Jun 14, 2021
Undoubtedly, the recent circumstances of COVID-19 pandemic have put schools at crossroads. Hence, schools should consider building capacity for their teachers and students to confront these unavoidable challenges. Given this, adopting effective instructional design leads to create a culture of learning which enhances the ability of students to be continuously motivated in order to improve their language skills. In Diyafah International School, the Arabic language team believes that students’ motivation is an essential condition for establishing a positive learning experience. However, motivating students can be a difficult task to achieve. It is proven that motivated students are more enthusiastic to learn, discover, contribute, and participate.
Whether online or face-to-face at Diyafah International School, we consider that our students become more motivated to learn when they are treated as distinctive individuals who have their individual aspirations and interests. In Arabic, Islamic, and UAE SS-A, it is fundamental for us to make the students enjoy the process of learning rather than join in a traditional lesson per see.
What Is Students’ Motivation?
Pedagogically, students’ motivation could be described as a process where the students' awareness becomes more focused on learning in order to achieve their educational objectives. It also refers to a mental state, or internal need that triggers a student to learn, ask, and discover. Simply, motivation is something that directs or impacts a student to learn. By way of elaboration, motivating students is a fundamental factor in establishing an appropriate teaching and learning environment. By and large, the motivated student normally orients his or her energies to achieve their learning potential. In addition, research has found a positive correlation between motivation and students’ academic achievement. To yield the desired motivation in our Arabic language classes, our goal is always to guide our lessons from students’ individual interests. To that goal, motivating students in Arabic language classes at Diyafah International School is a holistic approach that benefits from many well-structured activities.
Different types of motivation Exist in Classrooms:
In these exceptional circumstances, motivating and engaging students are a foremost challenge for teachers and parents as well. To form a profound understanding of how to motivate our students, it is beneficial to differentiate between two main types of motivation: Intrinsic motivation, and Extrinsic motivation.
-Intrinsic motivation
In our classrooms we can easily identify the intrinsically motivated students when they are motivated by their internal desire to accomplish tasks. For instance, students’ personal pleasure when completing an activity, or students’ keenness to master a skill.
-Extrinsic motivation
Extrinsic motivation describes the behaviour of students to carry out missions and understand new skills for external rewards. To enhance extrinsic motivation, students participate in activities to acquire skills of value in return.
Motivating Unmotivated Students:
In Arabic language, Islamic, and UAE SS-A classes at Diyafah International School, well-organised procedures have been adopted in order to motivate our students. These procedures focus on arousing, directing, and sustaining our students’ learning.
For parents and educators, a small but important fact should be cautiously considered; as students are getting motivated in different and multiple methods, it is instrumental to utilise a range of teaching approaches to engage and motivate them. Particularly, teaching and learning methods that include students’ contribution will motivate students beyond intrinsic or extrinsic goals, such as, role-playing, active learning, presentations, discussions, debates, and group work.
Students-Centred Learning:
To efficiently augment our students’ motivation in Arabic classes, a broad line of instructional activities is being implemented. These activities put the student in the centre of the teaching and learning process. Therefore, every curricular, extra-curricular, and cross-curricular activity in DIS is designed to meet our students’ needs and to be aligned with their individual learning styles. It is worth noting that guided discovery activities have been utilised for our distance learners and face-to-face students in many lessons in order to make the teaching and learning in Arabic language, Islamic, and UAE SS-A more student driven process.
Guided-Inquiry Activities:
When learning is part of students' real-life, learners will be more motivated to achieve remarkable progress in their learning. In the Arabic, Islamic, and UAE SS-A classes, the guided-inquiry activities are designed to enhance our students’ motivation to be life-long learners. To effectively incorporate inquiry into Arabic classrooms, the next fundamental principles are following respectively: Wondering, Questioning, Research, Explaining, Creativity, and Reflection. These concepts are carefully utilised to create a motivation-friendly Arabic classroom.
Project-Based Learning:
In line with international best practices in language teaching and learning, our approach in Diyafah International School to enhance the students’ motivation in Arabic language classes is to implement project-based instructions. This approach allows students to link their language knowledge and skills with real-life settings. Moreover, according to our experience, this approach enables students to enhance their engagement. In addition, project-based learning maximises our students’ skills in making a choice, self- & peer-evaluation, relevant feedback on own and others’ work.
In a nutshell, it is worth mentioning that as part of our endeavour to take care of every student, we continuously revise and improve our actions and strategies of students’ motivation. We believe that there is no one-size that fits all students when it comes to motivating our students to engage them in study. Hence, the broad key to success in motivating online and face-to-face students is to advance motivation factors and engagement activities into our teaching and learning methods.