Extrinsic motivation and EFL classrooms
A practical suggestion
Have you ever thought of rewarding your students especially after a big achievement? Have you ever stumbled over the idea of ‘motivational teaching’? Did it ever occur to you that extrinsic motivation is the sole kind of motivation that can be fruitful in EFL classrooms? Didn’t it?
It’s not unbeknownst to every practitioner that a reward is the unique way to instill and ensure that a good behavior is to become a habit. And that’s, for sure, a behaviorist approach, if you consider it for a while. The carrot and the stick approach, originally political, is a can-not-do-without in enhancing teaching/ learning process. Teaching in view, ‘carroting’ is the term I personally coined to stand as a counterpart to that approach. An approach, though criticized for its short-sightedness, turns to be a momentum to the development of the sixth competence namely that of ‘learning how to learn.’
Yes, for sure! You are right to consider that as far off topic and you are wrong to over-rule that that might be right. Allow me to clear your brains of this entire blur. Why can’t you admit an existing correlation between ‘learning how to learn’ and ‘extrinsic motivation’? Why not? I think that is feasible. ‘Learning how to learn’ aims at extending the quest of knowledge beyond classrooms to real life. It aims, succinctly, at immortalizing students’ learning and education to a degree where a student can and picks up his own learning enterprise even after he finishes his school based studies. Techniques that fit to develop this competence are, to my opinion, those geared towards motivation, let alone those on learning per se. Examples to this latter are note-taking, organizing one’s notebook, etcetera.
Motivation of its extrinsic type is, in this respect, of great import in the plain sense that as much as you motivate your students you ensure, to a variable extent, the immortality of learning desire in their lives. An immortality that only a focus on emotion can achieve. Here, I suggest that a teacher should keep on and on motivating his/ her students as part of their development of the known competence.
Thus, ladies and gentlemen, I think I have answered your question of how can you link extrinsic motivation to ‘learning how to learn.’
To get things out of the blueprint, herein I suggest a doc. (document) that is handy, affordable and that fits all that spiel (I hope that you do not consider so!). It is a ‘certificate of excellence’ and the below affixed link leads directly to. So enjoy it and get us through your feedback.
