Enhancing learners' self-efficacy to support L2 motivation: The need for strengths analysis

Many second language pedagogy experts recommend that curricular and instructional planning should begin with needs analysis. Few, however, recommend assessing students' strengths, and those that do seem not to consider learners' strengths to be integral to planning or instruction. Teacher preparation programs and materials that foreground needs analysis while unintentionally marginalizing students' assets might lead teachers to develop a deficit perspective (see Hertzog, 2011), perhaps even leading them to see learners as problems and engender in students a “deficit ESL identity” (Marshall, 2009, p. 51). This article seeks to rectify this imbalance by reporting the results of a case study in which an adult learner's nonscholastic strengths were identified and then foregrounded during instruction to help encourage and reinforce their developing sense of L2 self-efficacy. The results suggest that systematic analysis and reminders of learners' nonscholastic strengths and successes can have powerful effects on learners' L2 self-efficacy beliefs, thereby building and sustaining momentum in the face of language learning obstacles and threats to motivation. The study also has implications for teacher educators in that preparing teachers to focus on learners' assets prior to and during instruction could enhance teachers' understanding of and expectations for their students.