Motivational+Strategies

My name is Alison Kendall and I am a current senior year student at Michigan State University’s College of Education. I am studying Spanish, math and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). For an honors project this semester, I have decided to add a page about motivation to this wiki. I chose to research motivation because I believe it plays a key role in the classroom, especially in the case of foreign language learning. While it is important, I know that it can also be challenging, so I wanted to find out what actually motivates students and how we as teachers can get students to be intrinsically motivated to learn a language. I hope that this space can help teachers and future teachers to learn more about motivation and techniques that they can implement in their own classrooms to motivate students. Please feel free to add to this space anything you find helpful or interesting when it comes to motivating students. Thank you! user:kendal53

Integrative motivation- Students are motivated based on a desire to integrate or connect with target language speakers. Example: A student has plans to travel to Costa Rica and wants to be able to communicate with the local people.
 * __Types of Motivation__**

Instrumental, external or extrinsic motivation- Students are motivated in order to obtain a practical goal. Example: A student is in a foreign language class in order to get into college or to get a certain job.

Intrinsic or internal motivation- Students are motivated for personal reasons related to the learning task. Example: A student wants to be able to communicate with family members who speak French. A student has always had the desire to be bilingual.

Source: Winke, Paula M. "Promoting Motivation in the Foreign Language Classroom." CLEAR 9.2 (2005): 1-12. user:kendal53

__**Articles and Websites on Motivating Students**__

This article from CLEAR discusses the different types of motivation and outlines suggestions for implementing motivational strategies in the foreign language classroom. It provides a great overview of each type of motivation and provides good examples of each. It also provides many suggestions for motivating students, specifically in the language classroom. One of the most interesting aspects of the article is, "Dornyei and Csizer's Ten Commandments for Motivating Language Learners." Another great section of the article discusses how to motivate heritage learners or learners of less commonly taught languages. While the article has a lot of great general ideas, it does not go very in depth or provide many specific examples. [|Promoting Motivation in the Foreign Language Classroom] user:kendal53

This article provides a list of nine motivational strategies and explanations of each. It is not specific to foreign language classes, but applies to students of any subject. It also contains a very interesting metaphor comparing students' motivtion in sports to motivation in the classroom. It is interesting to think about applying the quailities that so many students love about sports to the classroom, a place that may not always be thought of as fun or enjoyable. This article has some great ideas or suggestions along with some general examples about how to apply these to the classroom, but it lacks specific examples. [|Some Ideas for Motivating Students] user:kendal53

This article, which can be found on JSTOR, also adresses motivation and motivational strategies as applied specifically to the foreign language classroom. Dornyei, Zoltan. "Motivation and Motivating in the Foreign Language Classroom." It provides a fairly in depth description of the different types of motivation, motivation specific to the classroom setting, and specifically to the foreign language classroom. What may be helpful to teachers, is that it provides a description of the teacher's role in motivating students. It also takes into account the language level, the learner level, and several different learning situations. The Modern Language Journal 78:3 (1994): 273-284. user:kendal53

This website provides some general strategies for motivating students, as well as instructional behaviors that motivate students. It also talks specifically about how to motivate students to do the readings, how to structure the course so that students are motivated, and how to de-emphasize grades so that students are more intrinsically motivated. The suggestions it provides are very basic and some may be idealistic. However, it does provide some specific examples that may be useful. [|Motivating Students] user:kendal53

**Ideas for Motivational Activities in the Foreign Language Classroom** See this page for ideas for motivational activites and feel free to add ideas of your own!
 * __More on Motivation__**

My Own List of Motivational Strategies Visit this page to see my own ideas on how to motivate students. Again, feel free to add any ideas of your own!

Motivation Survey Results__** After researching motivation, I decided to ask some high school language students what their personal thoughts on the subject are. Afterall, nobody knows better what motivates language students than the students themselves. Follow this link to see what they had to say!
 * __What High School Spanish Students Had to Say About Motivation