Motivating+Learners

Learning to communicate in another language takes a long time. It is one of the most challenging tasks your students are likely to undertake, and they can easily become discouraged and bored with it. Keep your students interested and motivated by helping them understand the language acquisition process, connect language learning with their larger educational and life goals, and succeed as language learners.

Help students understand the process of language skill development:
> Teach students that mistakes are learning opportunities.
 * Remind them that learning a language takes time.
 * Help them compare what they are doing now to the process they went through to learn their first language.
 * Keep the overall focus of the classroom on communication, not error correction.
 * Use spot commercials to keep attitudes positive

RESOURCE NCLRC website "The Essentials of Language Teaching" for more information on understanding language acquisition. []

Help students make connections:
Students’ intrinsic motivation for learning a language increases when they see connections between what they do in the classroom and what they hope to do with the language in the future. Their attention increases when classroom activities are engaging, relevant to their interests, task-oriented and communicative. -- NCLRC "The Essentials of Language Teaching"


 * Find out what topics they are studying and draw materials for activities, reading and discussion from those fields. Remember that materials do not always have to be about serious issues or academic topics. Students enjoy talking about movies and television programs, vacation plans, famous people, and other popular culture topics.
 * Don't be afraid to drop a topic if students' interest begins to fade.
 * Ask students to suggest topics and units of study. When students know that they have some control over what they do in the language classroom, they take ownership as engaged learners.

ACTIVITY Click on the document below for a Class Activity on helping students make personal connections to learning Arabic.



RESOURCE Integrated Approach NCLRC