Revista simpozionului Eficiență și calitate în educație - 19 mai 2017 Eficiență și calitate în educație | Page 57

INCREASING ENGLISH LEARNING MOTIVATION
AMONG TECHNOLOGICAL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
Maria Camelia Galaftion, Colegiul Tehnic de Industrie Alimentară „Terezianum” Sibiu
Abstract:
Teaching and learning English must be viewed in a much wider context than the often intimidating limits and
strictness of the classroom. The study of foreign languages is now regarded in the multicultural and dynamic
st
context of the 21 century, characterised by a society and labour market in search of creative and dynamic
high school graduates with initiative, good professional skills and high level of communicative competence in
a foreign language. The English teacher faces several challenges such as the socio-cultural background of
the students, the extent of student involvement and interest in the study of English, the didactic means and
materials available. There are many possible answers to the English teacher’s dilemmas but these only
become functional in the context of a genuine mixture between the students’ resources and needs, the
socio-cultural context, the teacher’s knowledge and personality, empathy and creativity.
Key words: teaching English, competence, learning, challenges, solutions, students, modern means and
methods.
Numerous approaches to education have emphasised the growing importance of modern
technology in today’s English class. It would be hard to imagine, if not impossible, a
classroom without the didactic means and tools of the 21 st century in it. Nevertheless, we
insist on the necessity of finding a balance, an efficient mixture of classical and modern
methods and techniques, practical and critical thinking, interaction, research and
discovery. The English teacher has to find a way of adapting his/her methods to the latest
requirements of the fast-changing modern society and this involves becoming flexible and
open-minded, learning new things every day, constantly analysing his/her students’ needs
and interests. Mission impossible! Some sceptics might say, especially if we refer to
technological high school students.
There are many issues that we have to deal with and one of the most disturbing is
the fact that more often than not we teach large heterogeneous classes. This is an
immense challenge for any teacher but we must find a way of accommodating language
learning to the unfavourable environment of the classroom, as Donn Byrne says (1). How
can we do that? We must create the best conditions for learning and we must motivate our
students, boost their interest in the English class, keep them involved in what they are
learning or doing. First of all, we need to prepare everything in advance. Secondly, we
must know our students very well, with their weak and strong points, and be able to
anticipate the possible problems they might have on the topic we are going to deal with.
Then, our personality, our empathy and our creativity are the key-elements that can
ensure the success of any teaching-learning activity.
As stated before, a teacher must be flexible in order to motivate his/her students
and by this we mean he/she must be both authoritative and friendly at the same time
(Byrne: 3). We establish a set of rules that must be strictly observed, we keep things under
control, we assign tasks and set deadlines, we explain our aims to the students and the
expected results. In a nutshell, we show them that we know what we are doing. It is
extremely important though to avoid having an aggressive attitude. We want them to take
us seriously but we do not want to intimidate them in any way. Our students must feel
confident, they must be aware of their qualities and they must feel free to communicate in
the foreign language.
The students will feel motivated by what happens in the classroom, lesson by
lesson. They must have the chance to use the language freely in many different contexts if
we want them to learn how to speak it. They must not be afraid of making errors. They
must learn from their errors. They need to experiment in a supportive atmosphere with
using language they have heard or seen without feeling threatened (Willis: 7). But is this
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