Strategies for motivating students

Размещено на Allbest.ru

Introduction

Motivation is the actual theme in teaching foreign language and performs a very vital function in every classroom. Motivation is highly recognized as a powerful tool to teach students. Most educators believe that motivating students is one of the complex tasks of teaching. One of the basic tasks of teachers is increasing students' motivation. Through motivation learners can reach their learning goals. In addition, motivation is the key of success in learning process. By having motivation students will definitely be ambitious and willing to study. In this article we are aimed to give some recommendations for motivating students.

There are numerous reasons of why a student may be unmotivated: they may have no interest in the subject or may have difficulty to learn and need special attention. That is why motivating students play key role in teaching them. Some students are self-motivated, while others do not have natural love of learning. Even though a great teacher can make learning interesting. As it is not easy task, teachers need to use some strategies to motivate them.

We all used to teach children in traditional way, force them to learn еру grammatical rules by heart, do exercises constantly. These days we are offered variety of methods and strategies to make lessons more interactive, but strategies for motivating students must be properly observed.

Every student has a particular degree of motivation, but the teacher's manner, a curriculum, learning environment, the nature of the courses all have a great impact on student motivation. The strategies, which the teachers can use in order to improve students motivation are setting a good goal, creating an interesting classroom and using games etc.

Setting a good goal

One more strategy that also essential in improving student motivation is setting a good goal. Teacher need to set goals that are specific, realistic, and attainable by students. Experts have proven that setting good goals enable students to achieve them more easily. There is strategy called SMART GOAL, which can help us to achieve our targets. By using this strategy, teachers have possibility to motivate students. Because this strategy closely connected with their objective.

The structure of this strategy:

S - specific

M - measureable A - achievable

R - realistic T - timely

Specific: It is when the goal is clearly stated and answers these questions: What do I want to do? Why do I want to do it?

Measurable: The goal describes the evidence you will use to determine your progress.

Achievable: The goal is realistic and attainable by students.

Relevant: The goal connected to student learning and performance.

Timed: The goal has clearly set dates for achievement.

Apart from this strategy, we can use wide range of strategies like Jigsaw, Slant strategy, Scamper strategy. All depends on a teacher to choose which one is effective. However, all these strategies help us to encourage students to learn better.

Simple tips for motivating

student motivation

Another good strategy is that teachers should know some manners, how to behave in the classroom like being communicative, achievable. Before learning some strategies teachers need to know simple ways of motivating students:

To be accessible and communicative. Teacher is the most influential person in the classroom. It is advisable for them to be interested in their lives. Creating friendly atmosphere, calling them by name, making lessons relevant to their lives as much as possible motivates students.

Rewarding students. Praising and rewarding students for participating are also effective ways to motivate students. Verbal praise of good points and writing positive feedback will motivate them to do even better their assignments.

Getting Creative. It is advisable to teach through games and discussions instead of lectures, enrich the subject with colorful charts, diagrams and videos. Teachers' classroom should never be boring. We can even show a movie that effectively represents a topic or theme.

To be relative to students' interests. We should offer our students an authentic material, which is related to student's lives with familiar situations language and real-life conversations. Using such kind of materials will help to create warm classroom atmosphere.

Provide active learning. Students learn best by doing activities. Active learning situations provide opportunities for students to know what they have learned and how they understand the subject. For instance, students get chance to share their ideas in front of classroom. Summarizing, paraphrasing, talking about the important ideas in your class through group discussions, role-playing, simulations, case studies and written assignments are really helpful.

Facilitate a learning process. The teacher should be a facilitator in the classroom. It is important for the teachers to give examples, provide some hints. Here pre-teaching needs to be emphasized, because giving some key vocabulary or materials really facilitate learning process.

Types of motivation

Apart from knowing good manners in the classroom, we need to know the factors, which come from external and internal world of students.

There are two types of motivation, Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation. It is important to understand that they are not all the same; thus effectively motivating your students requires that you gain an understanding of the different types of motivation. Such an understanding will enable you to better categorize your class members and apply the appropriate type of motivation. You will find each student different and each student's motivational needs will be varied as well. Some people respond best to intrinsic, which means «from within» and will meet any obligation of an area of their passion. Quite the reverse, others will respond better to extrinsic motivation which, in their world, provides that difficult tasks can be dealt with provided there is a reward upon completion of that task [1].

Games as the main tool of motivation

Games on language lessons offer students a fun-filled and relaxing learning atmosphere. As well as motivating students, games construct a cooperative learning environment. Games introduce an element of competition into language-building activities. This provides valuable impetus to a purposeful use of language [2].

While playing games, the learners' attention is on the message, not on the language. Rather than pay attention to the correctness of linguistic forms, most participants will do all they can to win. This eases the fear of negative evaluation, the concern of being negatively judged in public, and which is one of the main factors inhibiting language learners from using the target language in front of other people [3].

Conclusion

To sum up, motivation is an influential factor that drive students to reach their learning goal. In improving student motivation we need pay attention these factors. First, we must set goals that are meaningful, realistic, and achievable for students. Second, we must know how to behave in the classroom. Third, we must set interesting environment through games and interesting materials that related to their live. Finally, if we can applied all strategies in teaching learning process, the students will reach learning goal easily.

We found out different strategies for motivating students. Most of these strategies closely connected with goals. We can use these strategies not only for motivating students, but also to improve their ability to think creatively, to participate in lessons. Apart from strategies, games are also play key role in motivating students. The main aim of the games are to introduce students with new subject, they also help to develop the students' communicative competence. So the game is a good stimulus for extra work. Most of pupils and teachers find games relaxing and motivating. As future teachers, we should be able to use some strategies, games during teaching foreign language. These activities are mostly used to motivate students. Motivating students are complex task and requires from us not only knowing strategies, but also how to behave in the classroom. In this article, we wrote some tips for teachers, which in my opinion every teacher should to know like being communicative and accessible. Teachers should learn the art of interacting and communicating with the student effectively.

The aim of our article was to find out ways to motivate students. We wrote about tips, strategies and games, because all these main tools for motivating students in the classroom. We believe that knowing all of these strategies listed in this article define some of the characteristics of good teachers.

References

Prasad, U. 2003. Achieving communicative competence in English. India's National Newspaper (29, July).

Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M. B., and Cope, J. A. 1986. Foreign language classroom anxiety. The Modern Language Journal 70 (2) : 125-132.

Размещено на Allbest.ru