Motivating students in a language class is a perennial problem for English teachers.

Motivation has become more commonly recognized as perhaps the major determining factor for successful learning in general, whether one is an adult learner taking distance education courses or a high school student pushing one’s way through the battery of required courses need to graduate. In any learning setting, the dynamics of motivation will be different.

What will help a high school student sustain motivation may not apply to an adult learner or child, for example.

The problem is that in many ESL/EFL learning environments, there is an attitude among educators and administrators that “it is up to the student” to be successful. When students fall behind, or are not progressing, they are considered to be lazy or lacking aptitude, but the deeper source of the problem is not considered.

Instruction, which the learner perceives to be incomprehensible or irrelevant to their learning goals, will exacerbate affective issues, which can hinder motivation.

In spite of the realization by experts in the fields of second language acquisition and learning theory about the importance of motivation, instruction design in the formal classroom setting has been slow to catch up to current research indicating that student motivation can be generated through effective instruction design and teaching strategies.

How can we motivate the students and get them back “into” our class?

One sure - fire way to get our students to motivated is to offer them small prizes or treats to do the task at hand. We will have a class full of highly motivated, participating students.

They may even learn something from the activity. However, by giving the children prizes and treats to motivate them we’ll end up with an empty pocketbook and a class full of students who are only motivated for the material prize, not because they want to learn.

There are many other ways to motivate our students:

Be more than just a teacher

No matter what your class demographics are, there is one sur way to motivate your class into participating. Get them interested in you as their teacher and the interest in your subject matter and class activities will soon follow.

You’re not just a teacher, you’re person too

Sometimes students tend to have the mentality that teachers are just teachers. They exist in school and nowhere lese. However, if you let them see you as a person and not just a teacher you might see a change in how they react to your class and class activities.

Keep yourself motivated

Think back to what classes you like best and why. If the teacher was bored and didn’t make the subject interesting, then the children often didn’t like the lesson either.

To keep yourself motivated, change your activities to things that you are excited about.

Be an individual

Don’t be afraid to talk about your interests outside the school. Look for commonalities between you and your students and capitalize on them.

Encourage

When you’re frustrated with your class because they don’t seem interested in participating, it’s quite easy to forget that eve if they do something small, you need to keep encouraging and to stay positive.

If the students do not feel encouraged and good about learning then they will not feel motivated to learn.

Play games

Implement games that have the same outcome that you might have them reach by doing a worksheet. When you play games, you can use points and competition as a motivator.

Get them moving

Movement is a visual component to motivating children. Even if you just require them to come up to you instead of you going to them for help, the movement can help get them out of the trance that they sometimes get from sitting in one spot too long.

Grouping the students for study project and activities helps as well.

Every class is different and the experienced teacher should adapt all activities for the class.

Literature:

Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 261-271.

Driscoll, M.P. (1994). Psychology of learning for instruction. MA: Division of Paramount Publishing.

Malone, M.R. & Lepper, M.R. (1983). Making learning fun. In R.E. Snow & J.F. Marshall (Eds.), Aptitude, learning, and instruction: Cognitive and affective process analyses (Vol. 3, pp.223-253). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schiefele, U. (1991). Interest, learning, and motivation. Educational Psychologist, 26(3,4), 299-323.

Klara Sedlakova