Teach English in Xitieshan Zhen - Haixi Mengguzu Zangzu Zizhizhou

Motivation is the foundation of all communication. During early language acquisition in infants, we can clearly see that children obtain language because of the motivation to express and request their needs to those around them. Conversely, we can also see during second language acquisition that a deficit in motivation can result in self-consciousness, boredom, frustration, and ultimately defeat. It would be an interesting statistic to see how many prospective language students, formal or informal, have undertaken learning a new language only to quit a short time later as they “lose” their motivation. In order to address this issue, an attempt will be made to answer three questions: what is motivation, what are barriers to healthy motivation, and how can language teachers encourage students to persevere in their motivation to learn another language. First, what is motivation? Motivation in language-learning, for the purpose of this paper, can be defined in two ways: a desired end for our efforts (i.e. learning English for a job, moving to another country, enjoying English-based entertainment, etc.), and a satisfaction with our effort itself (i.e. feeling positive about participating in a language, enjoying the challenge of speaking with a native English speaker, etc.). For children learning a second language, the motivation to learn language for a desired end may not be as prevalent as the satisfaction with the effort itself (i.e. participating in class games). The opposite can be true of older learners, who are motivated by a long-term goal. Both of these age groups can experience barriers to language-learning based on their motivations. This leads to the second question: What motivational barriers are experienced by children and adults? Since language-learning is such a vulnerable task, older language learners may lose their motivational satisfaction with the act of learning the language itself, even though they still maintain a long-term vision for what positive outcomes may be experienced through mastering that language. As such, older language learners may become timid, discouraged, and disengaged in classroom activities after making errors and feeling self-conscious. Likewise, children, who are generally less prone to focus on mistakes and enjoy the language task itself, may lose motivation if they cannot see the value in putting in the effort, or if they become bored with the language session activities. So then, how can language teachers encourage their students, children and adults alike to overcome motivational barriers? First, the teacher must create a relaxed and opportunistic environment by establishing rapport with their students. Nothing can squelch motivation to learn like a surly, unclear, and over-correcting language teacher. The teacher should arrange and maintain the classroom to optimize an atmosphere of risk-taking and open communication. Second, in order to ensure for their students to remain motivated throughout session activities, it is crucial that the teacher provide topics, activities, and materials that are interesting to their class. This can be difficult to achieve in diverse classrooms, which is why teachers must provide varying topics, both authentic texts (i.e. newspapers) and non-authentic texts (i.e. language-level specific texts), that will catch the attention of the class as a whole. Third, the teacher must provide engaging and interesting lesson plans that will keep students from becoming bored and uninterested in the language-learning experience. This can be accomplished through the ESA (Engage, Study, Activate) method which provides students with opportunities to ease into a lesson, study the ins-and-outs of language (i.e. grammar, writing, reading, pronunciation, etc.), and to apply the lesson in real-time fluency-building activities such as roleplays. The ESA method is also easily adapted (e.g. boomerang structure, patchwork structure) to meet the needs of language students for any particular lesson. Language-learning is built on the foundation of motivation—whether the motivation to obtain a future goal or the joy of the learning process itself. It is imperative that language teachers become student-centered by focusing on the needs and desires of their students, and by doing so that they support the innate language-learning motivations of every student— children and adults alike.