Gardner's Model Of Language Analysis

This model has stressed the idea that languages are unlike any other subject taught in the classroom since they “involve the acquisition of skills or behavior patterns which are characteristic of another cultural community” (Gardner, 1985, p. 146).

Gardner maintained that the success in acquiring a second language depended on the learner‘s attitude towards and beliefs in the other community. He included the following four different individual differences that influenced how well individuals performed in a learning situation: achievement, intelligence, language aptitude, motivation and situational anxiety.

Gardener’s model also accounts for the language environment which can be formal or informal. A formal context would occur in any situation

Crooks and Schmidt (1991) argued that the dominance of this approach prevented the consideration of alternative concepts. Dörnyei(1994) criticized Gardner’s model for conceptualizing motivation based on social milieu perspective, without paying attention to the foreign language classroom. He mentions that “ AMTB contains a section in which student’s attitudes toward the language teacher and language courses are tested… but the data from this section do not provide a detailed enough description of the class room dimension to be helpful in generating practical guidelines” Dörnyei (1994,p.517). He further criticized Gardner’s model for not including cognitive aspects of

He divided Gardner’s model into five concepts. First one is about the integrative motive that is related to L2 motivation. Au has not denied that sometimes that there is a positive relationship between the integrative motivation and achievement measures of learners. This however is not the norm. He added that out of the fourteen studies conducted by Gardener and his associates, only the findings of seven of them supported the positive relationship between integrative motive and L2 achievement, while four of studies found negative relationship between integrative motive and L2 achievement. . Second, Au questioned the concept of cultural beliefs in Gardner’s model, saying that this concept lacks a clear definition. Third, He disregarded the concept of active learner that postulates that integratively motivated second language learners reach a high degree of proficiency in L2 learning. His fourth critique had to do with Gardner’s causality that claims that integrative motivation has positive effects on L2 achievement. He argued that the causal relationship proposed between intergrative motivation and L2 motivation was not conclusive. The fifth argument of au concerned with the two-process hypothesis that stated linguistic aptitude and integrative motivation affect L2 achievement. Au stated that “One may state that these relationships are not very substantial and some studies did not indeed find any significant