Okay, I am going to try (after my observations today and tomorrow) to hold a discussion with my secondary level language students where they direct what they want to learn next. I have some wiggle room in the next few weeks of school. So what better time to let them have some control of the content of lessons over the next few weeks.
In T by P, Brown suggests allowing students to self select reading materials and also select fluency exercises in which the students/learners talk about what interest them, not a topic assigned by me. Additionally I plan to let them select a grammar topic that they want to cover as well.
Brown includes a checklist for keeping you on track for motivating your students and my first pass through the checklist was not what I hoped it would be.....so I plan to let them do some topic selection and hope that when next I complete the checklist review that it will illustrate improvement when it comes to motivation.
I will certainly check back and share my results.
Intrinsic Motivation in second language classrooms
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