NURTURING STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

NURTURING STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Juvrianto CJ

juvrianto.chrissunday@yahoo.com

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.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Intrinsic motivation and effective teaching: A flow analysis. In J. L. Bess (Ed.) Teaching Well and Liking It: Motivating Faculty to Teach Effectively. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 72-89.

Leis, Adrian.(2011). Thoughts on foreign language activity classes in Japanese elementary schools.Bulletin of Miyagi University of Education. 46, 165-172.

Leis, Adrian. 2011.  Foreign Language Activities and Motivation: Nurturing Skills for Active Communication. Miyage University of Education

Joyette Fabien.2014. MOTIVATION: factors affecting student Motivation(http:www. Self motivation for succees.pdf Access on 23 October 2014)

Rasyid,Muhammad. 2010. Nurturing Students Motivation in Learning English Classroom Interaction through Varied Practical Tasks at SMAN 2Bau-Bau. Thesis: Graduate Program : State University of Makassar.

Rezky, Andi.2009. The Effectiveness of socioeffective strategies in improving the learners’ speking ability. English Department,Languages and Literature Faculty, State University of Makassar.

Reeve Jang. 2006. What Teachers Say and Do to Support Students’ Autonomy During a Learning Activity. Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2006 by the American Psychological Association 2006, Vol. 98, No. 1, 209–218