Enhancing Motivation in the Foreign Languages Classroom

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, University of Hildesheim, language: English, abstract: Motivation is, without question, the most complex and challenging issue facing

teachers today (Scheidecker and Freeman 1999:116, cited in Dörnyei 2007:1).

This quotation covers the importance of motivation for successful language learning

in the modern classroom. There are several ways of enhancing students¿ motivation

in the EFL classroom but an important one is to create the lesson on the basis of the

learners¿ interests. Everyone, who looks back on their former school days, might

remember that learning was more enjoyable when the topics were interesting and

furthermore, when they were handled in an exiting way.

The intention of this paper at hand is to present several ideas of improving the

general motivation in the classroom according to the consideration of learners¿

interests. In addition to that, the current interests of students from German secondary

schools and the consideration of the interests in the common English classroom will

be presented with the help of a questionnaire.

This paper consists of six main parts. Part one is an overview of the terms motivation

and interest. At first, motivation and interest will be defined in their psychological

context and in the following these terms will relate to their meaning in the English

classroom. It is necessary for the further content of this paper because both of these

terms appear frequently throughout the text. In addition to the first part, the second

part will mention the importance of incorporating students¿ interest in the learning

classroom.

The third part of this paper will deal with several possibilities of creating motivational

conditions in the L2 classroom. Therefore, this paper brings four main factors into

focus: the role of the teacher, the role of the student, the atmosphere in the

classroom and the lesson itself. In all four sections several ideas will be given how to

create a language learning atmosphere that is motivating to the participants of the

English classroom. In addition to the third part of this paper at hand, part four is about a research which

is conducted on the basis of the theoretical aspects which are presented in part one,

two and three. The intention of the research is, to find out the current interests of

students of secondary schools according to different factors of the English learning

classroom and furthermore the handling of students¿ interests in the lessons. [...]