Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: What this book is about and how it can be used
- 1 Background knowledge
- 2 Creating the basic motivational conditions
- 3 Generating initial motivation
- 4 Maintaining and protecting motivation
- 5 Rounding off the learning experience: Encouraging positive self-evaluation
- Conclusion: Towards a motivation-sensitive teaching practice
- References
- Index
2 - Creating the basic motivational conditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: What this book is about and how it can be used
- 1 Background knowledge
- 2 Creating the basic motivational conditions
- 3 Generating initial motivation
- 4 Maintaining and protecting motivation
- 5 Rounding off the learning experience: Encouraging positive self-evaluation
- Conclusion: Towards a motivation-sensitive teaching practice
- References
- Index
Summary
Motivational strategies cannot be employed successfully in a ‘motivational vacuum’ - certain preconditions must be in place before any further attempts to generate motivation can be effective. In my experience, the following three motivational conditions in particular are indispensable:
appropriate teacher behaviours and a good relationship with the students;
a pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere;
a cohesive learner group with appropriate group norms.
Of course, the three conditions are interrelated because, for example, you cannot have a pleasant classroom climate if there is tension between you and the students, but it is useful to look at them one by one.
Appropriate teacher behaviours
In 1998, Kata Csizer and I conducted a survey (Dornyei and Csizer 1998) among Hungarian teachers of English to find out what they thought of various motivational techniques and how often they used them in their own teaching practice. In order to even out the different personal views, we included a relatively large number of practitioners (N = 200) from diverse contexts (ranging from primary school instructors teaching beginners to university lecturers teaching English majors) and then summarised their responses. The survey revealed that the participants considered the teacher's own behaviour to be the single most important motivational tool. Furthermore, the results also exposed that this ‘tool’ was one of the most under-utilised motivational resources in the teacher's classroom practice.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom , pp. 31 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
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