CC BY
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Коммуникативные исследования. 2015. № 1 (3). С. 119-128.
УДК 378
K.N. Yesmambetova Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan
STUDENTS LACK INTEREST: HOW TO MOTIVATE THEM?
Passive learners don’t usually have the kind of instrumental motivation and determination for learning English. A sample dictionary definition of passive is “accepting or allowing what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance”. Passive learners quietly take in new information and knowledge, but they typically don’t engage with the information they get. This behavior can negatively impact the learning experience. Passive learners find themselves very uncomfortable when they are forced into a self-paced, active learning. English lessons must therefore be fun and rewarding. Teachers should engage the passive learners to group work or other strategies to cultivate students’ critical thinking skills. Highly visual aids with interactive lessons which rely less on written text will provide accessible support for such learners to become critical thinkers. Critical thinking includes the component skills of analyzing arguments, making inferences using inductive or deductive reasoning. It involves both cognitive skills and dispositions. Teachers are urged to provide explicit instruction in critical thinking, to teach how to transfer to new contexts, and to use collaborative learning methods and constructivist approaches that place students at the center of the learning process.
Key words: passive learners, critical thinkers, collaborative learning.
Introduction
My article is about the ways of how interest the passive learners into the lesson and its effectiveness. There will be described different ways of the motivation for students with lack interest. The activities will help teachers to encourage all pupils to be proud of their own achievements. It is true that most pupils wish to please the teacher so it is the job of the teacher to encourage all pupils to be proud of their own achievements and to raise their self-esteem. So the pupil continues to give maximum effort and increase personal success.
Teachers should engage them to group work or other strategies to cultivate students' critical thinking skills. Some children are highly motivated and the others are highly competitive and enjoy gaining greater success than their classmates.
Teaching is one of the greatest ways to develop students' linguistic skills so that they can more effectively communicate.
Furthermore, nowadays teaching is getting hard because of new generation. They want to know more and more and it makes you work harder and
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find other new ways of teaching. It is very important for the teacher to organize different out of class activities to improve students’ speaking skills and to make learning English joyful and more interesting. Here I would like to find out some characteristics for the teacher to have a good lesson. A good teacher should:
1. respect his/her students;
2. come to class prepared, and with a solid direction;
3. be a team player with students;
4. be creative and can present the same idea in many different ways;
5. fair with all students and treat all students equally;
6. be available to his/her students, not aloof;
7. make learning fun and clearly has fun as well;
8. passionate about teaching and it clearly shows;
9. be enthusiastic about being in the classroom and have a positive attitude;
10. be patient, not all students are perfect, but most truly want to succeed.
Lack of Classroom Management
If a teacher cannot control the students in their classroom they will not be able to teach them effectively. Being a good classroom manager starts on day one by incorporating simple procedures and expectations and then following through on predetermined consequences when those procedures and expectations are compromised. Any teacher trying to befriend students will be ineffective in the area of classroom management. Students will test teachers quickly, recognize a weakness, and take over a class before a teacher knows what happens.
Lack of Motivation
There are some teachers that do not challenge their students, rarely give homework, are often behind on grading, and give “free” days on a regular basis. There is no creativity in their teaching, they rarely smile or seem excited to be there, and they typically make no connections with other faculty or staff members [Handbook for teacher 2012].
Lack of Professionalism
Professionalism encompasses many different areas of teaching. A lack of professionalism can quickly result in a teacher’s dismissal. Teachers who are routinely absent or tardy are ineffective. They cannot do their job if they are not there to do it. Teachers who use inappropriate language in their classroom on a regular basis undermine the moral responsibility they have as an authority figure. Each of these situations involves a serious lack of professionalism which will undermine a teacher’s overall effectiveness.
It is important that children recognize that making mistakes is part of the learning process and by developing strategies to rectify their mistakes they will be able to solve them in future. I think it is the teacher who can control and know his/her students better as the students have different characters. Taking into consideration that they are from different families and have different attitude to school it is vital that the teacher is sensitive to the needs of pupils. In fact they are individuals, so it is important for the teacher to differentiate be-
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tween the success of the individual and comparisons with other children of the same age. If the teacher always can find the way to the heart of the pupil that pupil can trust him/her. By gentle persuasion and encouragement the pupil can cope with tasks and academic activity.
I think one of the ways of making our students think and work with great enthusiasm at the lesson is critical thinking.
Critical thinking is a disciplined approach to conceptualizing, evaluating, analyzing and synthesizing information from observation, experience, reflection or reasoning [Defining Critical Thinking]. Critical thinking is often associated with a willingness to imagine or remain open to considering alternative perspectives, to integrate new or revised perspectives into our ways of thinking and acting, and with a commitment to participatory democracy and to fostering criticality in others. I think it is the question for all teachers how interest their students and to my mind the answer is to use critical thinking activities at the lesson as it helps the students even with lack interest as they are also involved in them. At my lesson I try to use different activities which encourage my students. These activities help them think, imagine and work creatively. Now I would like to describe some of them.
ACTIVITIES
These activities help students to enhance critical thinking skills and sharpen their knowledge.
Picture story. The group will come up their own story according to the pictures in group (fig. 1-3).
Picture description. The students will be given a story “The Man in the Blue Car”. Describing the pictures the group will make a story. Then they will listen to a true story (fig. 4).
When I use this activity my students usually give different answers and I think it is good, because they try to think about the event of the story. It is their own idea especially about the cat in the picture. Some of them think the cat fell down from the balcony or another answer is it was running away from the dog and appeared at the top of the car. At the end when they know the real story you can see happy faces or still thinking eyes about the story.
Selecting and designing tasks involves not only a sound understanding of the material to be taught but also matching the level of work to that of the pupils. So you should:
• provide opportunities for pupils to reflect on and share their personal experiences and their feelings about the topic being studied
• draw on what pupils already know and can do to stimulate their interest and imagination
• select tasks that are challenging and achievable.
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Fig. 1. Picture story for group A
Fig. 2. Picture story for group B
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Fig. 3. Picture story for group C
Fig. 4. Picture story "The Man in the Blue Car"
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Critical thinking is the engine of learning. Teachers play an important role in developing the higher-order thinking skills of the learners. Children learn better when they are participants in the process. We have to engage them in active learning. Let them involve in structured activities to take greater responsibility for their own learning:
S providing students with repeated opportunities to practice higher-order thinking;
S promoting academic conversations or dialogue that poster critical thinking;
S allowing students time to develop critical thinking skills;
S consistently cultivating higher-order thinking skills.
If we remember Bloom’s taxonomy Evaluating is the second-most complex activity, and Creating is at the top. It means we should pay more attention to students’ creativity and analyzing [Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy].
Before we can understand a concept we have to remember it
Before we can apply the concept we must understand it
Before we analyze it we must be able to apply it
Before we can evaluate its impact we must have analyzed it
Before we can create we must have remembered, understood, applied, analyzed, and evaluated.
Thinking in terms of skills what we want our students to be able to do is a more effective way of communicating because doing so helps us reveal the complex processes inherent in what we require. As a teacher how do we know our students learned the concept? Typically, this is through observable behaviors, using the knowledge to accomplish a task.
Feedback
When the teacher gives feedback on a pupil’s work it has an impact on their motivation. It is true that sometimes children only focus on their marks and ignore the comments that accompany them. Therefore, if the teacher wants the pupil to improve learning he/she should:
• find out the learner’s strengths and advise how to develop them
• be clear and constructive about any weaknesses and how they might be addresses
• provide opportunities for learners to improve upon their work and with a clear understanding of what to do next.
So, in order to motivate pupils to learn effectively teachers must provide a safe and stimulating environment. Within this setting, the teacher must provide a curriculum which is relevant to them, takes into account their learning needs and builds on their prior knowledge and experience.
As I am an English teacher I try to attend some conferences, seminars and courses where I can enlarge my knowledge and share with new ideas with my colleagues. So at my school where I work I had a workshop on the topic
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“Keep Reviewing Fun” for English teachers of my city. Now I am going to describe its procedure and plan of it.
TIME ACTIVITY EXAMPLES
15 min. Warm-un Brainstorming
The participants will brainstorm the • What do you already
word ‘FUN’. They should name three know about keeping re-
positive adjectives beginning with the viewing fun?
first letters of ‘FUN’. For example: • In small groups, write a
Funny\Fantastic Unbelievable Noble definition of keeping re-
After they brainstorm they will have three groups and have a group discussion to share their ideas (why they gave such names to their groups) viewing fun.
15-20 min. Presentation about Keen Review- I will show concrete exam-
ing Fun ples of Keeping reviewing
Here I give a definition or explanation fun so the audience really
of my topic. Then I will ask them some questions to discuss: understands my topic.
1. What is the most important part of My words: When I say ‘fun’
your lesson? Why? I mean not to make my les-
2. What would you like to do to make son funny but more interes-
your lesson fun? ting using different games or
How often do you use games, videos activities where my students
or other activities at your lesson? can review both grammar and vocabulary materials.
1-2 hours per Group Work
activity Activity 1
I will give a piece of paper where they • I give each group 2 or 3
(20-30 min. should write 4-5 regular\irregular examples of keeping re-
group prepara- verbs (revision of Past simple). Each viewing fun and ask them
tion time member of the group will be working. to compare/contrast the
+ (in turn) examples.
30-60 min. to Who finishes the first should raise Good lesson: Bad\Boring
present and discuss groups’ his\her paper. lesson:
work) Activity 2
They have to write: • They hold a large group
- positive discussion to summarize
- negative the similarities and differ-
- interrogative forms of using Present Simple, Past Simple, Present Perfect Continuous, etc. Activity 3 ences.
They should write the formation of: • I will ask each group to
- Present Simple Passive design their own example of
- Past Continuous Passive keeping reviewing fun. Then
- Future Perfect Passive each group will present their creation to the class.
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Раздел III. Коммуникативная дидактика
Continuation of the table
TIME ACTIVITY EXAMPLES
Activity 4 They should change sentences from Direct into Reported Speech. e.g.: "I can’t come to the meeting tomorrow" he said. He said he couldn’t come to the party next day. Activity 5 Find the word by its definition. 1. It’s a place where people go regularly with their friends (restaurant, cafe, pub, etc.). 2. It’s a kind of vehicle which can carry heavy things (lorry). 3. It’s a thing which we wash our hair (shampoo). 4. It’s an animal which is striped and lives in Africa (zebra). Etc. Activity 6 They have to write the positive or negative adjectives about "Personality". Give the opposite of these adjectives: 1. Polluted - 2. Tidy - 3. Organized - 4. Generous - 5. Extrovert - 6. Talkative - 7. Lazy - 8. Selfish - 9. Noisy - 10. Near - 11. Excited - 12. Dangerous - 13. Kind - 14. Patient - 15. Honest - Activity 7 Find five differences in these pictures and write down these words into your paper (3 pictures will be shown to each group) • I will ask each group to design a lesson that uses keeping reviewing fun. Then each group explains their ideas to the class. I will ask the audience to give feedback and discuss each presentation.
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Ending of the table
TIME ACTIVITY EXAMPLES
15 min. per discussion topic Discussion The audience should: - give discussion prompts in pairs or in small groups (5 minutes) - share ideas what they have learnt from today’s workshop (10 minutes) • How can you adapt keeping reviewing fun to different levels of students? • What topics can you use with keeping reviewing fun? • What are the advantages and disadvantages of using keeping reviewing fun in an English class? • How can you adapt keeping reviewing fun for use with your own students?
5-10 min. WraD-UD • I will ask the audience if they have any questions and comments. • I will tell my audience where they can get more information (recommended websites, articles, books, etc.)
In conclusion I would like to say that staying awake and interested in class can be difficult. But what is even more difficult is being responsible for keeping students awake and interested. This is the job of any ESL teacher first and foremost. In order to be a great ESL teacher, one must not only teach, but inspire and empower. As the quote says: “The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book” or “A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way to others”. The goal of teaching is to excite the students about learning, speaking, reading, writing and comprehending English. Keep the advice in this article as a tool to be used often, and you will be one step closer to that goal.
References
1. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy. Educational Origami, available at: http://edoriga-mi.wikispaces.com/Bloom's+Digital+Taxonomy.
2. Defining Critical Thinking. The Critical Thinking Community, available at: http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766.
3. Handbook for teacher. Cambridge, 2012.
Список литературы
1. Bloom's Digital Taxonomy // Educational Origami. URL: http://edorigami. wikispaces.com/Bloom's+Digital+Taxonomy.
2. Defining Critical Thinking // The Critical Thinking Community. URL: http:// www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766.
3. Handbook for teacher. Cambridge, 2012.
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К.Н. Есмамбетова Кызылорда, Казахстан
ПАССИВНЫЕ УЧЕНИКИ: КАК ИХ ЗАИНТЕРЕСОВАТЬ?
Анализируется значение самостоятельной деятельности учащихся как основного фактора индивидуализации и дифференциации обучения. Для преодоления интеллектуальной пассивности автор считает необходимым учитывать каждую сторону познавательного отношения в отдельности, так как изменение мотива интеллектуальной деятельности само собой ещё не решает вопроса о создании соответствующих интеллектуальных знаний и умений. В результате проведения разных видов работы выделены следующие особенности интеллектуально пассивных детей: недостаточная сформированное^ интеллектуальных навыков и умений; отрицательное отношение к интеллектуальной деятельности; отсутствие познавательного отношения к действительности.
Автор включает работу над составлением рассказа по иллюстрациям, где проверяется критическое мышление учеников, используя традиционные виды работы и учитывая необходимость, с одной стороны, дать учащимся больше возможностей проявить свою самостоятельность, с другой - подготовить их к самостоятельной работе. Обучение в сотрудничестве представляется как пример современных педагогических технологий, позволяющих организовать самостоятельную работу учащихся на уроках английского языка.
Ключевые слова: пассивные ученики, критическое мышление учеников, обучение в сотрудничестве.
Сведения об авторе: About the author:
Есмамбетова Казина Нагашибаевна, Yesmambetova Kazina Nagashibaevna,
учитель английского языка English teacher
Школа-лицей № 3 School-lyceum № 3
120014, Казахстан, Кызылорда, 5 Zhankozha batyra ul., Kyzylorda,
ул. Жанкожа батыра, 5 120014, Kazakhstan
E-mail: kazynayes@mail.ru E-mail: kazynayes@mail.ru
Дата поступления статьи 03.09.2015
