Examples Of Integrative Orientation

Integrative orientation refers to a desire to learn a target language in order to integrate into the target language group with a positive attitude and/or to interact and identify with members from the target language community. Instrumental orientation refers to a desire to learn the target language with more functional and practical reasons such as getting a better job/grade or achieving higher social status. Gardner and his associates maintained that individuals with integrative orientation would have a greater chance to be better language learners than those who lack the integrative orientation, based on the results of a large number of empirical studies using the socio-educational model (Clement & Gardner, 2001).

Although many

At one level, this implies an openness to, and respect for other cultural groups and ways of life. In the extreme, this might involve complete identification with the community (and possibly even withdrawal from one 's original group), but more commonly it might well involve integration in both communities”. (p. 5)

Integrative motivation is a more complex concept, including 'attitudes towards learning situation ' and 'motivation ' with 'integrative orientation '. Even though we are made conscious of the differences between these two concepts thanks to Gardner 's clarification, this still does not change the fact that positive attitudes towards the target language community and a desire to be integrated into the group is a central component in the socio-educational model.

Gardner 's socio-educational model has been implemented in a wide range of projects over 40 years by L2 researchers other than Gardner himself, and integrativeness has been found quite consistently to be an important variable in successful language learning ( Clement, Dornyei, & Noels, 1994). In 2003, Masgoret and Gardner conducted a meta-analysis with 75 independent samples using the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB), developed by Gardner, involving 10,489 individuals to show the applicability of the socio-educational model in L2 learning

Recognizing the growing dissatisfaction with Gardner 's socio-educational model, L2 researchers in this area began to call for the need to develop and investigate other motivational approaches to language learning motivation (Brown, 1990). Responding to the issues regarding the socio-educational model, Gardner himself also admitted that the categorization of integrative and instrumental orientations, looking at language learning motivation, was rather static and restrictive by stating, "there are complex reasons for studying another language and potentially more than two basic orientations" (Gardner & Macintyre, 1993, p. 162), while emphasizing the need to incorporate other theoretical approaches only when they are backed up by empirical research (Gardner &