My
experience have been mostly with teenagers but I was working with children
during a month. The challenge was really hard because their motivation plays an
important role in their learning process. In this reflection I want to compare
my experiences in with these groups of the students. I applied the same
strategies: reading fairy tales, listen to songs and sing and acting. What
makes the difference?
When
I was working with teenagers, I discovered that their motivation is
Instrumental because their learning is functional (Ellis, 2002) because they,
the majority, are interested in passing the subject. While the children (5
years) were intrinsically motivated because they participated actively in the
class and every day they lived a new experience in English class.
I
observed that children and teenagers are strongly influenced by social factors
but this influences in children is positive, while in teenagers is negative. What
are those social factors? Firstly the idea of evaluation Colombian education
has: learner shows they learn if they get the best competence showed by
numbers. In the school were I observed this situation children are qualitative
evaluated while teenagers are evaluated by qualitative way. Secondly the
teacher´s role: in this kind of schools the role of teachers is informer of
process. It means they share a lesson with learners and they give a mark, while
in pre-school teachers are able to be guides and promoters of learning
environment. And thirdly, parents´ vision of the world because they think that
learning English is the most important subject their children have to learn and
look for schools where English subject is their philosophical vision.
Despite
of this reality, motivation keeps playing an important role in the classroom
because it is promoted by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. According to Ellis
(2002) learners have motivation but it depends on the learning context or task.
As I mentioned before the strategies applied were the same. Children enjoyed
singing and learning the songs and reading the fairy tales, while teenagers
developed the singing activity until some comments among the group emerged and
the reading activities did not develop until they were pressured by the mark. I
believe that children are motivated by intrinsic motivation, they learn from a
constructivist vision which claims that motivation is “a state of cognitive and
emotional, aroused which leads to conscious decisions to act, which gives rise
to a period of sustained intellectual and/or physical effort, in order to
attain a previously set goal” ( p.120).
And
teenagers, due to educational policies, schools´ visions and teachers´ role
learn from a behavioristic vision which according Skimmer (1985) cited by Brown
(1994):
“…behavior is controlled by its consequences.
When consequences are rewarding behavior is maintained and is increased in
strength and perhaps frequency when consequences are punishing, or when there
is a lack of reinforcement entirely the behavior is weakened and eventually
extinguished” (p.23)
To
sum up, Kumaravadivelu (2009) affirms that motivation is an affective factor
which, I think, must be empowered through the creation of learning environments
were learners can explore the useful strategies for learning by themselves.
Laws, policies, schools and teachers must go in this direction and change the
ways how we are teaching and learning. I am convinced that we can make the
difference if we start to implement new visions of education.
REFERENCES
Brown,
D (1994). Principles of Language Learning
and Teaching. Third Edition. San Francisco State University: Prentice Hall
Regents.
Ellis
(2002). Second Language Acquisition. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kumaravadivelu,
B (2009). Understanding Language Teaching
from Method to Postmethod. Chapter 2: Learning: Factors and Process. New
Jersey: Lawrence Eribaurnassociation,Inc., Publishers.
