Reflection 4: A topic in language education that I want to know more about

Since the first day I have been doing my internship at “The Highschool” I have been wondering what it would be the best ways or strategies that the teacher should use to maintain motivational levels in classes made up of students from different parts of the world.
Most of the time that I have spent there, the teacher has had to apply different strategies to keep the class hooked in what she is teaching. All those strategies have got success, and that success is what has triggered in me the interest of wanting to know more about “Strategies for motivation in classrooms”. Maybe, this is because of I really expect to be a good teacher; I have faith in my future students, even when I haven't met them. I have faith in them because I am convinced of everybody has a gift, and as teachers we are the responsible people who must discover it.


The students in that class come from different parts of the world, they have different interests, and different learning styles. In this point, the teacher must not only be the learning facilitator, but also she must be the leader of her class. And leadership is not an easy task. Being a leader-teacher means addapting your ways of teaching to lead your class forward; it also means carrying out a series of activities which are interesting to all the students in the class; activities that you know will create interest in each one of the students. But, how can you do that, taking into account that you are teaching a completely new language?; How can teachers manage their own classes to engage students in just one common activity which involves aspects of their own background?

Here there are some links that can be helpful to understand a little bit more what we can do as teachers to motivate our students in EFL clasrooms:

http://www.tefl.net/esl-articles/motivation-esl.htm

This link is useful because it gives you some hints that help you to adecuate or modify our lessons in pos of more motivating classes.

http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Hazzard-MakingMovies.html

This link takes you to a good experienced lived by a group of EFL students who discovered a new way to learn English.

http://teacherjoe.us/TeachersMotivate.html

This link takes you to a really energetic webpage. Its creator is "Joe", and he gives you very good ideas for the ESL classroom. In this case: "Teach your students to speak out in English"

All these links have taught me the importance of motivation for carrying out a good class of English. Motivation, and leadership go hand to hand, and it is important to be aware of that. Thus, by applying at least some of the strategiees that these webpages suggest you, your students will learn, and you (teacher) will feel full of yourself for having reached what you proposed to yoursef.