About motivation

What’s motivation?
The word MOTIVATION is derived from the Latin term « motivus » which means «a moving cause”.

Motivation is the key to learning. It’s a value and a DESIRE for learning.

Motivation is the characteristic that is required in order to achieve anything in life; without it one will give up at the first sign of adversity. It means to inspire, instigate and encourage a person to do their best. Motivation will compel a person to think and will cause them to do whatever it takes to become successful.

Motivation is the inner power or energy that pushes one toward performing a certain action.

What are the types of motivation?
Psychologists say that there are two types of motivation:
1- External, outer or imposed motivation: if the student is externally motivated, his parents and / or teachers are forcing him to learn.
2- Internal or inner motivation: this is the case where the student simply has a desire to learn the language. Maybe he likes the culture of an English-speaking country, or he likes the language / languages in general.
Internal motivation is much more useful in terms of moving students towards fluency in the language they are learning.

What’s the role of motivation?
Motivation is vital in language learning. It makes language learners positive about their own learning. It also creates the drive in them to acquire the targeted language and enjoy the learning process.

What can we do to enhance our students’ motivation?
To improve our students’ motivation and awaken the power that will push them toward achieving their goals, which is learning English, we should:
1- Help students set a goal. It’s important to help each student set goals and to provide informative feedback regarding process toward these goals. Setting a goal demonstrates an intention to achieve and activates learning from one day to the next. It also directs the students’ activities toward the goal and offers an opportunity to experience success.
2- Create warm and accepting atmosphere, which will promote persistent effort and favorable attitudes toward learning. Interesting visual aids, such as booklets, posters, or practice equipment, motivate learners by capturing their attention and curiosity.
3- Repeatedly reinforce our students’ internal motivation by incentives, praise and / or concrete rewards. The use of incentives is based on the principle that learning occurs more effectively when the student experiences feeling of satisfaction.
4- Develop a mutual relationship with our students. To do so, we need to understand students who are from different backgrounds, have different interests, future goals, and most importantly, different personalities. Once we understand our learners better, we are able to apply specific teaching and communicating strategies “tailored” to each student, thereby creating a trusting relationship between us and our students. If this objective is reached, the classroom will undoubtedly become comfortable and enjoyable enough for our students to learn positively from us without any hesitation.

Makiko Ebata (Digital Hollywood University - Tokyo , Japan ) did a survey on motivation using the students in his class. Sixteen college freshmen were interviewed regarding the class contents, materials and the ideal teacher. The students answered the question, “What kind of teachers do you prefer?” like below.
A teacher who knows how to deal with students, especially teenagers.
A teacher who does not force ideas on the students.
A tolerant and responsible teacher with a sense of humor.
A funny teacher who can be serious when necessary.
A caring teacher.
A friendly teacher.
An active teacher.
A teacher who can understand what students' expectations are.
A trustworthy teacher.
We need to know what students pursue in teachers in order for them to be motivated in language learning. It’s understood that a teacher’s personality and behavior toward students have a strong influence. In order to produce successful language speakers, teachers should devote themselves to teaching.