Motivation is the psychological feature that makes people act toward a desired goal. Or simply, motivation is that makes you to try your best to achieve your purposes.
Learning language requires actions or practices. Therefore, motivation is one of the most important factors in the second language acquisition, because “Motivation makes actions, actions make success”
The following story will tell you how a learner found her own motivation in learning English. Sometimes motivation is not something too big or unattainable, maybe it’s just simple enough that we can find around our normal life.
Jin was Yan’s young sister. Yan was a good English learner whose major is English language at her university. She could speak the language fluently and use English proficiently. On the contrary, unlike her elder sister, Jin was not good at learning English. Jin studied well in almost every subjects in school with high scores. However, the only subject that she got a low score in was English. Sometimes she hated the subject. In fact, Jin didn’t really hate the language, she just hated the way her parents forced her to study English and the way they compared her to Yan – her sister. Jin felt burdened and stressed every single times she thought about the subject. As a result, Jin felt scared and tired, she did not want to learn and there had not been any progress in her English learning result. Somehow, Jin lost the motivation to learn, she was so lost. In many cases, parents failed teaching their children the value of study by forcing them to do something. Jin and Yan’s parents were an example.
Yan understood what her sister – Jin, feeling about. She did not say anything about English or support her parents’ efforts to force to Jin as she knew it would bother her younger sister more. But deep inside Yan’s heart, she still really wanted Jin to study English well as Yan was aware of the importance of English. She knew that English could bring a brighter future to her sister. Also, Yan knew that Jin did not really hate English, she just hated the pressure from their parents. Yan started to observe Jin and her English study progress. Yan realized that at home, Jin was really interested in watching movies or cartoons on the Disney Channel. She could listen and understand what actors were talking about in the movies. Yan knew that using television or a video might be the way to motivate Jin to learn English as Yan saw how happy Jin would be every single time she understood the English in the movies.
Motivation is the psychological feature and it needs to be from the HEART. In my opinion, a good teacher should not talk to learners about what the parents or teacher wanted; instead, he/ she should talk to learners about what leaners want and what will motivate them.
Then, Yan decided to talk to Jin to find out what her problems were and together with her seek the solutions. Jin said that her problem was she was afraid of her parents and lost interest in learning English because of the pressure they put on her. She said she felt she had to do something that she didn’t want to do anything she was not naturally motivated to do. She just wanted to study physics well in this subject was the way she could enter the gifted high school and going to this school was something she really wanted to do.
Yan started to explain to Jan that “English is not something to be afraid of, and doing well in English would help her chase her dreams because English is one of three compulsory subjects in order to get in the gifted high school. Jin said she was still afraid. Yan then asked Jin how she felt when she could understand the cartoon characters on the Disney Channel without subtitle and interpretation. Jin said that was a great feeling. Yan told Jin that she could approach learning a foreign language not because of the mark she would get on a test, but because of the great feelings when we could understand what foreigners said. That was the value of learning the second language.
Jin agreed to try one more time. Yan tried to encourage her and started teaching her English. They worked hard until midnight, almost every night. Yan taught Jin from the basics: grammar, pronunciation and helped her to listen to or watch the cartoon with simple words. They did this together.
“Motivation makes actions” and “Actions make success” / “Practices make perfect”. When learners have purposes, have resources, have motivation and actions. They will have good result.
After 2 months of summer vacation, Yan had to go back to her university but things changed and she felt quite happy at how she spent her summer as Jin – her sister, in class she had higher English scores: 8-9 or even the highest mark: 10. But the point here is not the scores. The point is Jin was not afraid of learning English anymore, she started to like to learn English and she wanted to speak English with Yan through Skype or Facebook.
Teacher should TEACH, NOT PREACH
The lesson to be learned is that, a good teacher should spend time with learners to understand them and motivate them to learn. Once the learner is already motivated, NOTHING can stop them from learning.
