MOTIVATION, SELF CONFIDENCE, and RISK TAKING as THREE FACTORS in SUCCEEDING LEARNING ENGLISH as FOREIGN LANGUAGE*
Abdullah Farih
Islamic University of Lamongan
E-mail address:
farichabdullah@gmail.com
Abstract: Many teachers are not highly succeeded yet in
teaching English as Foreign Language. They haven’t got the most appropriate way to teach
yet. They follow many kinds of seminars to prepare teaching plans and to change
their own method of teaching. But one most important thing they forget in
giving motivation to the students. This is the real problem why the teachers
fail to make the students get four language skills. In this article, the writer
proposes five solutions
dealing with giving motivation and guiding the students to have self-confidence
and
risk taking. They are: 1)
doing meaningful learning activity 2) using authentic material 3) having good
interaction in the classroom 4) using co-operative rather than competitive
goals
and 5) giving feedback to the students. Such activities are possible to be conducted because teacher is a
controller, director, manager and also facilitator.
Key words: Motivation, self-confidence, Risk Taking
INTRODUCTION
The failure of teaching English in Indonesia has
become the main topic in English teaching and learning forum. This condition
has made the important educated people blame one another. This is just caused
by their inappropriate perception about understanding foreign language learning
and foreign language acquisition process.
The education curriculum has been changed many times
for some reasons. It has made the English teachers make lesson plans and
teaching duties. It forces the teachers to do what the curriculum has the
teachers do.
The English teachers have joined some English teaching
workshops and seminars. They are trained to make many kinds of teaching
preparation making all of the teachers bored. Instead of thinking about how to
teach and how to make the students enjoy learning they are busy sitting,
writing, preparing their lesson planning because of their fright of their
headmaster or the education controller. They are demanded to know well how to
plan a lesson and to make other teaching preparation while the motivation with
which the students will get a big success is almost neglected. They almost never
get special knowledge about arousing the students’ motivation, intention to
learn.
Something becoming the viruses in all the teachers’ mind
is Teaching
English as Foreign language.
Some teachers try to do “the atmosphere of learning English activity happily”
despite their fright of the students’ failure in their last examination. The
teachers hope the students to be able to speak a little bit English and become
interested in learning English. On the other hand, the students “not yet” get complicated
rules offered by the curriculum.
Many kinds of books have been printed and sold to the
students without being carefully revised. The most important thing is that the
books give high profit to the teachers, especially the low teaching motivated
teachers. The books are said to be communicative approach but the content is
really the traditional one. This condition also supports the failure of our
English education.
For these reasons this article is aimed to give
description of learning English as a foreign language. This is hoped to give good
contribution to all English teachers especially in motivating the students to learn
English. That’s why the writer wants to propose questions, “How can teachers motivate,
guide students to have self-confidence
and risk taking to study English?” and “How can motivation, self-confidence, and risk taking increase the students’ ability to
speak English?”
Language learning heart strategy has been ignored for
many years. It is really neglected heart of language learning. It is the most
possible pathway in the realm of language learning motivation.
MOTIVATION
What is motivation? Some definitions drawn from a
number of different sources: (l) Motivation is enthusiasm for doing something
(Cambridge dictionary, 2008). (2) Motivation is the cause to act in particular
way. (3) Motivation as “the anticipation of reinforcement”. (4) Motivation is
the extent to which you make choices about (a) the goals to pursue and (b) the
effort you will devote to that pursuit (Brown, 2004:72). (5) Effort and desire
to learn a language and attitude toward learning the language are viewed as
motivation.
This article stresses on various ways of improving the
student’s motivation to learn. Whatever the type of motivation is intended to
enhance the student’s spirit to win the four kinds of language skills.
Carter (2006) stated that motivation is composed of
four elements: (l) a goal (2) a desire to get the goal (3) positive attitude toward
learning the language (4) and effortful behavior to the effect. There are three
sets of motivational components; first,
course specific motivational components are the syllabus, the learning
materials, the teaching method, and the learning tasks. Second, Teacher specific motivational components are the teacher’s personality,
teaching style, feedback, and relationship with the students; and third, group specific motivational
components are the dynamics of the learning group. Groups are formed for a
purpose, to have fun to learn.
Many researchers show us that motivation directly
influences the student’s behavior in learning foreign language and the students
can determine themselves how to choose good strategies to learn and acquire
English skills. That’s why giving motivation, with various ways, to the students
is a ‘must’ to achieve the target language. No matter what strategies are chosen
to arouse the student’s motivation. The most important thing is that the students
can win both kinds of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Without motivation
it is extremely difficult for them to succeed in learning foreign language or the
writer is brave to say “it is impossible”.
TYPES OF MOTIVATION
Dornyei (2009) emphasizes many aspects of learning
motivation, but the writer is just interested in discussing about teaching
strategies dealing with motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Highly motivated
students will find themselves how to choose suitable learning strategies and
determine their own attitude to the target language. And the writer considers that
all normal human beings will get advantages of taking part in language learning
interaction.
Intrinsic Motivation
Motivation is the first requirement to be successful
in foreign language learning. The highly motivated students will learn faster
than those who are not well motivated. Brown (2004) states that motivation is
probably the most frequently used term for explaining the success of failure
virtually any complex task, including L2/FL learning. Never say “that is wrong
or that is not right” but motivate the students by saying “good” and hide the students’
mistakes by stating “almost right, but…”.
Keep the language politeness while teaching. Don’t use
difficult patterns because they will destroy the students’ spirit or even they
will hate the language target. Use conversational grammar because it is based
on how people actually talk. It includes small chunks, mostly clauses and single
words rather than complete sentences.
This is true for both interactional and transactional
turns and use authentic materials and media. Although they must be prepared and
need a lot of time to make them there are very strong reasons to use them.
Authentic materials and media can reinforce for students the direct relation between
the language classroom and the outside world.
One of the teachers’ tasks at school is to motivate
students by engaging their interest in classroom activities or outside classroom
activities. One way in which intrinsic interest in L2/Fl learning might be achieved
is by providing opportunities for communication. Ellis (1994) emphasizes the
importance of a desire to communicate, arguing that without this an integrative
motivation may not be effective. It is the need to get meanings across and the
pleasure experienced when this is achieved that provides the motivation to
learn an L2/FL.
One possibility, supported by a strong pedagogic
literature is that interest is engendered if learners become self-directed, able
to determine their own learning objectives, choose their own ways of achieving
these and evaluate their own progress.
Traditionally the teacher in elementary and secondary
school give rewards to the students to enhance the students’ motivation. The
students have a high desire to learn because of the prize in this case. But
they don’t have an internalized thirst for knowledge and experience.
Consequently, such dependency focuses students too exclusively on the material
or monetary rewards of an education for creativity and for satisfying some of
the more basic drives for knowledge and experience.
Extrinsic Motivation
Behaviors carried out in anticipation of a reward from
outside and beyond the self have extrinsic motivation. The extrinsic rewards
can be in the form of money, prizes, grades and even certain types of positive
feedback. The avoidance of punishment is also one kind of extrinsic motivation
because this can build the students sense of competence and determination
(Brown, 2004:76).
SELF CONFIDENCE
Self-confidence is we belief with our ability to do
something. According to Brown (2004: 62) self-confidence is a person’s belief
in his or her ability to accomplish the task. While self-confidence can be
linked to language ego, it goes a step further in emphasizing the importance of
the learner’s self-assessment, regardless of the degree of language-ego involvement.
In short self-confidence is learners’ belief that they indeed are fully capable
of accomplishing a task is at least partially a factor in their eventual
success in attaining the task.
Some immediate classroom applications of this
principle emerge. First, give ample
verbal and nonverbal assurances to students. It helps a student to hear a
teacher affirm a belief in the student’s ability. Energy that the learner would
otherwise direct at avoidance or at erecting emotional walls of defense is
thereby released to tackle the problem at hand.
Second, we sequence techniques from easier to more
difficult. As a teacher we are called on to sustain self-confidence where it
already exists and to build it where it doesn’t. our activities in the
classroom would therefore logically start with simpler techniques and simpler
concepts. Students then can establish a sense of accomplishment that catapults
them to the next, more difficult, step.
RISK
TAKING
Risk taking is the
ability of learners to take calculated risk in attempting to use language-both
productively and receptively. Successful
language learners, in their realistic appraisal of themselves as vulnerable
beings yet capable of accomplishing tasks, must be willing to become “gamblers”
in the game of language, to attempt to produce and to interpret language that
is a bit beyond their absolute certainty
(Brown,
2004: 63).
The Language and culture are intricately intertwined.
Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural
customs, values, and ways of thinking, feeling and acting. When
they are ready to take those necessary risks, they are ready to try out their
newly acquired language, to use it for meaningful purposes, to ask questions,
and to assert themselves.
How can clasroom activity
reflect risk taking? First, create and atmosphere in the classroom that
encourages students to try out language, to venture a response, and not to wait
for someone else to volunteer language. Second, provide reasonable chalengges
in the technoques-make them neither too easy nor too hard., Third, Help
students to understand what claculated risk-taking is, lest some feel that they
must blurt out any old response. Fourth, Respond to students’ risky attempts
with positive affiramtion, praising them for trying while at the same time
warmly but firmly attending to their langauge.
HOW TO MOTIVATE THE STUDENTS, GUIDE THEM TO HAVE SELF
CONFIDENCE
AND RISK TAKING
Motivating the students can be done through many kinds
of ways and all of you will agree that it is very complex. The motivation can
come from the teacher, the students themselves or their environment. The following
activities are examples of giving motivation to the students.
Doing Meaningful Learning
Almost all of the students whom the writer teaches
consider that English is the most difficult lesson. They also think that English
has no relation to their life. Some of them don’t want at all to know the
language rules given by the teacher.
Knowing that the students have very low motivation,
the teacher has obligation to find as many kinds of strategies as possible to
arouse the students’ desire to learn. By conducting various ways to teach, the
teacher is able to choose the best way motivating the students to learn and
make the students learn without having to understand and memorize complicated language
rules.
Meaningful learning will lead toward better long-term
retention than rote learning (Brown, 2004: 57)
Using Authentic Materials
and Media
To do this, he begins with an idea in a text and based
on the understanding of students' needs and interests, locate authentic
materials, as well as create additional activities that make use of them. Here
is as example of how the writer did this. While the students were participating
in ‘a card’ activity, they expressed interest learning how to offer drink in a
living room.
This condition is very suitable with what Brown (2004)
advises to avoid the pitfalls of rote learning. They are: (l) too much grammar
explanation, (2) too many abstract principles and theories, (3) too much
drilling and/or memorizing, (4) activities whose purposes are not clear, (5) activities
that do not contribute to accomplishing the goals of the lesson, unit or course
and (6) techniques that are so focus on the mechanics instead of on the language
or meanings.
In short, if the students have become intrinsically
motivated to all classrooms or outside classroom activities, teachers might not
be needed anymore. Develop students self confidence.
The teacher should ask the students to do inside
classroom activities or outside classroom activities by saying “You can do it”
repeatedly and he should start the students’ activities logically with simpler techniques
and simpler concepts.
Asking the students to memorize difficult sentences
and giving them complicated explanation should extremely be avoided. Just tell
the students that ing form and be, for example, are used if the time signal is “now”
without writing the name of the tense and even the pattern of the tense.
Interaction in Classroom
Settings
What is interaction? Interaction is the collaborative
exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas between two or more people resulting
in a reciprocal affect on each other (Brown, 2004: 165). Theories of
communication competence emphasize the importance of interaction as human being
use language in various contexts to “negotiate” meaning or simply stated, to
get an idea out of one person' head and into the head of another person and
vice versa. To do the best interaction, the teacher should consider:
First, helping the students learn the natural way is
useful. This means that learning foreign language only in the classroom is not
suitable anymore. The students must be in the real context to practice
communication. But they should no force themselves to use the language. A young
Israel who stressed the importance of living the language explained: “I don’t think
I have to use it. If it happens to me to use it, I use it. I don't force myself
to use a word, because if it is compulsive, it is not natural”.
Second, forcing the students to practice the target language
is needed. The teacher should find strategies in order that the students use
the language as often as possible. If someone practices he will learn automatically,
get accustomed to speaking, understand better and learn to think in English.
Third, including socio-cultural component in the foreign
language syllabus is a good way. The teacher can invite the students to watch
films or TV recordings, play relevant music and invite interesting native
speaker’s gusts. If possible organizing school trips or exchange programs to
the foreign language community; or finding pen friends for your students.
Using co-operative rather
than competitive goals
Co-operative learning activities are those in which
students must work together in order to complete a task or solve a problem.
These techniques have been found to increase the self-confidence of students,
including weaker ones, because every participant in a co-operative task has an
important role to play. Knowing their team-mates are counting on them can
increase students’ motivation. (Lightbown & Spada, 2001:57)
Giving
feedback to the students
After finishing
learning activity, the teacher should gives feedback to the students. by giving
feedback, the teacher will gets the information about how teacher doing in
his/her effort to reach a goal. Giving feedback also implies that students have
ready access to the discussion and evaluation.
TEACHER ROLES
Teachers play very important roles in the course of
teaching described in the form of metaphor: teacher as manufacturer, teacher as
doctor, teacher as judge, teacher as gardener and others. And the following is
another set of metaphors to describe the possibilities of teachers’ roles.
The teacher should make students group work. By
grouping the students, the teachers can give the students more opportunities to
speak, interaction happens. H. Douglas Brown, in his book untitled teaching by
principle, describes the importance of interaction in the language classroom:
The teacher as Controller
A role that is sometimes expected in traditional
educational institutions is that of “master” controller, always in charge of every
moment in the classroom. The teacher is a controller. So the teacher determines
what the students do, when they should speak, and what language forms they should
use. They can often predict many students’ responses because everything is
mapped out ahead of time, with no leeway for divergent paths. In some respects,
such control may sound admirable. But for interaction to take place, the
teacher must create a climate in which spontaneity can thrive, in which unrehearsed
language can be performed, and in which the freedom of expression given over to
students makes it impossible to predict everything that they will say and do.
Nevertheless, some control on your part is actually an
important element of successfully carrying out interactive techniques. In the
planning phase especially, a wise controller will carefully project how a
technique will proceed, map out the initial input to students, specify directions
to be given, and gauge the timing of a technique. So granted that allowing for spontaneity
of expression involves yielding certain elements of control to students, nevertheless,
even in the most cooperative of interactive classrooms, the teacher must maintain
some control simply to organize the class hour.
The Teacher as Director
Some interactive classroom can legitimately be
structured in such a way that the teacher is like a conductor of an orchestra
or a director of a drama. As students engage in either rehearsed or spontaneous
language performance, it is your job to keep the process flowing smoothly and
efficiently. The ultimate motive of such direction, of course, must always be
to enable students eventually to engage in the real life drama of improvisation
as each communicative event brings its own uniqueness.
The Teacher as Manager
This metaphor captures your role as one who plans
lessons, modules, and courses, and who structures the larger, longer segments
of classroom time, but who then allows each individual player to be creative
within those parameters. Managers of successful corporations, for example, retain
control of certain larger objectives of the company, keep employees pointed toward
goals, engage in ongoing evaluation and feedback, but give freedom to each person
to work in his or her own individual areas of expertise. A language class
should not be markedly different.
The Teacher as Facilitator
A less directive role might be described as
facilitating the process of learning, of making learning easier for students:
helping them to clear away roadblocks, to find shortcut, to negotiate rough
terrain. The facilitating role requires that you step away from the managerial
or directive role and allow students, with your guidance and gentle prodding,
to find their own pathways to success. As facilitator, teachers capitalize on
the principle of intrinsic motivation by allowing students to discover language
through using it pragmatically, rather than by telling them about language.
The Teacher as a Learning
Source
Here you take the least directive role. In fact, the
implication of the resource role is that the student takes the initiative to come
to you. You are available for advice and counsel when the student seeks it. It
is of course not practical to push this metaphor to an extreme where you would simply
walk into a classroom and say something like, “Well, what do you want to learn
today?” Some degree of control, of planning, of managing the classroom is essential.
But there are appropriate times when you call literally take a back seat and allow
the students to proceed with their own linguistic development.
In the lesson that you deliver, you should be able to
assume all five of these roles on this continuum of directive to non directive
teaching, depending on the purpose and context of an activity. The key to
interactive teaching is to strive toward the upper, non directive end of the
continuum, gradually enabling your students to move from their roles of total dependence
to relatively total independence.
The proficiency level of your class will determine to
some extent which roles will dominate. But even at the lowest levels, some
genuine interaction can take place, and your role must be one that releases
your students to try things for themselves.
CONCLUSION
Teaching English is not just teaching, giving
information, explaining the lesson as many as possible so that the students can
get knowledge faster, giving exercises and just doing any activities in the
classroom. Teachers should do more than just teaching, giving information,
explaining the lesson, giving exercises and just doing any activities in the
classroom. Motivation and guiding students to have self self-confidence to learn
must be administered to them in order that they can determine their own way to learn
and automatically have positive attitude to learn the language.
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Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Teaching by Principle: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd
ed.). Longman
Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Language Assesment:
Principles and Classroom Practices. New York: Pearson Education
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Carter, C.J. 2006. Reciprocal
Teaching: The application of teaching Improvement Strategy on Urban Students in
Highland Park, Michigan, 1993-95. Geneva: The International Bureau of
Education.
Dornyei, Z. 2009. Motivation
and Motivating in the Foreign Language Classroom. English Department:
Eotvos University.
Ellis, R. 1994. The
Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press.
Lightbown, P. M. & Spada, N. 2001. How Language are Learned. Revised
edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mu’minin, M. Amiril. 2012. Motivation as a Main Factor in
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