HOW TO MOTIVATE TEENAGERS

1. HOW TO MOTIVATE TEENAGERS

2. MOTIVATION • Motivation is an abstract, hypothetical concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they do. • Motivation explains why people decide to do something, how hard they are going to pursue it and how long they are willing to sustain the activity.

3. Language learners´ goals fall into two broad categories: • Integrative orientation, which reflects a positive disposition toward the group that speaks the foreign language and the desire to interact with and even become similar to valued members of the community. • Instrumental orientation, where language learning is primarily associated with the potential pragmatic gains of foreign language proficiency, such as getting a better job or a higher salary.

4. Motivational conditions: • An appropriate teacher´s behaviour and a good relationship with the students • A pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere • A cohesive learner group with appropriate group norms

5. An appropriate teacher´s behaviour and a good relationship with the students: • Offer concrete assistance • Respond immediately when help is requested • Correct tests and papers promptly • Arrange extracurricular programmes • Listen and pay attention to students (e. g. show interest in their hobbies)

6. A pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere: • Tolerance • Humour • Decoration – encourage students to personalise the classroom environment

7. A cohesive learner group with appropriate group norms: • Cohesive group – a group which is “together” – in which there is a strong “we“ feeling • Members should learn things about each other • Contact and interaction • Prevent rigid seating patterns

8. Generating initial motivation: • Point out challenging, exotic or satisfying aspects of learning foreign language • Connect learning of foreign language with activities that students find interesting (computer-assisted learning)

9. Familiarise learners with interesting aspects of the culture • Share your own positive experiences related to the foreign language (culture) • Focus on cross-cultural similarities (and not just differences) • Bring various cultural products (magazines, music) to class

10. Ways to improve motivation • Journal writing – Empathy • Using photos – Authenticity • Music - Acceptance

11. Journal writing, why is it good for? • to find out more about teacher's students lives • The idea is to communicate effectively in English and not to worry too much about mistakes (teacher will prepare a list of common mistakes) • Students can be more opened to their teacher and They can begin to trust him, this means that the teacher will never read anyone's writing out in the class

12. Preparation • At the start of a course, I ask students to begin their journals by telling me about themselves and their reasons for studying English. The teacher collects all the journals in and replies individually to each one and asks a question or two, which will be the topics for the next class's journal writing. • When introducing the idea of writing journals it is important to make the aims and general rules clear to students. • Students should each have their own notebook to use as their journal. These should be kept by the teacher and it should be made clear that the teacher will not read anyone's writing out in the class. It will be strictly a two-way 'conversation' between the individual student and the teacher. At the end of the course a teacher always gives the students their journals to keep.

13. Using photos • Teenage students can be very curious and inquisitive. • They want to know more about their teacher and his/ her life outside the classroom • Teacher decides how much of his/her life wants to give away and shares with the students • personalizing really helps to increase students' interest levels.  • How much more interesting to describe a photo of the teacher's friend or sister than to describe a photo of a random unknown man in a book .

14. Preparation • Topics that lend themselves to the use of photos are describing people, family, holidays or describing places. • Grammar lessons can also be supported with photos. To give a simple example, teaching 'used to' becomes much more memorable when sentences with a visual image can be formed. Eg. "my teacher used to have long hair and a moustache"

15. Music • Teenagers love listening to music! • Due to the fact that so much popular music is in English it can be a source for highly motivating activities.  • Having music on in the background can really change the atmosphere of a classroom. When students are working in groups.

16. Preparation • To get this information students can write surveys to do with the class to find out the top five favourite bands.  • Lyrics can be easily found on the internet and there are many opportunities to exploit language in songs. • Students themselves can be involved in creating activities to use with their favourite songs. • To prepare a project about music styles like EMO, ROCK, PUNK, HIP HOP

17. MIXED CLASSES • - Students vary or are similar in many ways (in their interests and plans, in their learning style, etc.). • - A teacher´s task is to get to know a class as much as possible and then to choose learning activities which are appropriate – interesting and useful. • - For lessons which are consistently interesting and useful for mixed classes, what kind of activities do we need?

18. We need activities which • are flexible – they allow students to choose from a menu of sub-tasks that they can attempt at different levels of ambition • cater for a variety of learning aims • Some activities have both flexibility and variety of aims • e.g. Kill the text (accuracy in speech, writing, listening to others)

19. POORLY MOTIVATED STUDENTS - There are four types of low-proficiency student • Some are weak in English for some reason; students need lots of attention, but they are able to work hard if they get adequate attention. • Students with psychological learning disabilities such as poor hearing. • Students with severe psychological problems resulting from traumatic experiences. • Students who are weak in English largely because their motivation is low; it is necessary to have lessons not just useful and well-managed, but also interesting and varied. => our target group

20. Some features of interesting lessons: • variety is important • activities should be clearly understood and have achievable goals • games are usually very good for generating interest (a degree of competition), as well as use of activities which encourage students to use the target language for communication of interesting messages • extensive use of non-language stimuli such as pictures, objects, mime, music and sound effects is very important

21. try to discover what topics are of current interest to the age group and try to include them in lessons • periodic opportunity to move about, or stand and move, is highly beneficial • make lessons success-oriented (achievable aims) • Adequate portion of humour is important too!

22. Some activities which can help us in: • maintaining discipline in the classroom – e.g. the disappearing word • ice – breaking, warming up etc. – e.g. alphabet improvisation dialogues (spontaneity, listening to a partner, following strict rules) clap and say (rhythm, concentration, learning names) • speaking mainly – e.g. letter on the board (spontaneity, fluency, sticking to a topic) • listening mainly – e.g. ticking differences (gist listening, speaking) • writing mainly – e.g. write in the shape (writing, speaking) • learning and reviewing vocabulary – e.g. How many? (terms for numbers, parts of the body, etc.)

23. Sources • Language activities for teenagers, edited by Seth Lindstromberg • Motivational strategies in the language classroom, ZoltánDornyei