Humanistic Teaching

An approach to learning English

Chris Hunt

The Wise Hat

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. Chesterton

Last week I concluded by asking what we can do to get the children we work with to care about learning English. I was hoping someone would write in with an answer! The only method I know is no real method at all. It is simply to spend time with children, discover their individual interests and work from there. In other words to relate to them as individuals and not as students who need to be taught something. How many teachers have this luxury? Even with a class of no more than half a dozen students it can be difficult to tailor material to specific personalities and what on earth can a teacher in a regular school do? And this all presupposes there is no curriculum that dictates what the students are required to learn. 

Do a web search on motivation and you will quickly come across the terms intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. But what is intrinsic motivation other than wanting to do something? And what are extrinsic motivators other than carrots and sticks? Everything I've looked at indicates that the more we try to push children to do something the less likely they are to want to do it. Basicially, if a child wants to learn something then rewards and/or threats are superfluous. If a child doesn't want to learn something then by what right can adults try and force them to do so?

It follows from this that I am ethically opposed to compulsory education, but what can teachers do who work in regular schools? One idea that Ted Powers mentions in a 1977 talk, "Motivation in Language Classes" is to make the target language important. As I mentioned last week, none of the French teachers I had ever took the time to do this. It is worth thinking about how to do it. For example, if the home room teacher sits at the back of the class room doing marking then this sends a clear signal that English is not important. If the lesson is largely conducted in Japanese and the native speaker teacher is little more than a glorified tape recorder than this probably sends a double message that English is not a language to be used but just a subject and also a difficult one. Having said this, I think that in Japan English is generally seen in a more favourable light than French in England.

How can English be made important? I think the less it is treated as a subject and the more it can be rooted in the real world the better. In this respect this is one advantage that Native English speakers have over their Japanese counterparts. They are real foreigners. Conversely, if students see their Japanese teachers using English outside of class with each other that can indicate its importance. This ties in with an idea that I think critical, the necessity of escaping the role of expert. If one is perceived as an expert one it makes any motivating role more difficult. Interventions by the teacher are more likely to be perceived as tests. Moreover, when teachers gets locked in the role of expert they are more likely to limit their focus to the transfer of information whereas a more powerful role is that of facilitator. Experts evaluate students,  facilitators enable them.

If the idea of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is accepted then I think it follows that providing information is extrinsic learning and essentially shallow. Encouraging the student to ask questions and make connections for themselves is a much deeper approach. So, especially when working with children presenting puzzles that create involvement  by stimulating questions is a much better approach than overtly teaching. This is another reason why it is important to avoid the trap of being the expert.

Not being the expert is one thing, being alert is another. It is useful to be able to assess how motivated children are.The U.S. National Association of School Psychologists have a useful page on this.Children who are motivated seek challenges, have persistence in pursuing them, show positive emotion and are more independent. The more a child needs the presence of an adult the less motivation they have, especially the older they are. It follows from this that the teacher should be careful about being at the centre of the class.

I think that motivation is not a fixed quality. Rather it ebbs and flows. How's yours?

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Hi, very nice post. I have been wonder'n bout this issue,so thanks for posting

Kelly Brown | June 13, 2009 2:22 AM

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