents of schoolchildren are interested in good grades and successful passing of exams by their children. As a result, I spent much time preparing for exams, so there were fewer opportunities for pupils to communicate in English and for me to create a language-rich environment.
Conclusion
The development of a language-rich environment in Hong Kong is substantially impacted by student disengagement and the washback effect of exams. Students’ motivation to learn plays an essential role in the effectiveness of the educational process and, in particular, the perception of information. SLA motivation is understood as a set of persistent motives that have a specific hierarchy and express the orientation of the individual. The internal forces connected to a person’s wants and prompt them to engage in particular behaviors to meet those needs are called motivation. The low motivation of Hong Kong students is the main reason teachers need to create a language-rich environment for their students.
The term washback effect describes how testing affects the creation of curricula, instructional strategies, and student behavior. Both students’ and teachers’ decisions are influenced by testing: students may concentrate on particular language acquisition abilities examined, while teachers may design their sessions to prepare pupils for a given exam. This effect, another reason for the impossibility of building a language-rich environment in Hong Kong, is associated with low student motivation. Secondary school students in Hong Kong usually learn English to pass their exams. When effective teaching methods are achieved, washback may be seen as positive, even if it may be destructive to more flexible approaches to language education where definitions of language competence may be constrained.
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