Motivating Adolescent EFL Learners Andrew Tweed United States Senior English Language Fellow National Institute of Education, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Session objectives Today we will… Learn about different types of motivation, and consider the sources for each type; Think of ways to include more intrinsic motivation in our class; Make use of personalization and students’ learning styles to adapt the textbooks.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF MOTIVATION

Two types of Motivation Extrinsic motivation comes from the outside, from other people and other institutions. Intrinsic motivation comes from the inside; it is connected with our own, individual desires to do something. Discuss some sources of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation for your students related to learning English.

Motivation Sources of extrinsic motivation: exams, parents, grades, what others say, expectations from society Sources of intrinsic motivation: positive feelings about learning, enjoyment, interest, feeling of progress, agency Next we will look at ways of making lessons more intrinsically motivating.

Intrinsic Motivation The following are important for motivating our students. What can you do as a teacher to help motivate students in these ways? a) positive feelings about learning English b) feeling of progress in English c) giving students agency in classroom activities

Motivation through personalization Personalize your lessons to make the language and topics relevant to your students. Find out what people, music, TV, comics, books, movies, video games, food, drinks, websites, etc. that your students are interested in and include these in your lessons. This will make the lessons more enjoyable and students will be more motivated to participate.

“The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all children as if they were variants of the same individual, and thus to feel justified in teaching them the same subjects in the same ways.” -Howard Gardner, Harvard University, famous for his theory of Multiple Intelligences

Motivation by tapping into various learning styles Vary your activities so that they tap into different learning styles. Learning styles include the following: Visual/spatial/tactile Auditory/musical Kinesthetic/bodily Interpersonal/social =with others Intrapersonal/solitary =alone linguistic /verbal Logical/mathematical Naturalistic

Which learning styles are used? Andy will lead 3 activities. For each one decide which learning styles are used: kinesthetic, auditory, or visual?

Use the grid to brainstorm ELT activities or techniques that match learning styles and areas of English VisualAuditoryKinesthetic Vocabulary Listening Speaking

Application Look at a unit from English for Cambodia. What learning styles have already been incorporated? Has the unit been personalized for adolescent Cambodian learners? If so, how? How could you adapt this lesson so that different learning styles are used and the lesson is more personalized for the students? Learning styles: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical

“After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.” -Benjamin Bloom, famous for Bloom’s Taxonomy

Questions?

References Harmer, Jeremy. The practice of English language teaching. Pearson-Longman, International House Certificate in Teaching Young Learners and Teenagers. Lovingtolearn.com