Teach English in Xinzhai Zhen - Jinan Shi

While it is the job of the teacher to guide the students through learning new material, it is the students themselves that must be motivated in order for the material to be maintained and remembered. If students are not motivated, they will not taking learning upon themselves, which means that their knowledge will only go as far as the classroom. For this reason, it is important to make sure that students are motivated in any learning environment, and there are several ways to do so. When students can relate to the material, they will generally show more of an interest. This is true regardless of the current topic, but can sometimes be difficult when teaching grammar structures within a language. While grammar can be less exciting, it is important to find other ways to appeal to a class. For example, showing that students could actually use the language being taught would add meaning and necessity to the lessons. One way that might encourage students to better learn a language would be facilitating a pen-pal system. This would allow them to engage in relatable conversations with their peers, while also adding pressure to learn the language at a conversation level. Ensuring that the content is challenging but realistic is also something important to strive for. When material is not challenging enough, the students can become bored and quickly lose interest and motivation. As earlier stated, motivation is necessary for a successful class. However, if the material is too challenging it can cause a great deal of frustration which can lead to students losing faith in themselves and giving up entirely. It is essential to find a balance between the two extremes. In every class, there will be students that are more advanced than others, so a good way to combat this is to pair stronger and weaker students together so that they are able to learn from each other. This enables the stronger students to practice what they already know, making them feel useful, while the less strong students are able to learn from their peers in a safe learning environment. While peer-to-peer motivation is important, it is also essential for the teacher to establish rapport with the students so that there is also a teacher-student relationship in the classroom. By establishing rapport teachers make themselves approachable so that students feel comfortable asking questions. There are many ways to establish a positive rapport, such as giving praise when it is due to each student. There should be unconditional positive regard for every student, meaning that positive feedback is not focused on one or a couple of students, but on each individual student as appropriate. Setting specific goals is a great way to motivate students. Goal setting is a very positive thing because it helps show the growth of the students over a specific period of time. When students can see how much they have learned and retained, it is more likely that they will be motivated to continue pushing themselves. The one thing to be very careful of is ensuring that the goals are attainable. If the teacher does not really know the level of the students it is best to set really small goals until more specific goals can be constructed. Motivating students, as well as guiding students to find motivation in themselves is one of the keys to teaching any language. If the motivation is not there, then the students are unlikely to remember any material that they are not currently studying. Finding ways for the students to relate to the material, making sure that the content is at the appropriate level of difficulty, establishing rapport, and setting specific and realistic goals are the building blocks to creating the proper motivation required for learners to truly learn material.