Motivating teenagers

Submitted by TE Editor on 4 November, 2003 - 12:00

"Motivation is as much an effect as a cause of learning." Ausubel
In this article I will discuss how teachers can aim to improve the motivation levels of teenage
students.

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I will link three practical classroom activities to the ideas of American Psychologist Carl Rogers.
The ideas of Carl Rogers
Types of motivation and teenagers
Ways to improve motivation
Journals - empathy
Using photos - authenticity
Music - acceptance

The ideas of Carl Rogers

Rogers (1957) outlined 3 attitudinal qualities that a teacher, or in his words, a facilitator, should
have to assist the learning process. They are empathy (seeing things from the students'
viewpoint), authenticity (being yourself) and acceptance (of students' ideas and opinions).

Types of motivation and teenagers

It is widely agreed that motivation has a great effect on a student's capacity to learn. Motivation
can be broken down into extrinsic and intrinsic forms. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the
learner, who wants to learn for the sake of learning. Although not impossible to find an intrinsically
motivated teenage student, five years of experience working with Young Learners in Spain leads
me to believe that they are few and far between! It is much more likely that our teenage students
will be extrinsically motivated, meaning that their motivation comes from external sources such as
wanting to pass an exam or please their parents. The good news for teachers of teenagers is that
there are many things we can do in the classroom to increase the levels of extrinsic motivation.

Ways to improve motivation

Journals - Empathy
Journal writing can create wonderful opportunities to find out more about your students' lives.
When introducing the idea of writing journals it is important to make the aims and general rules
clear to students.
Students should each have their own notebook to use as their journal. These should be kept by the
teacher and it should be made clear that the teacher will not read anyone's writing out in the class.
It will be strictly a two-way 'conversation' between the individual student and the teacher. At the
end of the course I always give the students their journals to keep.
It should be made clear that the idea is to communicate effectively in English and not to worry too
much about mistakes. The teacher will not correct mistakes and will focus solely on the meaning. I
always keep a list of common mistakes that are made in the journals and deal with them as and
when it is appropriate as an integrative part of the course. I would never use a sentence lifted
directly from a journal to focus on an error.
Class time should be set aside for journal writing. At the start of a course, I ask students to begin
their journals by telling me about themselves and their reasons for studying English. The teacher
collects all the journals in and replies individually to each one and asks a question or two, which
will be the prompts for the next class's journal writing.
Although replying to the writing in the journals can be time consuming it really does help the
teacher to empathise with the students. Discovering, for example, that the reason one of my
students didn't like to sing in class was because his voice was breaking, or that one of the students

was having problems with a group of friends at school really helps to remind us of what it is like to
be a teenager! I am sure these students would not have seen it as appropriate to come and talk to
me about these issues but they did feel comfortable to write about them. Many students have
really enjoyed the process of journal writing and have felt motivated to write in English on a
regular basis.
Using photos - Authenticity
Teenage students can be very curious and inquisitive. Given half the chance they want to know
more about you and your life outside the classroom. It is a personal decision how much of yourself
you want to give away and share with your students. I have always found that personalising really
helps to increase students' interest levels. Carl Rogers claimed that learning would be much more
effective when the facilitator does not hide behind a faade.
Using photos can really help to spark genuine interest and generate a lot of language. Topics that
lend themselves to the use of photos are describing people, family, holidays or describing places.
How much more interesting to describe a photo of the teacher's friend or sister than to describe a
photo of a random unknown man in a book? How much more engaging to see holiday photos from
the teacher's summer break rather than the typical desert island shots used in course books?
Grammar lessons can also be supported with photos. To give a simple example, teaching 'used to'
becomes much more memorable when sentences with a visual image can be formed. Eg. "my
teacher used to have long hair and a moustache"

Of course there can be drawbacks with letting the students into your personal life, and you should
think carefully about who to 'introduce' your class to! Teenagers have excellent memories, so
questions about the people in the photos will last for the whole course, sometimes the
relationships may not last quite as long!
Music - Acceptance
Teenagers love listening to music! A sweeping generalisation, but on the whole I have found it to
be true. Due to the fact that so much popular music is in English it can be a source for highly
motivating activities.
Although it can be tempting to only use music in the class that you enjoy listening to, teenagers
really appreciate it if you make the effort to find out what they like listening to. To get this
information students can write surveys to do with the class to find out the top five favourite bands.
When you know what they like to listen to encourage students to lend you the CDs or tapes. I
often record music videos from a local TV channel.
Most teachers have a variety of activities to use with songs. Lyrics can be easily found on the
internet and there are many opportunities to exploit language in songs. Students themselves can
be involved in creating activities to use with their favourite songs.
Having music on in the background can really change the atmosphere of a classroom. When
students are working in groups I sometimes like to have music playing softly in the class. Rather
than always play my own tastes I allow students to bring in their own tapes. A class vote decides
what we listen to when we work. By accepting their music tastes and 'tuning in' to them, the
motivation levels of a class can be improved. Teenagers know a lot about music and will be willing
to tell you all about it. Rather than ignoring the differences in taste between them and you, exploit
them and use them as a real information gap!

Joanna Budden, British Council, Spain

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Comments

joe

Carmen Rhor, Peru I am so

Submitted on 26 March, 2008 - 10:19

Carmen Rhor, Peru

I am so pleased that a colleague sent me your address this morning and the information that I
have just read in this page is just what I needed.
I've been teaching ELT for the last 25 years (I hold a diploma on Translations, but have been
involved in language teaching since my student days), and at present I am doing an MBA (virtual
one), but I am struggling with a group of teenagers (actually adults 17-22) from a very
fashionable and expensive private university here in Lima, Peru. I just don't know how to motivate
my students to do homework, to stop yawning in class (11 a.m.-1 p.m. - lunch time!!), and to feel
eager to learn (English is compulsory). We use Headway (American version) and I will certainly try
some of the tips the article gives. I am satisfied to read about Carl Rogers, for this author is one of
the experts we study in my course.
Thanks again

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tmea mark

Motivation and music

Submitted on 14 October, 2010 - 12:03

I am a free lance teacher from Budapest, in Hungary. Carl Rogers or not, I had been using music
for a long time as a listening and developing tool during my lessons and i had also noticed, it was
not really difficult,that students at the age of 17, or below are really open to this kind of
"exercise". It is relaxing, amusing, creating a connection between the teacher and the students, it
is an international means of communication between different cultures, but the easiest way to put
it , it makes you feel relaxed too:) I had a course lately, during the summer and i had 2 students
with a school leaving exam ahead, and since they had never been to a real English course before ,
they started asking me "favours", like lets do this and that during the lessons. I did not want them
to be the course leaders , since i had prepared them for a language exam, but my practice and
experience proves that sometimes or for a time you have to let things go, put your tense schedule
aside and have some fun, which can also be controlled, but it is only you , the teacher who will be
aware of this. At the end of my experimental lesson, with music, with them, which i had mentioned
proved to be useful in other cases, and even during the first moments , i noticed they one of them,
the one with more problems, had a totally different attitude for me and it made him and me happy
, not because i have a teenage daughter, and i also enjoy their kind of music, also because i felt
this was the thing he was looking for and it could make him understand how other things in the
lesson , other than music, would be important for him. So you have to be open to experiment with
the things in methodology, that is what it is for:)

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tmea mark

Having fun
Submitted on 14 October, 2010 - 12:13

And one more thing, having fun during the lessons is one of the most important things, you have
to find , or to be open to the things your students have in mind, and you can count on that ,
concerning their tastes.
I have heard about teachers bringing their interests to the lessons only, but that is something that
could lead to opposition, or boredom, or else. I think it is not difficult to be open minded to many
things nowadays.
Having fun is one of the keys and most people have a good sense of humour and other abilities
and skills too.

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tasha0705

Music and fun

Submitted on 13 August, 2012 - 14:09

I agree, having fun is really important because teenagers tend to roll their eyes on everything. As
parent of a teenager, I can say that you need to come down to their level, sometimes, in order to
get along with them better, show interest in their everyday life, be "in" when it comes to music,
fashion, celebrities, etc. Then they like you and it's easier to work with them. Never criticise them,
never push them or drag them to do something they are not interested in. The worse thing to do is
to get them hate the language, then they lose all energy and will and you have students who don't
want to learn.So, become a teenager yourself!