The Importance Of Student Motivation

There has been a lot of research over the past fifty years about student motivation and the practical problems posed for the teacher in relation to it. We all know that a motivated student is an 'engaged' one, the question is how to engage them in the first place and keep them engaged throughout their learning. The reasons students were motivated to engage in the class were found by Yolanda and Williams (2011) to be:

"That the tasks were product-orientated, communicative, meaning focused, had a deadline and centered to individual needs…learners start by doing."

As educators we have an important part to play in fostering the motivation that leads to students being engaged in the classroom setting. The following brief points address how we as teachers can initiate, foster and maintain motivation in our students and lead them to become productive members of the college/university community.

So, what creates motivation in our students to come to class everyday and 'want' to learn the English language? Is it their own desire to learn something interesting and fulfilling, something that challenges or develops them as individuals (examples of intrinsic/integrative motivation (N1), or are there exterior forces that make them come to class i.e. pressure from parents, money incentives (grants from the course providers), the need for qualifications or fear of failure (examples of extrinsic/instrumental motivation)?

For any successful learning to take place, students have to be motivated by some positive force (intrinsic/integrative or extrinsic/instrumental motivation) that makes them come to class and put in the effort to learn the subject. A Canadian study by Lambert and Gardner (1991) found that in...

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...es) overall for the above phases, it is not necessary or possible for a teacher to use them all at the same time. The necessary ones for the teacher's situation have to be selected according to need and context, for example:

Make the learning environment stimulating and enjoyable for the learner by increasing the attractiveness of the tasks. More specifically:

• Make tasks challenging.

• Make task content attractive by adapting it to the students' natural interests or by including novel, intriguing, exotic, humorous, and competitive or fantasy elements.

• Personalize learning tasks.

• Select tasks that yield tangible, finished products.

In doing all of this the teacher is inviting the learners into a classroom environment that is interesting, that piques curiosity, and leads to learners looking forward to new learning experiences every day.