The Matthew Effect in English Language Education
Martin Lamb
School of Education
University of Leeds
A ‘Matthew Effect’ in an educational setting means that children who come to school with a slight advantage based on their home background make quick progress and draw away from their peers from less advantaged backgrounds, leading to a widening gap in achievement. In this paper I present data from a research project in provincial Indonesia which seem to show a Matthew Effect in the learning of English, with learning practices, socio-economic background and motivation all interacting to advantage some school pupils and disadvantage others, leading to early differentiation in language proficiency which if sustained may contribute to long-term social inequalities. Though the causes are undeniably complex, I suggest some steps which teachers could take to inhibit the Matthew Effect in their classroom.
“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
(Gospel According to Matthew, XXV, 29)
Introduction
The term ‘Matthew Effect’ derives from the biblical passage quoted above, more popularly known as ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’. It has been applied to many different areas of human endeavour, notably Economics where aMatthew Effecthas been observed in the way various factors combine to widen the wealth gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries. In the field of education, Walberg and Tsai (1983: 360) used the term to characterize their research findings, which showed that the interaction of 3 basic factors – educational background, learning practices and motivation – meant that “socioeconomic and ethnic groups that scored somewhat higher than others in the early grades scored much higher in the later grades; and the gap or cumulative advantage increased steadily with grade levels”.
Educational Matthew Effects have been explored in most detail in the development of children’s reading skills(Stanovich 2000). It has been found that children who have a very slight edge in phonemic awareness when they start school – that is, they understand how words are made up of different sounds – are in a good position to make use of instruction in the alphabetic system; they start reading independently more quickly and therefore get more practice; as they practice, they develop automaticity and can give more attention to meaning,which in turn increases their enjoyment and encourages them to read more. By the 5th grade it is estimated that the top 10% of children read 10 times more than the bottom 10%, with obvious benefits for other aspects of their education. Social background is implicated because it is often children from middle-class backgrounds who come to school with slightly higher phonemic awareness, because parents have spent more time reading to them. A related example of the Matthew Effect is the TV programme ‘Sesame Street’ in the USA, which was designed to increase the educational attainment of children from poor working-class backgrounds who liked watching TV. Evaluation studies found that paradoxically it tended to increase gaps in achievement, because middle-class parents spent more time discussing the programme with their children, enabling them to get more out ofit.
In language learning, Williams, Burden and Lanvers (2002) referred to the Matthew Effect in their study of pupils’ motivation to learn French and German in UK schools. They found that by Year 9 there were already significant differences in the motivation and attitudes of high proficiency and low proficiency students and “such differences had clearly emerged early on in these students’ secondary school careers” (p 523). They speculated that pupils who were perceived as good language learners by their teachers and by themselves tended to enjoy lessons more, were thereby motivated to learn more, did better, and so on, while other pupils were caught in a vicious circle of poor performance and motivation. Williams et al. also hinted at a possible role for social background in these effects, as proficient students saw their parents as being particularly supportive.
In the rest of this article I will describe what appears to be another specific instance of the Matthew Effect in language learning, involving school pupils of English in Indonesia. I suggest that this case might be typical of many ‘TESEP’ (i.e. state education, as in Holliday 1994)contextsespecially in developing countries where the state system is not able to satisfy the aspirations of families to give their children functional competence in English, with possibly serious long-term consequences for those societies.
An Indonesian Case-Study
My research was designed to investigate the evolving motivation of Indonesian youngsters learning English during the first two years of junior high school in provincial Indonesia. The school was situated in what might be described as an ‘emergent middle-class area’ of a Sumatran town, though its own facilities were basic and the intake was of mixed socio-economic background. I used questionnaires at the beginning of the first year and end of the second year to get a broad view of motivational trends for the whole year group (approximately 200 pupils); and then chose a ‘focal group’ of 12 learners, with a range of motivational profiles (based on their initial questionnaire responses and teachers’ comments), to track in more detail through interviews at three points, by observing them in English classes and by visiting them outside of school. I also interviewed nine English teachers about their perceptions of learner motivation.
I will first describe some trends observable in the school year as a whole, then examine the experiences of two of the focal group learners in more detail.
Decline in intrinsic motivation
On entry to the school, learners’ motivation to study English was extremely high. It could be characterized as future-oriented, blending both integrative and instrumental motives (Lamb, 2004). Acutely aware of the effects of globalization on their community, the majority of these11/12-year-old learners understood that mastery of English could help them gain access not only to successful careers but also to international friendships, further study abroad, new forms of technology and entertainment, and to social and geographic mobility. They looked forward to the process of studying the language in junior high school.
After 20 months of study, their perception of the potential importance of English remained very high, but their enjoyment of the process had declined. Fewer pupils thought that there was intrinsic pleasure to be found in learning the language, while their comments about the language tended to relate more to their classroom experiences rather than to its global role. For example, at the beginning of her studies one student wrote in her questionnaire response that she thought English was ‘very important’ because “if I learn English I can gain self-confidence and many benefits…It’s the world language”; after 20 months she assessed it only as ‘quite important’, “because learning English in this school is just like learning it elsewhere….It’s not so satisfying.” The survey data was corroborated by the interviews with my focal group learners – even some of the most highly motivated had bitter complaints about aspects of their school English lessons. This fall in intrinsic motivation to learn is also not unexpected – it is commonly reported in studies of learner motivation during the middle school years (see Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez 1998) – though it is interesting that it seems to be distinct from a recognition of the subject’s importance.
Divergence in performance
Besides providing a more in-depth picture ofsome learners’ perceptions of their motivation, the interviews also gave me insight into the development of their language competence over the 20 month period. I started each interview in English, but quickly changed to Indonesian if the learner preferred. During the first phase of interviewing, all used mainly Indonesian, though most of those previously identified as ‘motivated’ did try to exploit the opportunity of conversation with a native-speaker (in almost all cases, their first such opportunity) to use a few English words and phrases. During the second interviews 8 months later, the same pattern repeated itself, though one was now able to express herself in English almost all the time. In the third interviews a further 12 months on, all seven of the ‘motivated’ learners used English for most of the time, reverting back to Indonesian when communicatively challenged or when the conversation got very animated. One pair of girls actually spoke to each other in English[i]. In stark contrast, the four learners who were previously identified as ‘less motivated’ made no significant attempt to use English during the final interview. In other words, there was a striking divergence over these 20 months in the performance in English of the focal group learners, with some making considerable progress and others making none at all.
To illustrate this contrast, and to raise new issues for discussion, I include below extracts from the interviews with two pupils, the first one (who I shall call ‘Asmita’) identified initially as a motivated and active learner, the other (‘Bambang’) identified
initially asless motivated and inactive as a learner.
Clearly Asmita’s English leaves a lot to be desired in terms of accuracy, but she is determined to use the language to express herself as far as she can, whereas 20 months earlier she had used her L1 throughout. How has she managed to make such progress, despite her negative classroom experiences during the past year, and the fact that she has only two English lessons per week? Her teacher in the first year (‘Mr B’) must take some credit for that, but she herself, like all her peers, ascribes her relative successes mainly to experiences outside of school –her sustained desire to learn the language leads her to study privately with dictionary and grammar book, and to practice with friends and parents.The daughter of a high ranking lawyer on the town council, Asmita lives in a house full of books, and has easy access to a computer with PlayStation games which she uses to pick up English vocabulary. These outside learning activities boost her performance in school tests, which in turn feed her motivation. Although she herself is not taking a private course in English at the moment, many of her peers are (54% had taken a course over the 20 months of the research, for an average of 11 months) and these are credited by both pupils and teachers with helping to develop pupils’ English, particularly their oral competence.
What is striking about the beginning of the interviews with Bambang – and with two of the three other less motivated learners[ii]– was their reaction to my invitation to speak English; not only were they unable to respond, they smiled in amusement at the notion, as if they could not conceive of themselves as legitimate English speakers. As the extract indicates, Bambang still recognises the importance of English in principle, but his negative feelings about the process of learning – particularly his failure to understand what’s going on in the lesson, and the teacher’s unsympathetic reaction to his mistakes – has reduced his motivation to learn. Moreover, Bambang apparently gets little support for learning outside of school. He has not taken a private course, and he does not have friends or family members who speak English and who can provide him with role models. Living with an uncle and aunt in a simple house on the edge of town, he does not have materials to learn with at home, and the computer which once gave him some minimal exposure to the language had broken.The lack of practice outside of school would contribute to poor class and test performance, which might reduce motivation further.
Teachers’ views
What Asmita’s and Bambang’s experience suggests is that social, cultural and economic capital (Bourdieu 1991) play an important role in facilitating and sustaining both their learning practices and their motivation to learn English; if you have it, you are in a position to make rapid progress, if you don’t, you may quickly get left behind. This interpretation was confirmed by an analysis of my interviews with teachers. All eight of the teachers mentioned social background as an important factor in determining whether pupils made progress in English while studying at the junior high school. One teacher stressed the role of parents:
“……Home, it [is] an important thing, I think, an important role, if their parents don’t think about English, or they don’t care about English, they never give suggestions to the students to study English, they never guide the students how to study English, or when they have to study at home, ah, it’s impossible for the students”
Even though the majority of parents in this generation are unable to speak English themselves, it is their attitude towards their child’s language learning which in turn helps to determine the child’s own attitudes, this teacher implies. Teachers pointed out that many children, far from spending their parents’ money on English courses of study materials, actually have to earn extra income for their family after school. As a teacher working at a semi-rural school put it:
“Most of my students can [speak]… English but maybe they are afraid, this is the problem…not just for me but for all other teacher in [the town] … especially for the school not…in the big city, like [the town] - their economic is low, they are not [taking a private] course, maybe they work in their home, they don’t have time to study………maybe most of the school like them.”
Apart from the lack of time to study, the teacher hints at more subtle psychological factors being involved. Like Bambang, children growing up in this environment may find it much more difficult to imagine themselves as English-speakers. As the teacher said later in her interview, children brave enough to use the language risk being publicly derided by their peers for being arrogant or ‘trying to be like westerners’.
It is also worth pointing out that the teachers proved very accurate in their identification of motivated and less motivated learners, when I asked for their views on my questionnaire data early in the research process. It seems that even after just a few weeks’ lessons, they were able to predict which pupils would succeed or fail to make progress during their time in the school.
How the Matthew Effect works
Drawing together the comments from learners, teachers and my own notes on extensive classroom observations, I would suggest that a Matthew Effect is in operation in this school, in which some pupils quickly gain an advantage over others in their English classes, and this advantage becomes cumulative through the interaction of various factors as represented in Figure 1. I would also suggest that it is family background which often provides the initial advantage by providing cultural, social and economic capital, which can ‘set the ball rolling’. Not all the factors may be operating in a particular class or for a particular individual, and there are of course many other possible factors which may work to accelerate or slow down the process.
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Figure 1 – How the Matthew Effect works in Indonesian junior high school English classes
There will also be exceptions to the pattern presented. For example, one of the less motivated boys in my sample had plenty of home advantages, including a father who was head of the Education department at the city’s university. In any school there is likely to be a middle group who are neither making great progress nor becoming helplessly demotivated, just as Williams et al. (2002) found in their UK survey. In relatively privileged urban schools such as the one researched here, this middle group will be larger than in rural schools, where many more pupils may be facing cumulative disadvantage and very few benefiting from a cycle of rising achievement and motivation.
It is also true that a Matthew Effect may be found for other school subjects. But there are several reasons why it might afflict languages more than others. As Robert Gardner (1985) has long argued and as a recent UK report (CILT, 2005)confirms, school pupils’ attitudes to languages are uniquely susceptible to influence by attitudes at home – if parents value foreign language learning, there is a high likelihood their children will too – and parents’ attitudes are in turn deeply influenced by sociocultural factors in the local community. Related to this, Tsui (1996) has pointed out how language learners are morevulnerable to criticism and negative evaluation than other subject learners becausethere are so many chances of making mistakes; or, one might add, of sounding pretentious when successful.A third reason why Matthew Effects may be more of a problem in language education is suggested byJones and Jones (2001), who argue that underachievement is very difficult to correct in language classrooms because of the cumulative nature of the subject matter. With many other school subjects, a new week brings a new topic and a fresh opportunity to perform well. In language classes, especially those using a grammatical and/or lexical syllabus, failure to learn material in one week is likely to cause poor task performance the following week, potentially leading to the spiral of poor performance and demotivation presented in Figure 1. Finally, in education systems where language teachers are strongly encouraged to teach in the L2, the subject is also the medium of instruction in a way that it is not in other lessons. In the questionnaire responses in this study, a frequent complaint about school English lessons was that they were incomprehensible: “I can’t catch the main point when the teacher explains something” said one pupil.