Abstract:

The article examines Ural Federal University (UrFU) academics’ motivation to develop foreign language proficiency as a major factor contributing to their integration into the global academic environment. A positive experience in running a large-scale project of teaching English to the faculty and in establishing different mechanisms for managing motivation is described.

The results obtained in an extensive survey of subject teachers participating in the project revealed that the optimum combination of different factors, such as eliminating typical demotivators known to impair adults’ motivation for learning and enhancing potential motivators enabled UrFU to strengthen its academic staff motivation for improving English language proficiency.

The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the survey data revealed that internal motivating factors prevail over external positive reinforcement. Moreover, icreased motivation for developing language skills generated motivation for participating in internationalisation activities (international publishing, designing courses in English).

The conclusion can be drawn that subject teachers need facilitation and support to become involved in internationalisation and respond very positively to this. The findings can have broad practical implications, such as influencing the most significant motives identified, providing for leveraging the faculty acquired English proficiency while addressing the need for internationalisation.

Keywords:

Managing motivation, teaching English to adults, facilitating internationalisation.