The students have to believe in what they're doing. If they don't believe that there's
a purpose to what they're doing, if they don't believe there's an overall goal to what they're
doing, then they stop seeing the point.
If you can say, okay today we're going to do this, this is our objective, these are
the reasons why were going to be doing this, this is how its going to affect your long
term success etc. etc. you're on to a winner.
Show them where they're going to be by the end of the course and they have to believe
in that goal and believe that it's valid for them.
I would suggest trying to avoid activities where the only purpose is to practise the
language.
Never go into the class and say, "Okay today we're going to do page 72 of the coursebook".
Page 72 - what is that? I don't understand what that is. If you don't know what you're
doing and you don't know why you're doing it, you've got no chance whatsoever of motivating
your students.
Even if they know it's good for them on an intellectual level, on an emotional level
I think they lose that motivation to put the extra effort in.
This might just be a question of tweaking the instructions for a standard coursebook
activity. For example instead of giving the students a list of discussion questions with
no particular outcome, you could try getting them to rank opinions in order or choose the
opinion they agree or disagree with the most. Changing the activity in this way does make
it a great deal more intrinsically motivating.
They all come to class motivated in the sense of wanting something, whether it be wanting
to meet up with their friends or talking about their favourite topic or even wanting to achieve
certain things using the English language, and we should tap into all of these motivations.
Find that. Find out what the students want to do, find out what they're needing English
for and tailor the lessons to suit them, suit their needs and their wants. And I believe
that way we're bringing out the motivation that's inherently in the student rather than
trying to bring in, you know, tried and tested methods and games and cut-up pieces of card
just because it's worked for you in the past.
We can vary activity type and we can also vary the dynamics in which that activity takes
place. By dynamics I mean sometimes people can be working alone, they can be working
in pairs, they can be working in groups.
I like to create situations in class where maybe we've done the introductory part of
the lesson and then I have a choice of tasks for them to do. Or even at the start of the
lesson a choice of topics that we could look at today.
Teaching and learning is a step by step incremental process and very often it's difficult to see
the progress that's been made.
And I think there are a variety of ways we can do this. So for example blogs and wikis
and Evernote can be a very useful tool for storing up learners' work over a period of
time. And then this can then be reflected on as time progresses so that the learners
are able to see what progress they're making. Also recording learners towards the beginning
of a course and then later on, perhaps during the middle and then at the end, and then these
recordings can be compared to see what progress has been made.