Proposal: Motivating young learners to learn English

Motivating young learners to learn English
Natalia Menéndez
CAECE University




Abstract

This study aims at finding indicators of the importance of motivation while students are learning English. This research will be carried out with two groups of learners who attend different state-run schools from two towns called Bordenave and 17 de Agosto. They belong to EPB 2 (Educación Primaria Básica) courses and they are between 10 and 13 years old. Appropriate activities for these groups of students will be implemented in the lessons. Carrying out science experiments, telling stories, listening to songs as well as playing games will be taken into account to motivate learners and make classes more enjoyable. These activities will be selected according to students’ ages, needs and preferences. Apart from that, a continuous observation will take place in order to determine whether the selected activities are beneficial for the students or not. Besides, evaluation will be formative instead of summative, since learners also have two other periods per week with another teacher who carries out formal tests.


Motivating young learners to learn English

Introduction of the study

Motivation places an essential role in language learning. Students’ needs as well as preferences should be met in order to succeed in their attempts to learn a language. Thus, teachers of English are in charge of creating this path towards learning. They are also responsible for planning and carrying out activities that motivate learners in the process of acquiring a second language.

Though motivating students is of paramount importance, teachers do not seem to be aware of this issue. If teachers are not conscious enough of the significance of motivation in their language lessons, language acquisition will not probably take place. They need to be well-informed to start incorporating motivation into their lessons. If teachers work towards including motivation in their classes, students will be able to learn English enthusiastically and effectively.


Purpose of the study

The purpose of this research work is to find indicators of why motivating young learners to learn a second language is important. In other words, the aim of this study is why motivation places such an essential role so as to promote language learning.



Rationale

According to Read (1999), “in order to ensure that learning English in the early years is a motivating and valuable part of children’s education, it is essential to adopt an approach which takes account of children’s special characteristics and needs” (p. 33). Among the author’s basic principles, Read (1999) states that motivation is vital, no matter what the teaching context is.

However, keeping students motivated involves much more than playing funny games without setting clear objectives. Thus, “fun should have a role in, rather than just be a feature of children’s education” (Rixon, 1994, p. 33). If games are properly planned, they are so useful and so important because the fun element creates a desire to communicate (Halliwell, 1992).


Discussion

The research questions for this study will be:
_Do activities with real and meaningful contents promote learning?
_Do learners enjoy story-telling?
_Are games, songs and rhymes positive sources that stimulate effective learning?


Delimitations

This current research will be carried out in six 4th, 5th and 6th year courses at two state-run schools in the province of Buenos Aires. Although these schools do not belong to the same town, their ways of working are very similar to each other. The experiential group belongs to a small town called Bordenave. Eighty students attend this school and the majority of them belong to a low middle class. Though EPB 1 (Educación Primaria Básica) students are at school from 1 to 5 p.m., EPB 2 learners are from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and they have English lessons four periods of 50 minutes per week.


Limitations

Although these learners have four periods per week, only two of them will be used to run this research. The other two periods are taught by a teacher who tends to be quite grammar-based. Therefore, timing could be a constraint to carry out this research.


Revision of literature

According to Cameron (2001), “children bring to language learning their curiosity and eagerness to make sense of the world. They will tackle the most demanding tasks with enthusiasm and willingness” (p. 246). Therefore, teachers need to take advantage of their eagerness and find strategies of motivating students to learn the foreign language.

“Teachers thus need to examine classroom activities from the child’s point of view in order to assess whether pupils will understand what to do and will be able to make sense of new language” (Cameron, 2001, p. 19). There are many activities that teachers could select in order to make their lessons more interesting and appealing.

One of the activities could be devising tasks which involve a real content such as science experiments. Read (2002) has claimed that if teachers incorporate activities with real content, lessons become more enjoyable and children feel motivated to discover things about the real world.

According to Read (2002), “children’s involvement in purposeful scientific activity, even at the simplest level, can help to promote positive attitudes towards ways of thinking and working that will be invaluable to them both as language learners and as people” (p. 23). Therefore, these activities could help students acquire English.

Incorporating activities with real content in our language lessons encourages learners to use language purposefully. Besides, as the focus is placed on real meaning, language tends to be easily memorable (Read, 2002). According to Halliwell (1992), “through demonstrating by doing and by using sources of understanding other than language the teacher explains even apparently complicated activities in a very simple language” (p. 18).

Another aspect which could be highly motivating is the inclusion of stories in the English lesson. According to Slattery and Willis (2001), children do love stories and feel always eager to listen to them. Thus, reading as well as listening to them could be funny and at the same time, memorable.

According to Cameron (2001), “stories offer a whole imaginary world, created by language, that children can enter and enjoy, learning language as they go” (p. 159). Thus, learning a language through stories is highly effective, and if it is handled properly, it promotes learning.

However, there are some guidelines that teachers should bear in mind before choosing a story book. A good story book for language learning will have interesting characters that children can empathize with, a clear plot which may have a surprise or twist at the end as well as a proper selection of pictures (Cameron, 2001).

Slattery and Willis (2001) have stated the most important reasons for using stories in language classes. Stories could help children imagine what it feels like to be someone else, they could also introduce the child to other cultures and attitudes, and they could be fun, enjoyable and interesting.

Games could also contribute to make lessons more interesting and appealing for second language learners. According to Rixon (1994), concentration, close listening and memory strategies are among the general educational benefits games may promote.

What is more, Rixon (1994) defines fun and games as “all those activities that we loosely think of as involving play and enjoyment” (p. 34). However, teachers should have a specific purpose to carry out games in order to encourage second language learning.

Last but by no means least, songs and rhymes are also a good method of motivating the students in the foreign language classroom. According to Rixon (1994), “primary school language learning should promote the formation of a positive attitude to language learning in general. It should form a good basis for secondary school studies” (p. 35).

Though songs and rhymes encourage students to learn a language, teachers should be careful while selecting them. The structure and vocabulary should remain simple (Halliwell, 1992) as well as easily understood. Songs and rhymes should be chosen taking into account the students’ language level; they should be neither too difficult nor too easy.


Procedures

Participants

Learners who attend two state-run schools. They belong to EPB 2 (4th, 5th and 6th years) courses and they are between 10 and 13 years old. Although both schools are located in different towns, they share similar backgrounds.

Materials

Activities which seem to be interesting and challenging for these groups of students will be implemented in the lessons. Carrying out science experiments, telling stories, listening to songs as well as playing games will be taken into account to motivate learners and make classes more enjoyable.

These activities will be selected according to students’ ages, needs and preferences. Apart from that, a continuous observation will take place in order to determine whether the selected activities are beneficial for the students or not. Besides, evaluation will take place constantly, since learners also have two other periods per week with another teacher who carries out formal tests.

Procedure

The same topics will be taught in both groups. However, the activities that will be used are different. Though the control group will be exposed to communicative activities, the experiential group will undertake more games, stories and songs in order to discover if motivated learners acquire English better than unmotivated students. The control group will have to sit for formal tests. Together with this type of evaluation, both groups will be evaluated constantly, through the teacher’s observation.


Conclusion

This study aims at helping teachers of English to understand the importance of motivation in their lesson. It also incorporates some samples of meaningful activities in which students could be enthusiastic to learn this second language. Therefore, this research paper could be put into practice by all those teachers who find their classes boring and not challenging enough. Their results could be highly helpful to continue going through this issue.





References

Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: University Press.
Halliwell, S. (1992). Teaching English in the Primary Classroom. New York: Longman.
Read, C. (1999). Towards whole learning. IATEFL CATS, 33-39.
Read, C. (2002). Simple science. English teaching professional, 23-26.
Rixon, S. (1994). Chapter 3: The role of fun and games activities in teaching young learners. In C. Brumfit, J. Moon & R. Tongue (Eds.), Teaching English to Children: From Practice to Principle (pp. 33-48). London: Thomas Nelson.
Slattery, M., & Willis, J. (2001). English for Primary Teachers. Oxford: University Press.