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Message board > A question to ask everyone
A question to ask everyone
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savvinka
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A question to ask everyone
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Hi, everone!
I �ve got a question to ask . I can assume we have the similar problems to solve at our work and a success of our students is the best reward for us. It doesn �t depend on a country we live and work. I believe we are all like-minded persons. I �m curious to learn how do you motivate the students who don �t want to learn English, I mean, they all know that today English is important for those who want to acheive the very top in their profession, but they are lazy... and want to sleep longer... and have more interesting and exciting things to do... (I teach young actors). I know the best motivation is to convince them with my work, my lesson, my attitude to them, and of course, I try to find the better ideas etc. And I want to know what "fairy tales" are you telling them in defence of the importance of our subject?
Love you all, Olga
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21 May 2010
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abigailhamad
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It �s not a simple task to motivate students. Especially those who don �t like English and don �t seem to realized about the importance of knowing English nowadays.
You will have to work harder and ask about each of their interests and try to do activities using as a hook those interests whenever you can.
What have always worked for me are songs. They love working with song, because they can learn what the songs mean. You may let them choose the songs, trying to pick up song with the grammatical structures you �re learning, and vocabulary, etc.
You may also work with famous TV series, movies, actors and actresses, novels and whatever they are interested in.
Here you will find plenty of material to work with famous movies and novels.
You may also prepare some grammar and vocabulary games, board games, a little competition may engage them and make them study harder. My students always like playing games, and they are rather lazy too.
I hope it �s useful.
Good Luck!!
Regards,
Abigail.
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21 May 2010
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savvinka
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Thank you, Abigail,I �ve read yr reply with interest. I try to use all the possible hooks I can invent up to the moment too. My actors, of course, sing with pleasure and very often professionally and I enjoy it very much and sing with them. And I give them plenty of articles about the celebrities, it works. And, of course, I must work harder, but at the end of the year I run out of any energy... Hugs, Olga
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21 May 2010
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atsanti85
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Hello,
Just recently, I read about a reward system in a classroom. A teacher gives students fake money during the month and at the end, he brings a whole bunch of stuffed toys and cool school supplies and the students then use the fake money to buy what they want. Of course, this can have variations such as putting the students into groups and for a reward, give them an extra day to hand in an assignment later on in the school year.
Finding a practical opportunity for the students to use their English skills would be good too. How about organizing an event where the kids will have to use English to interact with people such as writing an English play, or making a bilingual poster to advertise an event in the community to earn money for a trip the students can take at a later time. Students will love their work more if they see that it can be recognized and has some real purpose in the community.
Group activities work really well too because I �ve found that students always want to talk about themselves. If you do activities where they are forced to speak in English such as speed-dating kind of setup, or splitting up a story into two or more parts and giving each of the students a separate section and afterwards forcing them to communicate with each other in order to understand the whole story... That works too!
Haha I am full of ideas today because I just finished my lunch. All of the carbohydrates are coming out as suggestions!
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21 May 2010
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savvinka
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Thanks for yr ideas,atsanti, I can see you �ve had delicious lunch! |
21 May 2010
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miss K.
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I think it �s a good idea not to tell them "fairy tales". The �d like something real, not just for the check mark for sure. Maybe the �d like acting out something as they are young actors. There is one ws here that helps students to acctually write a play or some short drama (sorry, don �t remember which one it is). I think there is such website as teachingassitant.com (a division of British council) where you can browse for info you need. Your motivation has to bee age appropriate too. wish you succes in motivating your students! |
21 May 2010
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