The role of the mother tongue language assistant in students’ motivation. A case study in a University in the North of Italy

This work examines the role of the mother-tongue language assistant in university students’ motivation, whether it is relevant or not and which are the main motivational strategies assistants adopt. There is widely proven evidence that learner’s motivation is a fundamental factor for a rewarding learning experience but the importance of the assistant in this process has not been as much investigated. My thesis aims to close this gap, considering specifically the university context. The dissertation is articulated in two parts. In the first part I go deep into some of the main theories about motivation in learning that I consider relevant for my purpose. Then I present some case studies researchers have conducted on this topic. The second part of my work is dedicated to the field research carried out in a University in the North of Italy, where several mother-tongue language assistants were interviewed. The interview investigated the strategies the assistants implement mostly so as to motivate their students to learn and the techniques they usually ignore. On the one hand, some language assistants I interviewed assumed that university students do not need to be motivated because they have personally chosen to study their specific subject at the university, thus they are autonomous learners and assistants are required to give them only some learning advice. On the other hand, numerous interviewees highlighted the importance of the language assistant in encouraging their students’ motivational processes, given that the biggest motivation comes from within the learner and assistants should work to incentivize it. Therefore many assistants explained that they try to create a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere in the classroom where people feel they are respected and valued. In order to achieve a more complete overview of the situation a triangulation of data was performed: a satisfaction questionnaire about the language assistants' courses was administered to the university students and the resulting data were compared with the previous ones. The conclusion reached is discussed in the present work.