.\u00a0Language Teaching,\u00a054<\/em>(2), 221-235.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe first time that I entered a language classroom as a teacher was at an eikaiwa ky\u014dshitsu<\/em> (English conversation school) in Tokyo. It was the 1980s, and like many other native-speaking university graduates, it was easy to get job teaching English in Japan. I taught small groups of students and was paid by the hour. It didn\u2019t take me long to realize that engaged students equaled more hours, and that the best way to keep students engaged was to work with topics that were personally meaningful. So, every spare hour was spent finding materials about things my students were interested in talking about \u2013 which could range from golf and high-end shopping, to human psychology and business acumen. Although my career in Japan was not a long one \u2013 I was there for a year \u2013 insights from the eikaiwa <\/em>remained with me, and have shaped my thinking about language teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLike the pioneering language educator Earl Stevick \u2013 who famously stated that success in learning a language \u201cdepends less on materials, techniques and linguistic analyses, and more on what goes on inside<\/em> and between<\/em> the people in the classroom\u201d \u2013 I am a firm believer of the need to understand learner psychology. Echoing motivation researcher Zolt\u00e1n D\u00f6rnyei, who once confessed that as a language teacher, test-constructor, and textbook writer, he had had far more use for \u201crelevant psychological knowledge\u201d than linguistic theory, it seems to me that positive relationships and meaningful interpersonal interactions are the bedrock upon which successful language teaching can be built.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn a systematic overview of the motivational dimension of language education published in the journal Language Teaching<\/em>, Martin Lamb argues that it is \u201cresponsiveness\u201d \u2013 a capacity founded on empathy, and developed over years of practice \u2013 that is the defining characteristic of teachers who are successful in creating engaging classroom environments. What, though, does responsiveness entail? How does it develop? And what are the characteristics of teaching that is relationally oriented? These were questions that were central in a project I carried out with Pia Sundqvist and Cecilia Thorsen (Motivational Teaching in Swedish Secondary English, MoTiSSE). In this project we first identified 16 teachers who were successful in generating engagement. We then spent several weeks with each teacher, observing the things that took place in their classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPulling together findings from our research in an article entitled \u2018Motivational connections in language classrooms: A research agenda\u2019, and which is published in the journal Language Teaching<\/em>, I have argued that \u201cresponsiveness\u201d translates into three dimensions of practice in which connections are central. Drawing on a model developed by Martin and Marsh (2009), I suggest that in successful motivational practice, students are able to connect with the content of teaching, with the working practices employed in the classroom, and with the teacher as a person.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFor the first of these connections \u2013 \u2018connecting with content\u2019 \u2013 we found that engagement was generated when learning activities recognized and drew on students\u2019 cultural experiences outside of school. For example, in a unit in a seventh grade class, students investigated prejudice and stereotyping in advertising. By exploring these abstract concepts in the context of everyday popular culture, they developed skills of intercultural interpretation in a manner that was meaningful and relevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the second connection \u2013 \u2018connecting with working practices\u2019 \u2013 we could see how students responded positively to methods of working that supported creativity and autonomy, and which enabled students to work in ways that legitimized the types of interaction often found in digital environments. Engagement triggered in this way was most evident when students created digital artefacts \u2013 films, podcasts, and blogs \u2013 and in projects that encouraged creative use of multimodal media. In one project, students blogged about travelling in an English-speaking country. In another project, students created videos about different tourist destinations. In one class, students made a video introduction of the school for beginning students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the third connection \u2013 \u2018connecting with the teacher as a person\u2019 \u2013 we had become quickly aware of how the teachers in the project were highly empathic as individuals. We could also see how they were skilled in perspective taking, how they followed up on students\u2019 initiatives, and how they adapted their teaching to students\u2019 interests, ideas, and concerns. They were also very good at creating positive teacher\u2013student relationships through close and warm personal interactions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A particularly interesting insight was that students are very much aware of their teacher\u2019s concern for them as individuals, and how their teacher\u2019s engagement in creating meaningful activities and enjoyable working practices shaped their own responses to learning. Of course, it is hard to know how an engaged teacher influences the motivation of individual students. However, as is clearly documented in John Hattie\u2019s synthesis of international research findings, positive relationships with teachers matter a lot, and are among the most influential factors impacting on academic outcomes. In our ethnographic project, of course, \u2018evidence\u2019 took another form; we observed students\u2019 responses following close personal interactions with their teachers, and we listened to what students had to say about their feelings. For example, when asked to describe motivation during an essay writing lesson, one ninth grade student described how he often thought about his warm, caring, and trusting teacher:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
N\u00e4r man skriver, s\u00e5 t\u00e4nker man p\u00e5, allts\u00e5 instruktionerna innan, f\u00f6ljer dem och n\u00e4r man g\u00f6r det\u2026 det \u00e4r ju hon som har skrivit vad man ska g\u00f6ra, s\u00e5 g\u00f6r man det, s\u00e5 \u00e4r det ju som att lyssna p\u00e5 henne n\u00e4r man skriver till henne. Jag tror att det \u00e4r lite b\u00e5de och, d\u00e4r faktiskt. Och att man t\u00e4nker p\u00e5 [L\u00e4raren], ocks\u00e5 d\u00e4r hur man skriver. F\u00f6r n\u00e4r man skrev, man skriver bara mer och mer. Det \u00e4r roligt och man vill uppn\u00e5 n\u00e5got. Som [L\u00e4raren] vill att vi ocks\u00e5 ska g\u00f6ra. S\u00e5 [uppgiften], det \u00e4r en bra sak. Man vill ju n\u00e4stan inte sluta skriva.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nGenerating engagement should be high on the list of priorities for all teachers. Without engagement, learning is tiresome, and the classroom is an uninspiring place. For language teachers, engagement has particular importance. If a language is to be learnt, it needs to be used. Thus, as language teachers, it is important that we not only think about motivation in general terms, but, as Ema Ushioda has put, that we develop an awareness of \u201chow processes of motivation evolve through day-to-day interactions and events in the classroom\u201d. With this challenge in mind, the three connections presented here can provide a useable framework for teachers who are interested in exploring their own<\/em> motivational practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAlastair Henry, December 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
G\u00e4stbloggare Alastair Henry, Professor i \u00e4mnesdidaktik, H\u00f6gskolan V\u00e4st Source: Henry, A. (2021). Motivational connections in language classrooms: A research agenda.\u00a0Language Teaching,\u00a054(2), 221-235. The first time that I entered a language classroom as a teacher was at an eikaiwa ky\u014dshitsu (English conversation school) in Tokyo. It was the 1980s, and like many other native-speaking university graduates, … <\/p>\n
Forts\u00e4tt l\u00e4sa \u201dMotivational connections in language classrooms\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forskning","category-gastbloggare-skriver","category-lastips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356,"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sola.kau.se\/cslblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}