1.1: What is Interest?
Interest plays a predominant role in every day thinking, as well as in
the professional development of teachers. Interest is an impulsive
and instinctive interaction between the learners, their
communication with their environment and the material. It is usually
combined with motivation, curiosity and personal commitment.
Interest is a phenomenon that arises from individual’s
communication with his or her environment (Krapp, Hidi,
Renninger, 1992). Interest and its involvement in meaningful
learning have always played a significant role in both psychology
and education. Young learners’ social relationships with peers and
teachers can affect and guide interest. Classroom instruction and
teaching materials that are interesting play an important role in
determining learning achievement because it can produce pleasure in
learning and satisfaction. For young learners interest appears
initially as an individual value or significance and as a means for
exploring properties of an object. Such focused practice helps young
learners express their excitement and energy with the objects.
It is widely accepted that language learners and especially young
learners experience interest and motivation when they are asked to
do challenging and pleasing activities that give them satisfaction and happiness in learning. So learning becomes smooth and easy (Krapp,
Hidi, Renninger, ibid).
In order to sustain interest, it is advisable for the teachers of English to introduce a Needs Analysis Questionnaire in young learners’
classroom before the actual teaching starts, so that they find out the
preferences and favourite subjects of young learners (A and B
classes). The Needs Analysis Questionnaire can be oral since the
young learners cannot read and write well even in their mother
tongue in the first and second grades of Primary school. A
questionnaire can speculate the young learners’ preferences and
likes even after some activities have been implemented in class. This
way the teachers find out which materials and activities the young
learners enjoyed and how much they have learnt. The teachers will
also discover which activities the learners enjoyed more than those
learnt in order to be tested (C class usually). When young learners
are able to read even a few lines, teachers could ignore individual
differences in interests by permitting young learners to choose their
own reading lines. This way the learners feel more confident in
reading. Young learners who have a significant and worthwhile
reason for learning an activity and do not feel pressured, they tend to
find the material more interesting and learn it more fully. Teachers
can discover that sometimes incidental learning is interesting.
Poor motivation and subsequent poor processing in the classroom
can result from the lack of interest in school work or lack of learning
goals, each of which may also involve negative affect after
pertaining to the teacher and/or the classroom environment, Also poor achievement in school is due to lack of interest of young
learners towards learning. Roughly or badly designed activities may
add and contribute to learners’ weakness and failure in learning
English.
When teachers wish to facilitate young learners’ learning an activity
or a subject, they should consider the learners’ goal orientation and
interest. Teachers should involve young learners to teaching
methods and strategies that will enable learners to learn more
effectively and above all help them to learn how to learn. Thus,
when designing activities for young learners, teachers should
consider the properties of the activities and the learners’ prior
knowledge and abilities.
As all teachers know, learners prefer different learning strategies.
When young learners show interest in a certain topic they want to
learn about it or become involved with that topic for its own sake.
When young learners are interested in a topic or theme they are
familiar with, they collaborate successfully in class working in pairs
or groups. They recall interesting sentences better. Popular wisdom
holds that if teachers can find ways to make lessons more
interesting, learners will learn. When the teachers show interest in
their learners’ improvement and learning and teach every single
learner how to carry out activities more effectively and with less
effort, they create an interesting situation in class (Shirey, 1992 cited in Krapp, Hidi, Renninger, ibid). Interest and motivation in young learners’ classroom should promote collaboration rather than
competition.
1.2: Motivating Young Learners
As a teacher of English I always try to (a) keep the class input rich
all the time by building an English language speaking culture and
environment in class, (b) keep the class learner centred as much as
possible by increasing LTT (learner talking time), (c) keep the
whole personalities of the learners engaged and their attention span
stretched by involving them in interesting class activities and make
sure that they feel a sense of achievement at every step, (d) eliminate
class tests as a separate post - teaching assessment tool as they do
more harm than good to the motivation, morale and self image of the
learners (I used the tests as part of the class activities and as a tool to
give a sense of achievement to the learners), (e) mix with my young
learners and participate in their social activities, where I interacted
with them in the target language and try to know them personally
and deeply to work on their learning problems in the course of the
learning/teaching process.
When I undertook to teach a class, I always applied a Needs
Analysis questionnaire which I designed, structured and
administered to each group of learners according to their level of
language. Constantly I talked with my young learners about their
preferences concerning topics to use in class. Using these
instruments I found out which were my young learners’ interests,
and adjusted the content of the motivational materials in order to
make better decisions on how to capture learners’ attention
throughout all sessions, using only the target language in class. The
reasons I used these instruments are:
To break the monotony of learning: I introduced interesting teaching
activities and variety of materials (Dornyei, 2001).
• To make the syllabus of the course relevant: I involved the learners
in the actual planning of the course programme promoting
responsibility (Dornyei,2001)
• To increase learners’ self-confidence: I gave them the feeling that
they can play an important role in the classroom in order to reduce
competition and class anxiety.
• To increase young learners’ expectancy of success and to point out
challenging aspects of the target language learning (Dornyei, 2001).
• In order to motivate my learners I:
Used role play, simulation and drama (Theatre in
class).
Used CALL (Computer Assistance Language
Learning).
Used visuals/video
Used songs/chants and lyrics
Task-Based learning
Telling stories (storytelling in class) and Puppets.
Writing in class
All the above mentioned motivational lessons can be employed
successfully in any young learners’ class under the following
preconditions:
Appropriate teacher behaviour and a good relationship
with the students,
A pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere,
A cohesive learners’ group with appropriate group
norms (Dornyei, 2001).
After each lesson, I used to give my students a questionnaire
(designed according to my young learners’ language level) to
complete in order to have their opinions on the lesson, if they
desired to change an activity or if they wished to suggest another
one.
Motivational concepts young learners should become familiar with
over time:
• Classification according to: colour, shape, size, number,
comparisons
• Identification of objects: clothing, body parts, objects at home,
objects at school/classroom
• Spatial relationship: preposition of place (through activities and
games)
• Feelings and relationships: happiness, unhappiness, love,
family…
• Temporal relationships: present, past, future after, later, before…
• Ordering of objects: big, small, little, first, second….
A young learners’ classroom can function quite successfully when learning. A good idea for a successful outcome is the creation of
various centres in the classroom:
• Art and creating centre: modeling cookies, paints, pencils, glue,
colouring pens, brushes, papers
• Dramatic play centre: through playing young learners develop
their cognitive and thinking skills, also the dialogues between
young learners and the teachers help them use language clearly
and effectively.
• Library centre: where young learners may gather together sitting in
a circle reading books or listening to stories.
• Writing centres: young learners learn how to write their names,
dates, parents’ names.
• Science centres: young learners look at pictures of birds/animals or
plants/trees and then they are asked to observe, draw conclusions,
make graphs etc.
• Table toys centre: this part of the classroom may have a variety of
toys such as cars, trucks, dolls, puzzles and game
• Music centre: instruments of various sounds and rhymes are there
for young learners to use. It is better if music is used during the daily
lesson or when young learners enter or leave the classroom.
young learners are kept lively and interested in what they are