MOTIVATING LOWER SECONDARY
FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS
Zdeňka Řehoutová
IKS
2007/2008
Didaktika/DIRK I
I suppose that every teaching should include a motivation so as it could be successful.
In teaching English I can find two different levels of motivation.
To-day it should be very easy to motivate children to learn English because I am sure that this
language is gradually becoming one of the most used language that works as a universal
language or at least as a common language of civil countries.
My motivating for the pupils to learn English just comes from this idea. I very often remind it
mainly to those pupils who are not talented to learn languages or who have some disturbances
of learning. In addition we know that mostly worse results motivate negatively. The others,
good and excellent pupils of good language aptitude should be motivated in the same way but
it is easier. They simply want to learn, they are ambitious and mostly at such a good level that
they can recognize how necessary is to learn foreign languages. It is only up to us if our way
of teaching or our teaching methods will be sufficiently interesting for them so as they
wouldn’t lose their interest about it.
In the other meaning, with motivation I understand a way to attract the pupils to concentrate
on the topic of each lesson.
Many aspects can influence this motivation for example: topic, teaching methods, evaluation,
the type of the lesson (project work, interpretation of new subject matter, exercises or
revising), aids or means of teaching. Very helpful can be tools of motivation as are marks,
reports, medals, a hall of fame, competitions, performances, rhyming, songs, and crosswords
or guessing games.
We can hardly have an influence to the topics or the extent of grammar. They will be
probably very similar at the same age level. But when we gradually get to know specialties
and differences of our classes we can make use of the suitable way of motivation.
As far as I can remember I succeeded in motivating my seventh class when my pupils had to
do one of their projects.
They had to work by themselves. The task was: “Describe your favourite photograph and use
present continuous tense”. First they brought their pictures and I chose some of the children to
try to describe them. The others had to check their mistakes in pronunciation or grammar.
Next we put some examples on the board to avoid making mistakes. Later I put a clue and an
arrangement how to do it. I suggested them to start with: I’d like to show you… or You can
see me and my mum in this picture, This is a photograph of my grandfather and me on our
holidays, and so on. Next the children could prepare their describing on sheets of paper. They
could ask me about some problems, they were allowed to use dictionaries. At home they had
to stick their photographs on a lean sheet of paper and to put down their describing that had
been partly corrected at school.
Nobody forgot to do it. They were deeply interested in it. Later they were pleased when they
could find their projects displayed in the main school hall. They were proud, their older and
younger schoolmates were reading their works and even the other classes wanted to do the
same work.
I am persuaded that the success of this project came from the motivation based on
personalising. The pupils who are not as successful as their more talented friends had an
opportunity to show that they can be good at some different activities. It could be seen in their
pictures where they had been taken playing football, floor ball, riding a horse and so on. In
addition they discovered me a lot of their privacy. A shy boy was proud of his picture where
he had been taken with his father, who lives in America, and this boy meets him only once or
twice a year. Another girl who has many learning problems wanted to show her hobby-riding
a horse. She wanted to find the suitable words and very often asked me for help.
A disadvantage of this project that at the same time deeply motivated them was that it took
much more time than I had presupposed. I spent a lot of time by correcting mistakes. Next
time it might would be possible to limit the topic of these photographs; for example: “My
birthday party” or “Our successful floor ball match” or so on.
This year I have taken over the ninth class. These children were not used to speak. Their had
been teaching in a way as is; reading a text, doing grammar, exercises and a test, so they were
very ashamed to speak a lot, their pronunciation was terrible. Later I found out that very good
way of motivating them to make them speak was singing and listening songs. I started with
very simple lyrics; sometimes I offered them a choice of several songs that I first played for
them. I was surprised that they did not refuse songs of Abba, Beatles or Scorpions. The song
“Yesterday” of Beatles was successful because we were learning it during a time when one of
my pupils’ favourite singer sang it during some singing competition on TV.
Gradually, when we had a short list of songs I started to feel that my pupils were not afraid to
risk to pronounce, they suddenly had more certainty to speak.
I was very delighted when I was with my own children on a children discotheque and these
pupils of my ninth class with sovereignty were singing the song “All my loving” when it was
being played.
According my experience the way of motivation should always be connected with the age,
specialities and interests of our pupils. We should motivate them through their inner needs.
From my point of view the best way of motivation is the teacher’s personality. It means his
enthusiasm, manner and his ability to respect an individuality of each child. Sometimes his
ability to be a good actor is very useful too. A boring teacher hardly can motivate his students.