There are no bad students (except there are)

There are no bad students (except there are)

April 14, 2013

The idea that there are no bad students, only bad teachers, is one of those truisms that has become a bit of a cliché.

However, even if it is true that good teachers can make good students, they wouldn’t have to do this if there weren’t bad students in the first place. I think the exploration of reasons why students are struggling to progress is something that many teachers neglect.

I once had a student who was on crack. It was a nightmare. Before he’d spun out into addiction, Jorge had been one of the most talented students I’d ever had in my Drama class, with the inspired, all-out brilliance and timing of a comedic pro. But crack turned him nasty and out of control. He’d bounce into my class hopped up, sweaty, eyes glinting with rage; we, his teachers, sent each other frantic emails about him. We did an intervention. We called in his weeping, desperate mother, who begged him to get help. Nothing worked. Jorge, a kid who’d once loved my class so much that on facebook during winter break he’d counted down the days till Drama class, now stared me down every day with simmering, unsettling animosity. He took to harassing other students and one day, after calling me a bitch, he lobbed the n-bomb at one of the girls

I lost it. I actually only dimly recall what happened next. I’m sure I didn’t actually drag him by the collar into the hall, but that’s what I remember. All I know for sure is that a friend of mine who taught several doors down said that she could hear me yelling at him even with her door shut. When finished, I was shaking. He wouldn’t make eye contact and walked out of school, disappearing for the rest of the day.

All I could think was: I am a terrible teacher. I was ashamed of my loss of control. Even the next day, when I had had a chance to calm down and try to have a more rational conversation with Jorge, I couldn’t reach him. To be fair, none of us could. He bombed his classes and did not graduate on time.

Am I really a bad teacher? How would I know?

So in case you’re like me, wracked with doubt about whether you’re a bad teacher, I’ve identified five key tendencies that I’ve observed in the classrooms of truly bad teachers. Take this short quiz and at the end I will tell you if you’re a bad teacher.

1.Do you dislike children? I don’t mean that you love every single one of your students every day. I mean, do children in the age group you’re teaching generally fail to delight you in any way? The number one quality I’ve observed in bad teachers is that they do not seem to like children very much. In high schools, this means they do not seem to find teenagers charming, funny or interesting—ever.

2. Do you find your subject matter dull? If asked “why are you teaching this?” will you respond “because it will be on the test”? Do your eyes glaze over at the thought of your subject area? Every teacher has dud lessons from time to time (believe me) but what I sense in the classrooms of bad teachers is that they have no interest in their entire subject.

3.Do you know what you’re talking about? I recently sat in on the class of a teacher who was teaching students incorrect grammar. Actually teaching it—she’d put an incorrect rule on a slide and then was forcing her students to rewrite sentences in order to conform to this incorrect rule. It was especially upsetting because several students were shyly raising their hands and going “Miss…are you sure? That sounds wrong.”

4.Do you ignore a large subset of your students most of the time? The truly bad teachers I’ve observed tend to engage only with a small number of very compliant, eager students, ignoring the rest except to reprimand troublemakers.

5.Are you totally disengaged? I don’t mean those bad days when you want to flush your head—or someone’s head—in the toilet, or even those days that you’re so burned out you can hardly keep going. I mean have you checked out emotionally as an operating philosophy, day in and day out? A central quality in truly bad teachers is that they seem to have stopped caring; this lack of engagement is reflected not only in their interactions with students (or lack thereof) but in their seemingly random choice of lesson topics.

So are you a bad teacher? No. How do I know? Because if you’ve read this far, you care. You may not be great (yet). The inspirational movie of your life may be set several years hence. It may be that you have a tremendous amount still to learn. But you’re not a bad teacher.

Let me tell you how Jorge’s story ended. He did not graduate but made up his classes in summer school. To everyone’s astonishment, he went to a four-year college. We all lost touch with him for a long time, then last year, when I was chaperoning prom, I saw a young man waving to me: clean-cut, in a pressed tux, sipping a fruit juice. It was Jorge, escorting his younger cousin, beaming. He told me that he’d been sober for two years now. All those years ago, the teachers had been right, he said, and as part of his 12-step program, he apologized for everything he’d put us through. Over and over I tell the same story, right? But the truth is, you never know the effect you’re having on someone. If you care, you’re not a bad teacher–which doesn’t mean there’s nothing more to learn. As the Dalai Lama is said to have observed, “You’re perfect. And you could use a little improvement.”

By the way, Jorge will graduate from college this spring.

Language learning is a very complicated process that is influenced by many factors. Besides the intelligent factor, the

non-intelligent factors----motivation, attitude, interests, age, methods, will and character----are the direct and the most

important factors to English learning. People are always motivated; in fact, they are never unmotivated. They may not be motivated to do what we would

prefer they do, but it can never be truly said they are unmotivated

Students who have strong

learning motivation take a correct and positive attitude towards study and make great efforts to master English with

clear goal and desire and consequently gain better grade than those who haven’t acquired motivation and those students

usually regard English learning as a heavy and boring burden. So it is necessary to understand

motivation more deeply, HOW TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS

Combining Technology
with the
6 “C’s” of Motivation The 6 c’s of motivation

Definition of intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation is a response to needs that exist within the learner, such as curiosity, the need to know, and feelings

of competence or growth n

other word, students are willing to learn the knowledge that is new and interesting in the purpose of fulfilling of their

curiosity

Their purpose of

learning is also the enjoyment of the learning process not for praise or rewards. Students with intrinsic motivation

orientation study English on their own initiative

Definition of extrinsic motivation

In contrast, extrinsic motivation is as an outward force in the form of expectation, praise and rewards powers students in

English learning. When students work hard to win their parents’

favor, gain teachers’ praise, or earn rewards such as pocket money, we can rightly conclude that their motivation is

primarily extrinsic, their reason for work and study lie primarily outside themselves and the aim of learning is not for

the knowledge itself

Relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are important,

Personal factors in motivation

et’s focus on these four personal

factors: arousal, needs, beliefs, and goals.

Motivation and arousal

Arousal is a physical and psychological reaction to the environment, including anxiety and curiosity motivation.

When a teacher hands out a test, the students are sitting nervously and curious about the content of the test, with

elevated blood pressure, fast breath and sweaty hands.

Motivation and need

A need is the lacking of something necessary or desirable. The need for achievement drives

students to fulfill their goals. Students with a high need for achievement tend to be motivated by challenging

assignments, high grading standards, explicit feedback, and the opportunity to try again.

Motivation and beliefs

A third personal factor that affects people’s motivation is their beliefs. An optimistic belief about one’s ability in English

learning can help students increase their motivation.

Motivation and goals

Students’ goals influence their motivation and effort in English learning. With learning goal, students study purposefully

. They are

not worried about failure or comparison to others. It is effective to help students setting realistic and appropriate

goals in learning.

Students lack interest or motivation the factors that impact the EFL learners to have poor performance in English language learning as followings

English is regarded as a difficult subject to learn.

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Learners’ learning depends on the English teachers as authorities.

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There is a lack of support to use English in the home environment and the community.

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Learners have insufficient or lacking of exposure to the language as there is a limited opportunity to use English outside the classrooms

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Students have a limitation of vocabulary proficiency as well as English reading materials are not always available.

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Learners have an unwillingness and lack of motivation to learn English as they do not see the immediate need to use the language.



Lack of motivation for learning or the negative attitude towards the target language

Six Reasons Why Students Are Unmotivated

Motivation Challenge 1: The student is unmotivated because he or she cannot do the assigned work. Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student lacks essential skills required to do the task. Areas of deficit might include basic academic skills, cognitive strategies, and academicenabler skills. Here are definitions of these skill areas: How to Fix This Motivation Problem:  allows students the chance to engage in practice activities distributed throughout the lesson

(e.g., through teacher demonstration; then group practice with teacher supervision and

feedback; then independent, individual student practice).

Motivation Challenge 2: The student is unmotivated because the ‘response effort’ needed to complete the assigned work seems too great. Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: Although the student has the required skills to complete the assigned work, he or she perceives the ‘effort’ needed to do so to be so great that the student loses motivation. How to Fix This Motivation Problem: q Teachers can increase student motivation through any method that reduces the apparent ‘response effort’ of an academic task (Friman & Poling, 1995). - so long as that method does not hold the student to a lesser academic standard than classmates

Motivation Challenge 3: The student is unmotivated because classroom instruction does not engage. Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student is distracted or off-task because classroom instruction and learning activities are not sufficiently reinforcing to hold his or her attention.

How to Fix This Motivation Problem: The teacher can increase the inattentive student’s focus on instruction and engagement in learning activities by using one or both of the strategies below: q Reduce the Reinforcing Power of Non-Instructional Activities. The teacher identifies any noninstructional activities in the classroom that are competing with instruction for the student’s attention and takes steps to reduce or eliminate them.

Motivation Challenge 4: The student is unmotivated because he or she fails to see an adequate pay-off to doing the assigned work. Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student requires praise, access to rewards, or other reinforcers in the short term as a temporary ‘pay-off’ to encourage her or him to apply greater effort. How to Fix This Motivation Problem: q Praise the Student. The teacher praises the student in clear and specific terms when the student engages in the desired behavior (Kern & Clemens, 2007). The teacher uses praise statements at a rate sufficient to motivate and guide the student toward the behavioral goal. q Use Rewards. The teacher establishes a reward system to motivate an individual student by implementing these steps

Motivation Challenge 5: The student is unmotivated because of low self-efficacy—lack of confidence that he or she can do the assigned work. Profile of a Student with This Motivation Problem: The student has a low sense of self-efficacy in a subject area, activity, or academic task and that lack of confidence reduces the student’s motivation to apply his or her best effort. How to Fix This Motivation Problem: q Challenge Faulty Student Attributions about Ability. As a student articulates attitudes toward learning and describes techniques that he or she uses as an independent learner, the teacher can use this information to identify whether a low sense of academic self-efficacy may be holding the student back.

Therefore, teachers should do several efforts to help learners move along the continuum from

extrinsic motivation towards intrinsic motivation. I will put forward three main

suggestions They are: teacher‟s positive

behavior, pleasant learning atmosphere, and effective techniques.

TEACHER’S POSITIVE BEHAVIOR

Teachers should be well-motivated themselves before they

expect students to have motivation to learn. Take the first commandment of motivation which says ‘Set a personal example with your own behaviour’.

What does this mean? It might actually be easier to start with what it isn’t: this one isn’t, I think, about how we get on with students or how we explain the material we teach, as much as who and what we are in the classroom.

I don’t really like slogans disguising themselves as truths but one I have found really useful recently goes ‘Be the behaviour you want’. An interesting thought: what do you want your students to be like in your classroom? During my experience as a

learner, the lessons I have enjoyed most are those taught by enthusiastic teachers: The teachers

who not only master the materials and techniques, but also share a lot of interesting experiences.

The next step beside being enthusiastic is to give attention and care. Teachers should show that

they care about students‟ learning, their progress as well as their problems

For instance, a student might be very shy and seldom speak in class,

but when one day he or she attempts to be a little bit involved, the teacher should give positive

comment. This may mean a lot to them and increase their self-confidence, so next time they will

not feel shy again

PLEASANT LEARNING ATMOSPHERE

Students usually are more creative than we

thought and able to produce amazing works. How to make students feel a positive emotional atmosphere in the

classroom is first, by maintaining good relationship with the students, and second, by creating

good and solid relationship among the students themselves There are probably as many ways of having a good relationship with your students as there are good teachers in the world, but here are some things which you’d usually expect to see.

First up, listening. The Scots have a saying: Listen twice before you speak once. we should listen first for what our students are actually saying before listening for mistakes. And when we’re monitoring it’s a good way of entering into a dialogue

Promote learner autonomy

why is it a good thing that learners take care of their own learning? More than that, autonomous students will probably learn with more enjoyment, do better in exams, set their own targets, be more fun to teach, and so on…As to the classroom, a useful proverb comes to mind: you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. So we can set up a classroom culture where students are more likely to be independent,

Motivating Middle School Students

EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUES

In my view, first,

techniques must vary because variety of subjects and exercises will keep the students engaged

and second, techniques should be related to learning goals, therefore

teacher should not just use games, or certain activities without clear purposes

A Brainstorming Activity for ESL/EFL Students

Hall Houston

City University of Hong Kong, English Language Centre (Hong Kong, China)

hallhouston (at) yahoo.com

www.hallhouston.com

Introduction

While brainstorming is a commonplace activity for generating new ideas, many students have not had guided practice. This lesson will enable them to brainstorm more effectively.

Lesson

1. Ask the class, "How do artists and businesspeople come up with new ideas?" Give them a couple of minutes to think, then call on a few students to give you their answers.

2. Tell the class you are going to do an activity called brainstorming. Ask students to raise their hands if they have ever participated in a brainstorming session before, then call on anyone with their hand up to describe their experience.

3. First, put the students into two groups, Team A and Team B. Assign one student in each group to be a leader. Give the team leaders the following slips:

Team A - Leader:

Your job is to encourage the other students to contribute ideas on how to improve this English class. However, you do not want to waste any time. If a student states an idea which seems useless, tell the student "That’s no good" or "Bad idea", then move on to another student.

Team B - Leader:

Your job is to encourage the other students to contribute ideas on how to improve this English class. Ask one student in the group to write down all ideas. Offer praise for everyone's contributions and don't criticize any of the ideas. Make sure all ideas are written down.

4. Give students ten minutes to do the brainstorming activity.

5. Now ask for feedback. Which group produced more ideas? Which group enjoyed the activity more?

6. Ask both group leaders to read out their slips of paper. Ask the class to guess which one was brainstorming the right way.

7. Write these rules of successful brainstorming on the board:

write down all ideas

the more ideas, the better

wild, unusual ideas are welcome

feel free to take someone else's idea and expand on it

save criticism until the end of the session

8. Now have the students do the same activity again with the rules on the board, but with a different topic. Some suggested topics are "How to save money" or "How to make friends".

9. When they are finished, have both groups choose their three best ideas and write them up on the board. Ask a few students how they feel about brainstorming.

10. Now, tell the class you want to arrange a brainstorming activity for a future lesson. (Note: While it might be tempting to turn this discussion into another brainstorming activity, I would recommend changing the format to add variety to the lesson.)

Give each student an index card and tell them you want them to write the answers to the following questions:

Topic: Which topic should we work on?

Location: Where should we have our brainstorming activity?

Time: When should it take place?

Duration: How long should we spend brainstorming?

Number of groups: How many brainstorming groups will we have?

Participants: Who will be in each group?

Leader: Who will be the leader of each group?

Secretary: Who will take notes in each group?

Other considerations: What else would make our brainstorming activity more productive (music, pictures, snacks, etc.)?

End product: How should we present our best ideas (poster, presentation, role play, short essay)?

Ask one student to lead the class in a discussion in order to decide on answers to all the questions.

11. Take notes and mark your calendar for the brainstorming session.

12. After the students' scheduled brainstorming session, ask for some feedback. What did they like about the brainstorming session? What could have been improved? Would they like to do more brainstorming in a future lesson?

Developing Awareness:

An Intercultural Communication Lesson Plan

Asako Kajiura

Lesson Objectives:

Increase student's ability to interact with and understand aspects of other cultures such as body language, discourse patterns, male and female roles. The students use English during the whole process.

Student Levels:

This activity is appropriate for intermediate and advanced level students. Teachers can vary the difficulty of the language and tasks involved to fit their classes.

Prior to this lesson:

It is necessary to have pretaught the concept of body language, especially regarding greetings, leave takings, personal space. Of course, students must know vocabulary such as bowing, shaking hands, hugging, kissing touching palms together, etc...

For teaching these, it is useful to use sections from videos which show people from many cultures greeting, eating, starting conversations etc.. Students watch with the task of observing and recording how Italian, Saudi Arabian and Thai males and females interact with each other.

The Lesson:

Divide your class in half. Tell the students that each group is a new culture and each culture must create its own body language for greetings, leave takings, etc.. They must also decide what questions are asked and what topics are discussed when meeting strangers. They must also decide if and in what ways men and women in their cultures differ communicatively. Less imaginative students may require some funny or strange examples to inspire their creativity.

Place the students in two different rooms, so the groups cannot look at or overhear each other. In each room, they create their body language and other rules of social interaction. Then students within each group practice with each other, following their rules.

In the next stage, explorers from each culture travel to the other culture with instructions to interact and observe the foreign group's body language, conversation rules, sex roles, etc.. During this stage each group has foreign guests. Give them three to five minutes to interact. Then the foreigners return to their home cultures and report their observations to their partners. After this, a new group of explorers leaves for the foreign culture and the process is repeated until all students have spent time exploring and observing the foreign culture. Each group discusses how the two cultures differ and what they share in common.

In the last step, all members of the two cultures come together in one class. Representatives from each culture express their assumptions about the other culture. Each group tells the other group if the assumptions are correct. If the assumptions are incorrect, the groups teach their rules of social interaction.

Teaching Speaking: Activities to Promote Speaking in a Second Language

Speaking is "the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts"

Discussions The students may aim to arrive at a conclusion, share ideas about an event, or find solutions in their discussion groups Role Play Students pretend they are in various social contexts and have a variety of social roles. Simulations In simulations, students can bring items to the class to create a realistic environment.

Information Gap

In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs.

Information gap activities serve many purposes such as solving a problem or collecting information.

Brainstorming

On a given topic, students can produce ideas in a limited time.

Storytelling

Students can briefly summarize a tale or story they heard from somebody beforehand,

Interviews

Students can conduct interviews on selected topics with various people

Story Completion

This is a very enjoyable, whole-class, free-speaking activity for which students sit in a circle. For this activity, a teacher starts to tell a story, but after a few sentences he or she stops narrating. Then, each student starts to narrate from the point where the previous one stopped.

Reporting

Before coming to class, students are asked to read a newspaper or magazine and, in class, they report to their friends what they find as the most interesting news.

Playing Cards

In this game, students should form groups of four. Each suit will represent a topic. For instance:

· Diamonds: Earning money

· Hearts: Love and relationships

· Spades: An unforgettable memory

· Clubs: Best teacher

Each student in a group will choose a card. Then, each student will write 4-5 questions about that topic to ask the other people in the group. For example:

If the topic "Diamonds: Earning Money" is selected, here are some possible questions:

· Is money important in your life? Why?

· What is the easiest way of earning money?

· What do you think about lottery? Etc.

However, the teacher should state at the very beginning of the activity that students are not allowed to prepare yes-no questions, because by saying yes or no students get little practice in spoken language production. Rather, students ask open-ended questions to each other so that they reply in complete sentences.

Picture Narrating

This activity is based on several sequential pictures. Students are asked to tell the story taking place in the sequential pictures by paying attention to the criteria provided by the teacher as a rubric.

Picture Describing

Another way to make use of pictures in a speaking activity is to give students just one picture and having them describe what it is in the picture.

Find the Difference

For this activity students can work in pairs Students in pairs discuss the similarities and/or differences in the pictures.

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