Q3 - Motivation. I have some comments to make on the issue of motivation in adult ESL learners. I am teaching a class of pre-level one learners - Hispanic working class adults with basic literacy in their L1, but not a lot of education in their background. They appear to have a positive attitude toward their ESL learning. Their major goals are to learn English either to get a job or function better on the job, deal with life situations in their community, and just be able to communicate better. Granted their motivation may vary day-to-day, depending on the task at hand; and there is extrinsic motivation being provided by the sponsoring organization - NDSM - in offering a grocery sack to those who attend 3 classes a week. But despite that, I think they still come because this is something they want for themselves, and they seem willing to sustain the activity for as long as circumstances permit.
Complicating their motivation, no doubt, are the endemic problems challenging this demographic overall: they are poor and highly mobile because of this; plus they have varied and sub-standard learning contexts, which make sustained progress difficult for them. These are also the same factors that make it hard to assess and track their progress in order to get better learning outcomes. But what I do see, and what motivates me as their teacher, is how much they want to learn and how teachable they can be.
What this all means in an instructional context is that I must maintain the self-motivation that is quite evident in this class, and make every effort to strengthen proficiency in their TL, particularly through conversation interactions. I sense that their attention is selective in that it is based on what they can both hear and understand. Capturing that moment when it occurs in order to give them productive language input will be the real challenge for me.
They are bonded as a group, and enjoy helping one another, which makes pair work a good option. The trick there is to pair a more proficient with a less proficient. They also respond well to full-class repetition and group choral repetition. My interaction with them is critical. I am finding that the more I am able to mix, mingle, and demonstrate, the quicker they are able to make a language transfer. Another important task for them is vocabulary - not just learning new words, but connecting words to a familiar task or situation. Lots of visuals. All of these approaches are ways that I think can effectively maintain the motivation that will keep them learning.
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I totally agree with these approaches to teaching ESL to a group of highly motivated learners. I am too teaching a group of high–beginners all with good literacy level in their L1.
ReplyDeleteAs has been mentioned above, it is a challenge for any ESL teacher to capture the moment that an ESL student(s) grasps an idea (because he/she can hear the word/sentence recognize it and understand it) and builds on it so that the teacher can encourage them and push them to move forward. I would also add to that challenge another one that faces me personally, one that has been briefly touched on in the above post, which is the issue of low participation in beginners ESL classes.
The problem of low participation is a prevalent problem in ESL classes. The way I go about this problem is by creating group exercises where students have to work in pairs and allow them to prepare and work through the language exercise before standing in front of the class to participate and practice questions and answers or giving directions.