Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Class on 9/22
Once again this class reinforced the idea of teaching material in a variety of way in order to reach auditory, visual, and kinthetic learners. I also think it is interesting on how our own teaching styles and our choices for lesson activities can be so highly influenced by past experiences, either positive or negative. I enjoyed seeing how others thought the different theories should be ranked according to importance and was somewhat surprised to see so many similarities. I especially thought peoples' beliefs on motivation was interesting. Personally I think it is idealistic to think that we will be able to bring about any internal motivation to our students. They are either going to have it or they won't. If external motivators (m&m's, extra free time, movie day, ect.) work to educate and bring about results then I don't think teachers should dismiss them. I'm hoping that my ESL students are a little more motivated than traditional Language Arts students. I would think the social pressure to communicate clearly would be a big motivator. The only resistance I can predict at this time would be a student not wanting to lose their home or native voice and identity.
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3 comments:
Your last point about ESL students' motivation very much reminds me of my own impetus in learning English. You're very true in saying that social pressure is one factor that make ESL/EFL learners work hard to achieve a proper level of communicative competence. To me social pressure started as an extrinsic motivation when i was first pushed to learn English by my parents. However, as time goes by and i have more exposure to English as well as the cultures that it represents, that pressure becomes an inner motivation for me. I am now learning English because of my own personal development, not merely because the society where i am living in places a great emphasis for young people to use English effectively.
Especially if you start to learn language in early ages of course there is a kind of extrinsic motivation mostly provided by parents then by the time the more you learn a language the more you start to own it as one of your belongings at least in my case it was something like this.
I personally believe that enthusiasm makes a difference as well, our passion for both our students and our subject.
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