NURTURING STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH
AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Juvrianto
CJ
Abstract
This paper discusses about how to nurture students’ motivation in learning
English as a Foreign Language. There are some information relate to this paper.
It includes the position of English Language in Indonesia,definition of
motivation, factors that affecting students’motivation, character of students’
motivation ,conceptof students’ motivation and nurturing students motivation.
English in Indonesia becomes compulsory subject starts from elementary school
up to university. Motivation is efforts alert even conscious and
unconscious process for doing something that can make someone activate to get
the goal and to get self-satisfaction
with their action. The biggest factor that affecting students’ motivation
are coming up from the students it self and the environmentalof the students.
The character of students consist of students who have high and low motivation.A
good teacher who inspire the students and it can be one way to nurture
students’ motivation in learning English as Foreign Language.
Key words: Student, Factors, Nurture and Motivation
Introduction
Language is
considered to be a system of communicating with other people using sounds,
symbols and words in expressing a meaning, idea or thought. This language can
be used in many forms, primarily through oral and written communication as well
as using expression through body language. There are many kinds of language around world. The first
language that someone know and acquire in their life will be as their mother
tongue. In Indonesia many people use Bahasa Indonesia as their mother tongue
and English become a Foreign Language
that they learn after their mother tongue.
English as a
foreign language becomes one of compulsory subjects in Elementary School,
Junior High School and Senior High School up University in Indonesia. English
language teaching tends to help learners to use English in written and spoken
communication. It is hoped that they can use the language effectively,
appropriately, and accurately. Once children start school as a student, they begin forming
beliefs about their school-related successes and failures. The sources to which
children attribute their successes (commonly effort, ability, luck, or level of
task difficulty) and failures (often lack of ability or lack of effort) have
important implications for how they approach and cope with learning situations.
Awareness of how students' attitudes and beliefs about
learning develop and what facilitates learning for its own sake can assist
educators in reducing student apathy.A big motivation
of students in learning make them are
easy and enjoyable to learn and to know the subject that they learn because
they will think that learning as their needs and they will try and have a big
effort to know the knowledge of one subject and their motivation is also
related to their teacher in teaching EFL.Resky (2009)states English Foreign
Language (EFL) teacher is the one who has a capacity or professional in a
teacher education to teach and master in teaching English in an educational
institution. An EFL teacher has an important role to motivate students in
learning English. An EFL teacher is required to have a good knowledge in
English. An EFL teacher has been said success to teach if he can make the
teaching learning process running well, especially in motivating the students
to learn. He has to have many techniques to nurture motiv ation of students in
learning English as a Foreign Language.
The success of
teaching-learning activity as many researches have studied is influenced by
many factors. The factors may occur before or during the process of the
activity. Some factors come from the students’ surroundingsome others are from
the students themselves. Environmental factors often become the main topic of
discussion about the students’ development in their study. Support upon the
students is needed for the success of their learning. But when the final result
has been exposed, the question should be returned to the students themselves. The teacher and school should give their best effort to
develop them. There
are also many factors supporting the success of learning activity. One of the
most important factors, as many theories give, is motivation. It is the
condition of a person, which encourages an individual to do certain activities
to gain certain objectives. Some people also assume that motivation is the
final purpose of an activity and often is concerning with a mental condition of
the individuals.
Based on the
description above,the existence of motivation among the student is closely
related to their success in learning English. Therefore, the important thing
that the teacher of English should do to reach learning outcome knows the
factors that influence the motivation of students in learning English and
nurturing students’motivation in learning English. Related to the statements
above, the writer will explain about Nurturing Students Motivation in learning
English as a Foreign Language in this paper. It includes the definition, factors,
concepts and theory of student’s motivation in learning English.
Definition of
Students’ Motivation
There
are many statements about students’ motivation, such as in the following:
Motivation is perhaps the most commonly used word
when explaining whether humans are able to complete a complex task successfully
or not. Many second language (L2) teachers often put the success of their
students down to motivation; those who did well were the ones who seemed to
have more drive to study(Adrian:2011).
Based on Patrick
(2004) states that Motivation is intrapersonal in the sense that students
harbor personal orientations and beliefs that affect their motivation and
performance.Motivation is interpersonal in the sense that the quality of a
student’s intrapersonal motivation depends, in part, on the quality of the
relationship provided by the teacher
Reeve jang (2006)
Student’s Motivation is an intention is a determination to engage in a
particular behavior, and it is equivalent to being motivated to act.Student motivation naturally has to
do with students' desire to participate in the learning process. But it also
concerns the reasons or goals that underline their involvement or
noninvolvement in academic activities. Although students may be equally motivated
to perform a task, the sources of their motivation may differ.
The
writer concludes
that Students’ Motivation is efforts alert even conscious and unconscious
process for doing something that can make someone activate to get the goal and
to get self-satisfaction
with their action.
Factors that Affecting
Student’s Motivation
Students bring to the
classroom varying types of extrinsic motivation such as a nurturing home
environment or rewards promised by parents and relatives. However, they also
depend, to a large extent, on school factors such as school and classroom
environment, teacher personality, skill and ability of teacher, rewards and
commendations and relationship with peers for motivation not only to succeed,
but to excel. Based on Javvete (2014) there are some factors that affect
students’motivationasfollows:
1.Home Environment
A child who comes from a home environment which is caring, comfortable and
supportive brings to the classroom, motivation arising from his conducive home
environment. A positive school environment will reinforce his own motivation
and cause him to achieve at even higher levels. On the other side of the coin,
an unfavorable home environment produces a pupil who arrives at school perhaps
hungry, angry, resentful, bitter, depressed, lethargic or just simply stressed
out. Such a student would require really strong school motivation to prod him
out of his malaise and cause him to perform.
2. Intrinsic Motivation
The most powerful motivation, however, is intrinsic motivation for no
matter how favorable external factors are, unless a student has set goals that
he is determined to achieve , he can easily be side tracked by factors such as
peer pressure, complacency
or simply his own indecisiveness. Take, for example, the first scenario
above. The child is already comfortable at home and at school. He can take
either of two routes: He may easily become complacent and tell himself that all
is well at home and as such, there is no need to work hard. Here, it is the
intrinsic motivation otherwise called self motivation, which is needed to push
this student to take the better route which would be to apply himself in order
to become a success story like his father, brother or someone else whom he has
adopted as role model and to bring gratification to those who have made the way
easy for him. Take the second scenario where the child comes from a less than
favorable home environment. This student also has two options: He may, from
sheer determination to access a better life in the future, push himself to the
edge to achieve success. Conversely, he may succumb, as many do, and let his
adverse circumstances dictate his future. Indeed, the unfavorable home
environment is probably a stronger motivator for personal success than the
favorable home environment. Students from the former, however , rely more
heavily on school factors for motivation than those from the latter.
3. Peer Motivation
Peers are also a great source of motivation for one another. Life long
friendships are formed at school and peers have been known to stand up for one
another sometimes even more than siblings. They assist one another with school
work and also become mentors to one another in their personal lives. Very often
one finds that the students who work in groups, sharing their knowledge and skills,
obtain better results than those who work alone.
4. The School System
The school system itself can influence students either to excel or to
rebel. A school system which is extremely regimented can impact negatively on
students. The reverse is true; one which is too lax will eventually have
discipline problems and lose reputation. Nobody wants to be associated with a school
whose reputation is poor, thus students who attend such schools feel that
nothing good is expected of them and so they are not motivated to do well.
5. Teacher Motivation
Among extrinsic factors the teacher is probably the single, most powerful source
of motivation for pupils. The personality, skill, attitude, sex, age andeven
the attire of the teacher are all veryimportant factors in determining whether
students perform or not. Teachers must be conscious of the powerful impact that
they can have on their students and make every effort to ensure that they
impact positively rather than negatively on the young minds entrusted to their
care. Teachers arementors, life shapers, destiny shapers and they must be
prepared to undertake the task which has been put into their hands. Students
are motivated by teachers who show that they are concerned about their well
being, that they have answers to life’s questions , that they can rise to
challenges, that they can be mothers, fathers and friends.
The writer concludes that children’s home environment and schools
favorable
shapes the initial constellation of attitudes they develop toward learning
English. When parents nurture their children's natural curiosity about the
world by welcoming their questions, encouraging exploration, and familiarizing
them with resources that can enlarge their world and school
condition are support them to explore the students to learn English.
The
Characteristics of Students’ Motivation
Muhammad (2010:11) found the characteristics of students
who have high motivation and low motivation are described below.
The signs of high motivation are many and varied, but it
is fairly easy to recognise when a group of students is well motivated, for
example:
1.
They
participate actively and willingly with one another in learning activities.
2.
They
are attentive to what the teacher and other students say and the questions they
ask.
3.
They
do their homework regularly and prepare the next day’s activities.
4.
They
find input material interesting.
5.
They
are willing to cooperate with one another or with the teacher when practical
difficulties arise.
6.
They
come to class with well-organised notes.
7.
They
are willing to “have a go” even if they find an activity difficult or
unfamiliar.
The signs of low motivation are equally varied and areto
a large degree, the mirror image of those mentioned above. They include the
following:
1.
Students
tend not to arrive on time for class or enter the classroom with evident
reluctance.
2.
They
are listless during and become restless towards the end of the lesson. (They
can’t wait to get away.)
3.
They
are unwilling to cooperate with one another on learning activities.
4.
They
find study materials and learning activities boring or complain about them not
being useful.
5.
Disagreements
or tensions arise among grup members for not apparent reason and are difficult
to resolve.
6.
Students
are unwilling to depart from habitual routines or familiar activities. Even if
the teacher explains their relevance in learning terms.
7.
They
seem not to retain what they have done in previous lesson.
The writer
agrees with this finding that the students who have a high motivation are more
interesting to learn, ask, find, follow the class or teaching learning process
and they will feel bad if they miss the class even just once and they will do
some efforts to get a high achievement in good ways and it’s different with
students who has low motivation they seems not ready to learn, ignore the
materials and do all things because the forced of school curriculum like
students who come,sit and silen in the class without catching anything.
Concepts of Students' Motivation
Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation
Intrinsic
motivation of
students refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the
task itself, and exists within the individual rather than relying on any
external pressure. Intrinsic motivation has been studied by social and educational psychologists since the
early 1970s. Research has found that it is usually associated with high
educational achievement and enjoyment by students. Students are likely to be
intrinsically motivated if they:
- attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control (e.g. the amount of effort they put in),
- believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals (i.e. the results are not determined by luck),
- are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.
Extrinsic
motivation
comes from outside of the individual. Common extrinsic motivations are rewards
like money and grades, coercion and threat of punishment. Competition is in general
extrinsic because it encourages the performer to win and beat others, not to
enjoy the intrinsic rewards of the activity. A crowd cheering on the individual
and trophies are also extrinsic incentives.
Social psychological
research has indicated that extrinsic rewards can lead to over
justification and a subsequent reduction in intrinsic motivation. In one
study demonstrating this effect, children who expected to be (and were)
rewarded with a ribbon and a gold star for drawing pictures spent less time
playing with the drawing materials in subsequent observations than children who
were assigned to an unexpected reward condition and to children who received no
extrinsic reward.
Self-determination theory proposes that extrinsic
motivation can be internalized by the individual if the task fits with their
values and beliefs and therefore helps to fulfill their basic psychological
needs.
Nurturing Student’s Motivation
“You can motivate your students by fear. And you can motivate by reward.
But both of these methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is
“self-motivation.” There are some ways to nurture students’motivation to learn
English.
1.
Teachers’ Active Participation in FLA classes.The
language instructor needs to be a good role model for students.
Csikszentmihalyiin Adrian (2011)
suggests that the enthusiasm a teacher shows for language will be passed on to
his or her students. Although, as Csikszentmihalyi continues, students may
outwardly make fun of the teacher, inside they tend to feel admiration for such
an attitude, developing a strong intrinsic eagerness to learn. It could be seen:
-
Using media to show videos of the students using English.
-
Praising students effectively.
-
Having students think deeply.
-
Encourage student creativity.
2.
Autonomy
Supportive
Based on Jang
(2006) When autonomy supportive, teachers help students develop a sense of
congruence between their classroom behavior and their inner motivational
resources (i.e., psychological needs, interests, preferences, goals, strivings,
and values). They cannot directly give students an experience of autonomy.
Instead, teachers can only encourage and support this experience by identifying
students’ inner motivational resources and by creating classroom opportunities
for students to align their inner resources with their classroom activity.
3.
Control
Behavior
Jang (2006)
states that when controlling, teachers have students put aside their inner
motivational resources and instead adhere to a teacher-centered genda. To
encourage students to adhere to their agendas, teachers offer extrinsic
incentives, impose external goals, utter pressuring communications, make
external evaluations salient, and generally influence students’ ways of
thinking, feeling, and behaving in ways consistent with behavior modification
programs. The general idea is to establish an agenda of what students should
and should not do and then shape students toward that agenda by using external
contingencies and pressuring language. Hence, when controlled, students are
motivated by external contingencies and pressuring
The writer concludes
that the way to nurture motivation of students in learning English it comes
from students’self motivation that can be affect from the way of the teacher
give students chance to learn by their head, heart and hand. So if the teacher can
touch the three parts of students it will lead them to get high motivation to
learn English.
Closing
Students’
motivation is efforts alert of students even conscious and unconscious process
for doing something that can make someone activate to get the goal and to get
self-satisfaction
with their action.Students’
motivation is crucial for parents, teachers, and school leaders to devote
themselves fully to engendering, maintaining, and rekindling students'
motivation to learn especially learning English as a Foreign Language.
Students’
motivation concepts consist of intrinsic and extrinsic concept. Intrinsic motivation
of students refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in
the task itself, and exists within the individual rather than relying on any
external pressure. Extrinsic motivation
comes from outside of the individual. Common extrinsic motivations are rewards
like money and grades, coercion
and threat of punishment.the way to
nurture motivation of students in learning English it comes from students’self
motivation that can be affect from the way of the teacher give students chance
to learn by their head, heart and hand. So if the teacher can touch the three
parts of students it will lead them to get high motivation to learn English.
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