3677. Should I Foster Positive Motivation in Class? Some Guesses

 Today I’m talking about positive motivation and other topics alike. 

The first premise is that when our dear students get involved in lessons and the activities we as teachers implement, they will likely work nice and keep on behaving that way. A person who is getting interested in studying something, that one will carry on doing that way likely. 

And we teachers I think ought to also give them oral presentations about the topics involved in the school subject we teach. Presentations and explanations alike. A teacher has to speak a lot in class, in a good manner. 

If we teach a second or foreign language, we have to give them a lot of correct pronunciation and we must speak for a lot, plus we must have them speak also for a lot, thus the lesson is something like a nice conversation between the teacher and his or her students. 

Also we may utilize audios and videos where native speakers talk. 

As well in that way we will be getting them involved in class. 

Positive motivation helps a lot. Nevertheless we should not praise the students too much, so we avoid adulating them. Some positive motivation is right, a right thing I guess. This is, to recognize their hitting the correct target. 

I teach adults, English to adults, and when the lesson is over, I thank them for their cooperation to the class, and quite often they thank me for my teaching. It’s nice and they keep growing up regarding their learning English and getting communicative skills. 

Another point I’ve observed in class is that those students tend to make up kind of theories about how such and such things could be said in English: it’s the way adults – and teens – often learn the language. 

And I as a teacher have to accept those guesses, if they’re correct: I cannot despise those theories: they show the way they’re learning English! If there’s something to correct, well then I’ll do it, but often the tries and guesses are okay. 

Both they and I are in the same team: we are a learning team, for I’m also learning English! 

Positive motivation helps a lot, and you’ll get more with kindness than with a lot of quarreling and abrupt reprimanding. Teaching is hard work – which job is not so? – yet it’s something great. Have a nice day and my remembering Spain’s flood victims. Well, something else: sometimes even often our students are able to give to their classmates some explanations we teachers may be more difficult to give to those same students: in their own words they can explain something better than me as their teacher. Also accepting that may help increase positive motivation.