CPlan Motivational and Visioning

Plan - Motivational and Visioning Intervention 

I mentioned in a blog before that this third intervention in my inquiry aims at enabling learners in my inquiry group to feel safe and comfortable in their learning environment so they can focus on their learning. They need to feel confident, motivated, and have a vision for their own learning. These should hopefully dinimish their feelings of anxiety, stress, shame, inadequacy, and reluctance simply because they do not have enough knowledge and skills in English language.

Krashen's affective filter hypothesis (1985) in second language acquisition alludes to the fact that affecive filters in English language learners must be low enough to allow the acquisition input in. According to this hypothesis, affect includes motivation, attitude, anxiety, and self-confidence. Basically his viewpoints are:

• A raised affective filter can block input from reaching Language acquisition device (LAD), which is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language.
• A lowered affetcive filter allows the input to strike deeper and be acquired. 
• The affective filter is responsible for individual variation in second language acquisition.

Being influenced by this theory of affective filter and being able to closely relate to in my experiences as a second language learner myself, I set out in this engagement to incooperate into my teaching ways to lower these affects in my inquiry learners.

While working with Dr Jannie van Hees and Michele Ensor on content for a workshop with my EL tutor group, I began to try and motivate my students in the classroom by doing the following: 

• I create a 'home' atmosphere in the classrom by referring to our classroom as a 'homeroom'. Students in my ESOL tutor group (my inquiry group included) are encouraged to regard their classroom as like a home for them, of course with very high expectations in place. They are allowed to come in and have their food and do work in the room during intervals and lunch. They could just simply sit down, have their food, talk, or do work, but very respectfully regarding the spaces of others and teachers in the rooms. I have never done that before as a teacher yet found no major issues at all doing it. I have only found my students feeling more at home in their classroom, treating it as their home with respect, and feeling that our 'homeroom' is a safe place for them. They begin to know each other better and closer too. There is not much teasing or bulling, but they have fun. This helps lessen their anxiety. 

• 'Morning talks' is another activity I start doing with my tutor group (again with my inquiry group included). Every morning we have 20 minutes for tutor to check attendance and uniforms, but I use the time to do motivational talks and give advices to my children. I have covered topics such as - be motivated, importance of English language in their study, importance of reading to improve their English, my personal experience on reading, respecting others, being yourself, making your future in the present, matariki, languages week, wellbeing, cyper-safety, and many others. We celebrate language weeks together. I find the children engaging and responsive too. Some children come and ask me further questions on topics talked about, and I have found them more settled. There is better engagement during class activities and we hardly have any behavioural problems with our children.

• I tried to develop relationships with my children and to have fun time with them in the classroom as well. I believe in having high expectations for my learners and with high consistency, but at the same time I can be also 'motherly'. It's a nice feeling hearing my students asking me, 'Ms, are you hungry?' or simly putting a plate of food on my table without me asking them. It's great to see my older boys responding to do some work that I ask, eg cleaning our department office, not simply out of obligation but they just want to help. I like having a sense of community while working with my children.

• Working on the vision of having a motivational workshop with our students is well underway. However, it is most likely that we will not be able to do it this term. Most likely next term is more realistic.