Although the topic of motivation related to education and learning has always kind of frustrated me--feeling like there are too many outside, pre-set factors in students for me to make a whole lot of difference on way or another--I really enjoyed the section in L&S about motivation in the classroom. Particularly the statement about how if a teacher makes certain remarks about the upcoming activities, a students' interest level is heightened. I would like to learn more about this so I could consciously make remarks to better engage my students. I also enjoyed hearing that co-operative learning helps with motivation because I tend to rely heavily on group work in my classroom and I know this has the potential for some students to just check out and not pull their weight. (I never realized how much I use figurative language in my writing.)
In the opening paragraph of L&S ch 3, it asks the reader to "interview several friends, colleagues, or family members about their experiences learning a second or foreign language" (p53). At first I guffawed, and then I remembered I had just had this conversation with my mother. She had taken ASL several years ago and had a very positive experience with it. I wasn't so fond of mine. We both probably have the same level of proficiency: minimal. It was just interesting to ponder what made the difference in the positive/negative feelings we each had toward our experiences with language acquisitions.
In HDB ch 7 I found the Scope and Sequence chart to be quite useful. I felt it was concrete information that helped summarize the more abstract information given in the chapter. I agree that judging someone's level of proficience is quite a relative task. However it is necessary to have some set of criteria to distinguish what who needs to be taught.
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I agree that it is very interesting how our experience in the classroom colors our entire feeling on a topic, or event. That is something to take into the classroom too. We need to be excited as the teachers, or the students will tune out too.
You're right about uneven participation in groupwork. We need to ensure that every student has roles and responsibilities.
I would like to share one my experiences about "how if a teacher makes certain remarks about the upcoming activities, a students' interest level is heightened" when I was a student at my undergraduate we had a very proficient professor. He was extremely good in terms of motivating us. First of all, although the syllabus was so intensive it was so clear. He spent lots of time to make everything explicit and understandable for us. So we were aware of that it was going to be a busy class but since he explained everything clearly step by step we were sure what and when to do all those assignments. Before starting the classes he always recollected us what we had done until then and what we were going to do next and this helped us to motivate each time.
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