Week #10: Motivating Learners

Gaining your students’ interest and improving their motivation will increase the likelihood that they will commit the time and effort necessary to achieve the learning objectives (Clark, 1999; Dembo, 1994; Gagné, Yekovich, and Yekovich, 1993; Smith and Ragan, 1999).

I think motivation is very important in learners, why? Because, without motivation they won´t succeed. Motivation increases the learners´ desires and their want to do something, either better or worse. It puts them in action, increase their desire to participate in class and achieve their goals. But, in order to achieve that motivation in learners the teacher should assess some motivational techniques.

The reading mentions that “Language teachers promote or discourage students' engagement by the ways they define successful language learners”. To promote engagement in language learning:

Ø  Encourage students to use the language spontaneously to communicate ideas, feelings, and opinions.

Ø  Identify informal out-of-class language learning experiences.

Ø  Ask students to evaluate their progress in terms of increases in their functional proficiency.

So, this is very important, because as the reading says “Students' motivation for learning a language increases when they see connections between what they do in the classroom and what they hope to do with the language in the future”.