Job Discussion Forums

[JZer]

I was wondering how others motivate their students. Is it even possible to motivate non-English majors in a required English class? For the record I am teaching at a university in Korea.

[John Hall]

I also have to motivate uni students who are not English majors. At my university, everyone must obtain a certain level of proficiency in English in order to graduate. That in itself gets a lot of students going.

And then there is also the fact that, as the President of the University once said, the difference in graduating without English proficiency and graduating with English proficiency in Costa Rica is about three times the salary!

Nevertheless, there are students who are not into it. One of my solutions for these students is to bring in HR people from various multinational companies in Costa Rica to talk in English about their hiring requirements (which always include high proficiency in English) and the importance of English in their companies. Human Resources people are often great motivators in themselves, so their effect on the students is very positive.

I do not know if this is true in Korea, but here in Costa Rica, proficiency in English is a key that unlocks and opens up a big door to the world outside of Costa Rica.

Would your students be interested in writing an essay or having a discussion about what English can do for them? That's often good for motivation. And after that activity, you can teach them the other things that they do not yet know about that English can do for them.

[John Hall]

I wrote this recently on a discussion board for a course about teaching, and thought it might be worthwhile to add here:

I once witnessed something quite impressive from a recruiter for a multinational company who I had invited to speak to my students in English. After great fanfare and introduction from me, he began to give his presentation by asking the students individually, "Why are you studying English?" One of the first students that he asked the question to happened to be one of the least motivated students in the class. She answered quite bluntly, "Only because it is a requirement for me to graduate. I really don't like studying English." The worst possible answer!

I was so embarrassed. This was such an awful way to start the presentation. But the presenter paused a moment, thought to himself, and then said, "Well, you know, sometimes life is like that. You just have to do things that you don't want to do in order to get the things that you really want in life. What are you studying?" She answered, and then he asked her why she was studying it. She gave him some of the reasons, and then he proceeded to point out to her that even though she thought English was boring, she shouldn't let her boredom get in the way of obtaining her goals. This man apparently had had some experience as a motivational speaker, and before I knew it, he had changed the student's attitude around in a way that I never had been able to before. I had never thought of agreeing with the student that English was boring, but once he did just that, she seemed to take much more interest in what he had to say. He had captured her interest in a way that had never occurred to me before.

[JZer]

Interesting. I wish I knew someone like that to talk to my class. One thing that I am doing is giving students some bonus points if they attend some lectures in English in my town. My hope is that maybe they will talk to some foreigners and befriend them. That will give them more of a reason for trying to study English.

[Mike_2003]

I get a fair number of student who have been urged to learn English by their bosses and have little or no interest in learning.

One student once said to me 'My company doesn't pay me to learn English' after arriving late for a lesson.

I pointed out to her that they DID pay her to learn English as they allowed her to take the classes during working hours. In fact, they paid MORE for those training hours if you consider the money they are also paying me.

I then asked her if her bosses were in the habit of paying for employees to simply enjoy themselves or have fun. She admitted this was unusual behaviour and not the likely reason. I then asked her who normally needed to know English. She replied that she didn't really need English in her position and only the departmental heads generally need to speak English well.

pause...

meaningful look...

sound of penny dropping...

Now she works extremely hard

[Justin Trullinger]

[Mike_2003]