Memory, Learning, and Motivation: Shaping Society

Colliers and their communities made Britain, and their identities continue to exist in the shadow of the industry which once defined them. Yet, the historical significance and legacies of coal mining are often contested, divisive or ignored. Building on an ongoing project teaching these histories to pupils in schools, thistalk taps into the rich seam of songs sung of and by mining communities, empowering people to decide for themselves how these histories and legacies should be remembered and understood.

We spend our lives scrolling, swiping, and skimming, but what is the impact on how we read, think and learn? Just as the invention of books brought societal panic about the potential decline of morals and memory, the digital age brings fresh fears about the loss of deep, focused reading skills. In this session we’ll explore the latest research on exactly how digital text changes the process of deep reading for digital natives, novices and everyone in between!

As a former languages teacher, I have always been interested in students’ motivation. Arising from this, my colleagues and I have started to think about students’ goals. In this talk, I will introduce our new goals questionnaire, and discuss what we have found out about undergraduate language students. We’ll look at how growth-focused goals are more strongly linked to autonomous motivation than performance-focused goals, and we’ll also discuss similarities and differences compared to learners of English in China and Japan.