Motivating students to learn

Today I am going to write about motivation. I consider it as the key role in learning process so I am very interested in it. Moreover, during my writing course I wrote my paper on motivational techniques and methods, so it was interesting also listen to a podcast where some ESL teachers were talking about it.

According to Dornyei(2006) “Motivation is an abstract, hypothetical concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they do. It is the inner power or energy that pushes toward acting, performing actions and achieving goals”. In the podcast(http://www.eslteachertalk.com/) the teachers say that there are three key points which influence on the motivational level of the students. The first one is self-motivation, which means that teachers should be motivated themselves. I have read about this in Zoltman Dornyie’s book Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom,

where the author points, that if a teacher is thrilled with the subject, this enthusiasm will transfer to the students for sure. One of the teachers in the podcast mentioned a very interesting idea, he said that when teachers enter a classroom they should feel themselves as if in a stage, where they must forget about their personal problems and should wear a happy face in order to make their students do whatever they do with pleasure.
The second key point is that the teachers should encourage their students. All students, more or less, are motivated to learn, but the teachers are the ones who should and can increase even a minute of motivation (McCombs, 1994). In the podcast the teachers say that in a groups of young children teachers can play games, talk about their favorite cartoons, friends. Another thing that motivates students is praising. But this praising should not be meaningless. Feedbacks are also very important. When a student fails, the teacher can attribute the failure to a lack of effort e.g.,the teacher may say, “I don’t think you were really concentrating,” indicating a belief in the student’s ability to succeed (Stipek, 1993).
Finally the third point is the environment. Only in a supportive classroom children can feel themselves at ease and reach a success. By mentioning the environment they mean both physical and psychological. It is important to mention that both teacher-student and student-student relationship can have great influence on motivation. I hope you liked my post and if you are interested you can click here and read a book which gives a lot of information about motivation. I hope you will find it helpful.