In recent years, I have had the privilege to visit many classes around the world, to talk to teachers and sit in on their lessons. I remember very clearly one experience in particular which started me thinking about the whole question of motivation.
I was visiting a secondary school, and my first visit was to a first year class of 11-12 year olds, early in their school year. As soon as you opened the door, you could feel and see the motivation to learn in these students. Big, bright eyes, and smiles, eager to show the visitor what they had learned. They had been looking forward to the visit by ‘the Englishman’ and now the moment had arrived. The bubbling energy of these students was overwhelming, and so too was their desire to learn English.
Next lesson, I went a little further along the corridor to visit a second year class, a year older. Here, the tone was very different – more purposeful but more subdued with none of the spark that I had seen just before. Their eyes no longer had a twinkle and the smiles were now replaced by a somewhat expressionless look on some students. We had a pleasant encounter, and they read short pieces of their work to me but the overall tone was rather polite.
Next, I visited a third year class, and here I found a quite different atmosphere. At front of the class, there were a few students who were clearly interested in the visit by ‘the Englishman’. We talked about the things they liked and disliked in learning English and their interests. It was, however, always the same students who talked and most of the students remained silent throughout. More significantly, there were two students who clearly couldn’t care less – or so it appeared. One of them, sitting at the back of the class, had his feet on the edge of his desk, not a book, a pen or a piece of paper near him. He was removing what looked like motor oil from his nails. Every so often he would shout something out to another student, and receive a glare from the teacher. The other student, also at the back, was evidentially asleep, with his head flopped over his desk, and no sign of any school equipment near him.
Many teachers, I am sure, will recognise the scenarios here. They are, in fact, situations that I have since seen time and time again in my visits to schools. Many teachers, too, will also recognise the sketch of the ‘couldn’t care less – don’t want to learn’ students. The most striking thing for me, however, was the transition from the 1st year students –all seemingly eager and energetic- to the wide differences amongst the 3rd year class, with some students now apparently completely negative about their learning. Assuming that the 3rd year class had once been like the 1st year class, what had happened in the intervening three years? Where did the students’ initial motivation come from? And where did it go?
Sources of motivation
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to point to a single factor which would account for the apparent changing levels of motivation and involvement that I had witnessed. As all teachers know, and as Marion Williams in an earlier article (ETP, Issue 13) has explained, there are many, many factors which affect students’ commitment to study. Many things – perhaps most – are beyond our control as language teachers, and fall outside the confines of the few lessons that we have with them in a week. Home background, physical tiredness, events in their personal life, health, previous educational experience, personality and the onset of adolescence, are just some of the factors that can affect how individual students appear to us in our classes. Nevertheless, I believe that in many cases, the explanation of why the smile disappears from the faces of some students – whatever their age - may indeed lie in their experience of their English classes – in short, in how their classes are organised.
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