Motivating teenagers
The ideas of Carl Rogers
Rogers (1957) outlined 3 attitudinal qualities that a teacher, or in his words,
a facilitator, should have to assist the learning process. They are empathy
(seeing things from the students' view point), authenticity (being yourself)
and acceptance (of students' ideas and opinions).
Types of motivation and teenagers
It is widely agreed that motivation has a great effect on a student's capacity
to learn. Motivation can be broken down into extrinsic and intrinsic forms.
Intrinsic motivation comes from within the learner, who wants to learn for the
sake of learning. Although not impossible to find an intrinsically motivated
teenage student, five years of experience working with Young Learners in Spain
leads me to believe that they are few and far between! It is much more likely
that our teenage students will be extrinsically motivated, meaning that their
motivation comes from external sources such as wanting to pass an exam or
please their parents. The good news for teachers of teenagers is that there are
many things we can do in the classroom to increase the levels of extrinsic
motivation.
Ways to improve motivation
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 I always give the students
their journals to keep.
It should be made clear that
the idea is to communicate effectively in English and not to worry too much
about mistakes. The teacher will not correct mistakes and will focus solely on
the meaning. I always keep a list of common mistakes that are made in the
journals and deal with them as and when it is appropriate as an integrative
part of the course. I would never use a sentence lifted directly from a journal
to focus on an error.
Class time should be set aside
for journal writing. 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 prompts for the next class's
journal writing.
Although replying to the
writing in the journals can be time consuming it really does help the teacher
to empathise with the students. Discovering, for example, that the reason one
of my students didn't like to sing in class was because his voice was breaking,
or that one of the students was having problems with a group of friends at
school really helps to remind us of what it is like to be a teenager! I am sure
these students would not have seen it as appropriate to come and talk to me
about these issues but they did feel comfortable to write about them. Many
students have really enjoyed the process of journal writing and have felt
motivated to write in English on a regular basis.
Using photos can really help to
spark genuine interest and generate a lot of language. Topics that lend
themselves to the use of photos are describing people, family, holidays or
describing places. 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? How much more engaging to see holiday photos from the teacher's summer
break rather than the typical desert island shots used in course books? 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"
Of course there can be
drawbacks with letting the students into your personal life, and you should
think carefully about who to 'introduce' your class to! Teenagers have
excellent memories, so questions about the people in the photos will last for
the whole course, sometimes the relationships may not last quite as long!
Although it can be tempting to
only use music in the class that you enjoy listening to, teenagers really
appreciate it if you make the effort to find out what they like listening to.
To get this information students can write surveys to do with the class to find
out the top five favourite bands. When you know what they like to listen to
encourage students to lend you the CDs or tapes. I often record music videos
from a local TV channel.
Most teachers have a variety of
activities to use with songs. 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.
Having music on in the
background can really change the atmosphere of a classroom. When students are
working in groups I sometimes like to have music playing softly in the class.
Rather than always play my own tastes I allow students to bring in their own
tapes. A class vote decides what we listen to when we work. By accepting their
music tastes and 'tuning in' to them, the motivation levels of a class can be
improved. Teenagers know a lot about music and will be willing to tell you all
about it. Rather than ignoring the differences in taste between them and you,
exploit them and use them as a real information gap!