Archive for the ‘Motivation’ Category

…a dash of realism, a big dollop of the painfully obvious and a side serving of hedging their bets:

“…for teachers, the distilled research finding that positive attitudes and motivation contribute to successful learning yields little useful insight into their day-to-day problems of how to motivate little Samantha in Class 2B and keep her motivated.

Fundamentally, two key principles seem crucial to the maintenance of motivation: first, motivation must emanate from the learner, rather than be externally regulated by the teacher;second, learners must see themselves as agents of the processes that shape their motivation.” 

The first sentence is a breath of the fresh air of realism in the usually bs smelling world of applied linguistics. Not sure what to do with the information in the second sentence, in fact I’m half tempted to say it “yields little useful insight into…”. 

And so the book goes on, telling us that (in my own simplistic words, based on my limited understanding):

-When they move to a foreign country kids are more likely to get a native or near native level than adults (but we don’t know if that tells us anything relevant about students studying a few hours a week in their own country) (Chapter 2- Age and Good Language Learners- Carol Griffiths)

- The students who are more likely to progress quickly, especially at lower levels, tend to be extrovert but the ones in the top classes tend to be people who are introverted but can look at the big picture and take guesses in an intuitive (i.e. not anally retentive) way. But again, we don’t know what that means for classroom practice,e.g. whether we should just use and try to reinforce students’ strengths or whether we should concentrate on developing their weaknesses (Chapter 4- Personality and Good Language Learners- Madeline Ehrman)

-Despite not being able to come up with any statistical evidence, the writer and we all know that the fact that fitting in for boys means not being seen to be studying too hard can be a problem for teachers. Boys also have different motivations and preferred ways of learning to girls (Chapter 5- Gender and Good Language Learners- Martha Nyikos)

- Students who are in higher level classes tend to use more strategies for language learning such as reading newspapers. It can be difficult to determine if they actually do some of these things because they have a high level rather than reach the level because they do these things, and even more difficult to determine if those study skills can and should be forced on students who don’t use them (Chapter 6-Strategies and Good Language Learners- Carol Griffiths again. Is she sleeping with the editor? Oh, she is the editor…)

- Etc

Etc. being a very useful word to hide the fact that I’m making comments about the book when I’ve only read a quarter of it. Oh well, surely that’s what blogs are for- half formed judgements and thinking aloud. The real review will be along in a month or so on TEFL.net reviews. Books I’ve been flicking through that I would highly recommend are:

A History of ELT

The Experience of Language Teaching

And it is quite possible I will end up recommending Lessons from Language Learners in the end as well, now I’ve got that little rant off my chest…

Don’t know if the exploding posh hot springs resort in Shibuya (of 8 directions at once crossing and Lost in Translation karaoke fame) made the news abroad. It was another quiet news day in Japan (apparently news of Africa cannot reach east of the Maldives due to some physical law or another), so we were convinced it was a yakuza hit and on the edge of our seats. But it was not to be, just pure incompetence.

Much as I might have been confused and interested by a story of built up volcanic gases destroying a shopping centre a couple of years ago, I lost interest pretty quickly in this one due to no surprises- neither the incompetence that lead to the explosion (the Japanese are as serious and hard-working as they could possibly be, but if their boss isn’t focused on safety neither are they) nor the fact that there as a hot springs resort in the equivalent of Trafalgar Square.

The Japanese really do love their mineral baths. One theory* of why is that they can’t actually relax unless they are told it is good for you and virtually a moral duty to do so. Hence the fact that you can’t reply “Oh no, that’s fine. I enjoyed it” when your boss thanks you for doing some work and you have to make strange noises all the time to show how much effort you are making. And hence the appeal of doing something right and sitting around in radioactive water etc.

And so it often is in the language classroom. As they know they are doing something they should (learning English), they finally feel they can justify chatting, relaxing and generally enjoying themselves. However, they certainly won’t be saying that is their motivation if you ask them, hence the difficulty of doing needs analysis in Japan and students who keep on asking for more homework but not doing any of it.

There might be some everyday human good intentions seeing the light of day there, of course, but where is the fun in not making gross generalisations???

That will officially be the only Google search result for “exploding baths and English teaching”. Coming up next- “Bananas and error correction”

* Vague summary of what I remember from the book “Getting Wet- Adventures in the Japanese Bath”, Eric Talmadge, Kodansha. Highly recommended for those who wonder what the appeal of getting naked and pink with strangers of the same sex could be