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What factors can affect the motivation of my students in the classroom? It is almost 2020 and it is a beautiful gift that children all around the world are going to school. I think that the number of children going to school is still growing. Happily, I was able to go to school too. For almost 20 years, I have had education in school classes. However, I did not like every day at school. It changed through the years. The first years felt as playing around, later it felt more as an obligation to go to school, and at last I could choose what I wanted to learn. And even in that period of the last 4 years I was not interested and a hard working person every day. My motivation was different every single day. Motivation helps us to get out of bed, to create new goals and to reach them. Learning a new language requires motivation too. There are 2 types of motivation. Intrinsic motivation drives you to do something because something is personally rewarding to you. Extrinsic motivation comes from an external reward you want to achieve or a punishment you want to avoid. I think that a balance between these two are very important to be successful as a student. Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be affected by many factors. If we look at the intrinsic motivation first, we will look at the person itself. So, what kind of student are you teaching? That is an important question to think about, because it will say something about there intrinsic motivation. First of all, the age of your students is an important thing to think about. Young learners are not motivated that much and their attention span is short. When children get older their motivation increases, but when they turn into teenagers often their motivation decreases. The age of your students does a lot. But as the age can be the same, two students can have total different interests. Hobby's, culture and previous good or bad experiences all do something with the things we like or dislike. Hence, it creates our intrinsic motivation. The discussed factors above do not change that much. But unfortunately it is an utopian idea to think that our motivation is set. Out motivation is often different every day. Besides the intrinsic motivation, the extrinsic motivation can affect the students behaviour in class as well. As a teacher I can use external factors to motivate students to study. Examples for increasing the extrinsic motivation are tests, feedback, projects, presentations essays, and groupwork. If you make these factors specific, measurable, realistic and timely, st students will know exactly what to do in a certain amount of time. With measurable I mean using grades to motivate the students. At last, I think there are some other personal factors that help with motivating students. The atmosphere in the class is an important factor to make students comfortable. Comfortable in willing to speak English, to make mistakes, to share stories and to ask questions. Having fun in class is therefore an motivator. The atmosphere with either the teacher and other classmates can change the student's motivation. For a teacher it is one of the main tasks to keep the students motivated. At the one side by creating a save, fun and structured atmosphere. At the other side by creating external factors.
