Naglaa Ahmed Abdelmonem
Wednesday, August 21st, 2013
Motivation essay
Motivation essay
Motivation is an indicator of the flow of the learning experience in a classroom. The teacher
should base his lesson plan and activities on motivating techniques to get the message
through. I observed the motivation fluctuation levels of a beginner’s class on colors and
clothes. There were five students. The grammar tackled the usage of the present continues
tense to express what each student” is wearing”. For a beginners’ class, the teacher’s language
of presentation was difficult because he used a lot of American slang with no clear instructions
and long sentences. All the five students were Latin Americans which indicates that for them
learning English is most probably for work reasons. So, to some extent they were extrinsically
motivated, but because it was a beginners’ class, I believe that more external motivation
methods would have been useful as well (clearer language presentation for example). To some
extent, I believe that Robert Gagne’s theory applies to the fact that motivation through clear
instructions would have been more useful in this case.1 They would have been more
interested if they had the “sense of becoming more capable following instructions”2
As the lesson started, the students’ interest was high because the teacher made a personalized
introduction to the topic, so the students started interacting and expressing their favorite
color/s. That made them interested in seeing the few words of color vocabulary written on the
board and in participating in the vocabulary drill. This continued during the vocabulary activity
because it was short. Afterwards, the teacher introduced new vocabulary related to clothes
and again managed to maintain their attention because he made them speak about what they
were wearing in the class. However, the vocabulary activity for cloths affected their interest
span because the instructions were not clear. When the teacher introduced the grammar, he
used the title of the tense “present continuous” directly which forced them to listen to the
explanation and increased their motivation. The oral practice of grammar maintained that
level because students were encouraged to say what others were wearing. When they reached
the produce phase, the motivation level was different from one student to the other, but
generally it was good because the teacher came closer to the students to follow up what they
wrote. For example the weakest student had been struggling with the teacher’s language
during the whole class. However, when he came closer to her desk to help her with the
exercise, she was more relaxed and demonstrated being an extrinsically motivated student.
Motivation was maintained in the wrap up as the teacher explained that each student should
speak about what he/ she is wearing. Unfortunately as a back up near the end of the class, the
teacher introduced the topic of seasons and did not have enough time to elaborate more
about it, so after gaining their interest, their motivation dropped because they lacked the
practice and the topic was not completed.
I guess that thanks to the repetition of some structures and vocabulary “I am wearing a blue Tshirt”, students were motivated to express themselves in the produce phase.
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Naglaa Ahmed Abdelmonem
Wednesday, August 21st, 2013
Motivation essay
During the class, the teacher made sure that he explained all the class phases. For instance, he
said “now we are going to practice the vocabulary- Now, it is grammar.” I do not think that this
helped their interest level, because besides his presentation language difficulty, he sometimes
spoke fast.
Moreover, Student Talking Time (STT) was reasonable and they participated in a couple of pairwork, which made them motivated to participate. This attitude was emphasized by the variety
of activities: he showed them the different colors through his laptop, students mentioned their
favorite color and what they were wearing and they applied the same technique with their
peers.
I also noticed that since the some students had a problem in understanding the teacher
sometimes, they depended on asking their peers. Thus, as Albert Bandura points out
motivation is based on other people’s motivation.3 That was very clear in the case of the weak
students so when activities started they relied on other students’ motivation to get the work
done. That is why one of the weakest students used to get help from the student next to her.
In general, despite the fluctuations in the motivation levels during the class, the teacher tried
to get closer to the students and that helped in raising their motivation levels to be able to
answer his questions and fulfill all the required tasks.
References
1-Robert Gagne
Instructionaldesign.org (1992) Robert Gagne- Conditions of learning (online)
http://instructionaldesign.org/theories/conditions-learning.html
2- Source:
www.http://instructionaldesign.org/theories/conditions-learning.htm
3- Albert Bandura
Instructionaldesign.org (1973) Albert Bandura- Social learning theory. (online) Available at:
http://instructionaldesign.org/theories/social-learning.html
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