Tangible and intangible rewards: How do they relate to task-specific motivation and task performance in second language writing?

This study investigates the impact of tangible and intangible rewards on extrinsic and intrinsic task-specific motivation of young second language (L2) writers, as well as their writing performance. It also examines the relationships between task-specific motivation and writing performance under various reward conditions. A total of 123 Chinese secondary school students were assigned to three groups: a tangible reward group, an intangible reward group, and a no reward group. Participants in the two reward groups were informed that they could receive a tangible or an intangible reward if their writing performance ranked among Top 10 in their class. All participants then completed an English writing task, followed by a scale assessing their extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in the task. A series of Kruskal-Wallis tests revealed that rewards increased extrinsic task motivation but had no effect on intrinsic task motivation. Both reward groups outperformed the no reward group in all aspects of writing performance (i.e., content, organization, and language). Additionally, Spearman correlation and multiple linear regression analyses revealed that extrinsic and intrinsic task motivation were positively associated with writing performance in the tangible reward group, but not in the other groups. The findings provide practical implications for task motivation intervention among young L2 learners.