Six Effective Strategies to Increase Motivation

Create situations in which students will feel a sense of accomplishment

A sense of accomplishment is a great factor in motivating students. Instructors have to make sure to give positive feedback and reinforcement. Providing positive feedback can increase students’ satisfaction and encourage positive self-evaluation. A student who feels a sense of accomplishment will be able to direct his or her own studies and learning outcome. Both positive and negative comments influence motivation, but research consistently indicates that students are more affected by positive feedback and success. Praise builds students’ self-confidence, competence, and self-esteem.

However, giving positive feedback should not be mistaken with correcting mistakes without giving explanations. Some teachers correct their students’ mistakes without really explaining why they think that he or she made that mistake. It is very important for a teacher to point out any of the good and bad in a student’s work and to provide a clear explanation of his or her mistakes. Students value the teachers’ ideas when they feel the sense of appreciation for a good work and start evaluating themselves for further studies.

Encourage students to set their own short-term goals

Language learners can achieve success by setting their own goals and by directing their studies towards their own expectations. Students can help themselves to achieve their goals by determining their own language needs and by defining why they want to learn the language. Having goals and expectations leads to increased motivation which in turn, leads to a higher level of language competence. We as teachers should encourage our students to have specific short-term goals such as to communicate with foreigners or to read books in English. No matter what they are, we, as language teachers, should encourage our students to set and pursue their short-term goals.

Read more in Languages

« English: National Language

Briefly on Esperanto »

Provide pair and group activities to develop students’ confidence

Students learn by doing, making, writing, designing, creating, and solving. Passivity decreases students’ motivation and curiosity. Students’ enthusiasm, involvement, and willingness to participate affect the quality of class discussion as an opportunity for learning. Small group activities boost students’ self-confidence. Group work is an excellent source of motivation. It can give quiet students a chance to express their ideas and feelings on a topic. Students find it easier to speak to groups of three or four than to an entire class. Once students have spoken in small groups, they usually become less reluctant to speak to the class as a whole. Group activities allow students not only to express their ideas but also to work cooperatively, which increases class cohesion and thus motivation.

I often do a vocabulary exercise where I put students in groups of four. I distribute the vocabulary words on flashcards. Each student must choose one of the flashcards without showing the word to their friends. Then, each student needs to explain their word by giving three clues to their friends without using the actual word. Using the clues, the other students must draw pictures that reflect the meaning of the word. This activity gives students a flexibility to use other skills for their language development. It also gives a chance to the quieter students to express themselves within their groups, even when they are not confident to express themselves in front of the entire class.

Connect language learning to interests outside of class

In today’s high-tech learning environment it would be unfair to limit students to traditional methods. Encouraging students to relate their classroom experience to outside interests and activities makes developing language skills more relevant. For example, computer assisted language learning could be linked to playing computer games, or to computer programs which the students are interested in using. Listening to English-language songs, watching English-language films or videos, and reading English language websites can lead our students to broaden their perspective on their language acquisition process.