What we know about motivational teaching & Inspiring teaching

What we know about motivational teaching &  Inspiring teaching

Many of us can remember a teacher at school who inspired us to learn, who changed our relationship to a subject, and who persuaded us to invest effort in learning it, inside and outside school. In the era of communicative language teaching, there is plenty of published advice for practitioners on how to
make classes stimulating, and there is also an emerging line of research that examines the motivational strategies that teachers use in class. But genuine competence in a foreign language only develops through sustained effort over many years, and we need to know what kind of teaching can inspire such a lasting commitment.  I will then consider what value the results may have for Indian teacher educators, in particular by considering whether there are generalisable and transferable teacher qualities that underlie inspiring teaching, and if so, how trainers can help teachers become inspiring.

Given the huge amount of research that has been conducted on second language (L2) motivation in
the last 50 years, it is,‘hard to believe that until the mid-1990s there had been no serious attempts in the L2 literature to design motivational strategies for classroom application’ (p. 105). Researchers’ attention in the past tended to focus on the level and type of motivation that the learners brought to class – for example, whether their motivation was mainly intrinsic or extrinsic, or whether they had positive attitudes to the people and culture whose language they were learning. This emphasis is all the more surprising considering that a common complaint of teachers the world over is that their pupils lack motivation to learn an L2 in school.

While the interest in learner motivation continues, there is now a new research initiative underway that examines how learners’ motivation may change, and in particular how teachers can promote it. In his pioneering book Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom,  The methods that teachers can use to motivate learners:
1. creating the basic motivational conditions, e.g. through building a pleasant classroom
atmosphere
2. generating initial motivation, e.g. through ensuring the learners all have their own goals for
learning the L2
3. maintaining and protecting motivation, e.g. through giving enjoyable tasks in class
4. encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation, e.g. through giving timely and constructive
feedback.

Valuable as this research is, an important element is missing. that ‘there is a critical difference between “motivating” students and “developing their motivation”’
A teacher might successfully get learners to do what (s)he wants them to do in class, by carrot or stick, i.e. by providing pleasurable experiences, or by threatening dire consequences if they do not obey. But unless the learner internalizes this motivation, it is unlikely that they will continue to put effort into learning English after the course. Learning a language is a long-term endeavour, and for most young people it requires a great commitment of time and overcoming many obstacles – especially, perhaps, in the state-school systems of developing countries, where official provision of English is limited in resources and time. Thus, one might argue that a truly motivating teacher is one who anticipates this future, and inspires their pupils to learn when they are no longer there.