a purpose to what they're doing, if they don't believe there's an overall goal to what they're

doing, then they stop seeing the point.

If you can say, okay today we're going to do this, this is our objective, these are

the reasons why were going to be doing this, this is how its going to affect your long

term success etc. etc. you're on to a winner.

Show them where they're going to be by the end of the course and they have to believe

in that goal and believe that it's valid for them.

I would suggest trying to avoid activities where the only purpose is to practise the

language.

Never go into the class and say, "Okay today we're going to do page 72 of the coursebook".

Page 72 - what is that? I don't understand what that is. If you don't know what you're

doing and you don't know why you're doing it, you've got no chance whatsoever of motivating

your students.

Even if they know it's good for them on an intellectual level, on an emotional level

I think they lose that motivation to put the extra effort in.

This might just be a question of tweaking the instructions for a standard coursebook

activity. For example instead of giving the students a list of discussion questions with

no particular outcome, you could try getting them to rank opinions in order or choose the

opinion they agree or disagree with the most. Changing the activity in this way does make

it a great deal more intrinsically motivating.

They all come to class motivated in the sense of wanting something, whether it be wanting

to meet up with their friends or talking about their favourite topic or even wanting to achieve

certain things using the English language, and we should tap into all of these motivations.

Find that. Find out what the students want to do, find out what they're needing English

for and tailor the lessons to suit them, suit their needs and their wants. And I believe

that way we're bringing out the motivation that's inherently in the student rather than

trying to bring in, you know, tried and tested methods and games and cut-up pieces of card

just because it's worked for you in the past.

We can vary activity type and we can also vary the dynamics in which that activity takes

place. By dynamics I mean sometimes people can be working alone, they can be working

in pairs, they can be working in groups.

I like to create situations in class where maybe we've done the introductory part of

the lesson and then I have a choice of tasks for them to do. Or even at the start of the

lesson a choice of topics that we could look at today.

Teaching and learning is a step by step incremental process and very often it's difficult to see

the progress that's been made.

And I think there are a variety of ways we can do this. So for example blogs and wikis

and Evernote can be a very useful tool for storing up learners' work over a period of

time. And then this can then be reflected on as time progresses so that the learners

are able to see what progress they're making. Also recording learners towards the beginning

of a course and then later on, perhaps during the middle and then at the end, and then these

recordings can be compared to see what progress has been made.