2.4 Motivational strategies in teaching English to young learners at primary schools
2.4.6 Displaying appropriate teacher behaviors
Harmer (2007) points out that young learners have a need for individual attention and approval from teachers. The learners always want teachers to pay attention to them, to take care of their learning. Alsheri confirms the crucial role of teachers in motivating students in his study in 2013. Both students and teachers in the research of Alsheri (2013) perceived teachers’ care and interest on students as the most effective factor to students’ motivation. In order to motivate students, teachers should show their care, attention, interest and approval to learners.
Particularly, the young ones’ psychology is the feeling of happiness when teacher pays attention to them, talk to them. The behaviors of teachers towards students are important to build motivation in language classroom.
As young learners’ need of teachers’ attention and approval, teachers who want to motivate their learners could build motivational strategies basing on this characteristic. In order to show learners the attention from teachers, there are four suggested strategies which are related to teachers’ behaviors towards learners.
Firstly, building rapport with learners is the top priority of behaviors towards learners. Astuti (2013) finds that almost all students in his study ranked teacher’s good relationship with students as the first preference to motivate students. Having friendly relationship with the teacher, students could feel relaxed in learning, feel free to ask for help and specifically enjoy learning with the teacher. Secondly,
teacher care is another behavior to motivate learners. Bieg et al. (2011) defines teacher care as “teacher behavior derived from the need for relatedness which improve or maintain the quality of interpersonal relationships among teachers and students” (p.124). Care from teachers and academic motivation of students have correlation because teacher care has a big influence on learners’ motivation (Jasmi and Hin, 2014). A caring teacher is considered as the one who cares about their learners, respect them, listen and understand them (Chang, 2003). Showing care to learners is a way to motivate them. Moreover, teachers should avoid two things when behaving towards learners. Teachers should avoid social comparison and face-threatening acts. As human beings do not want to lose face in public, when teachers make comparison between learners in their class, particularly between low- achieving and high-achieving learners, the lower ones can feel hurt. Thus, these learners will have bad impression on their teacher. Furthermore, face-threatening acts such as humiliating criticism or putting learners in the spotlights unexpectedly should also be avoided. Both these two things will hurt learners’ self-esteem which may lead to demotivation in their learning. In short, good rapport with learners, teacher care about learners and avoiding social comparison and face-threatening acts are behaviors teachers can have towards young learners to motivate their learning.
In conclusion, young learners are curious, imaginative, interested in exploring things around them, willing to practice the target language. Furthermore, they can be easily motivated in a relaxing, supportive atmosphere with playing, games, films, songs etc. They also learn effectively with concrete things by touching, seeing and interacting. These characteristics of young learners are useful to take advantage in finding the strategies to motivate learners to learn English.
From the literature review, six hypothetical macro strategies which include 27 micro strategies in total are presented in table 2.1 below.
Hypothetical motivational strategies Stimulating
learners’ active participation
1. Providing pair work, group work or whole class activities
2. Designing competition between pairs and groups 3. Designing tasks which include body movement 4. Including playing during lesson learning
Maintaining learners’ attention
5. Relating the subject matter to learners’ everyday experience
6. Varying the learning tasks
7. Adjusting the difficulty of tasks to students’ abilities 8. Making the task content attractive by including stories,
humor, fantasy elements or learners’ interest 9. Breaking the monotony of classroom routine 10. Giving learners choices
Building learners’
self- confidence
11. Encouraging learners to believe in their abilities and strength
12. Designing tasks which learners can successfully complete
13. Designing tasks which involve public display of learners’ skill
14. Offering praise and rewards
15. Taking time to celebrate learners’ accomplishment Integrating
interaction into teaching
16. Using visual aids in teaching
17. Bringing concrete things relating to learning lessons into classroom
18. Including culture of English speaking countries into learning lesson
19. Offering opportunities for learners to practice English
in real life situation Creating pleasant
and supportive classroom atmosphere
20. Using humor in teaching
21. Providing positive information feedback on learners’
progress
22. Explaining to learners the fact that making mistakes is a part of learning process
23. Encouraging learners in taking risks Displaying
appropriate
teachers’ behaviors
24. Showing teacher care about learners 25. Building rapport with learners
26. Avoiding social comparison in classroom
27. Avoiding face-threatening acts such as humiliating criticism or putting learners in the spotlights
unexpectedly
Table 2.1 Hypothetical motivational strategies
To conclude, table 2.1 presents the conceptual framework of this study, which is the synthesis of various strategies that are assumed to be able to motivate young language learners based on learners’ characteristics. Six macro strategies, which are maintaining learners’ attention, stimulating learners’ active participation, building learners’ self-confidence, integrating interaction into teaching, creating pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere and displaying appropriate teacher behaviors are some hypothetical motivational strategies. In each category, it hypothetically proposes 27 micro strategies to motivate young language learners.
On the ground of this conceptual framework, the study explores young learners’
perceptions on their teachers’ motivational strategies and teachers’ perceptions of their learners’ motivation and practices to motivate their young learners in English classrooms. This conceptual framework is the foundation to make the questions for the interview to teachers and questionnaire to learners as well as the framework for the data analysis. The methodology of the study is presented in the next chapter.