The Importance of Motivation

In this week’s post we’re going to examine the role motivation has in language learning.  I’ve been thinking about this topic as I always hear teachers say, “What can you do with a student who doesn’t want to talk?”  I think this can be a very frustrating answer for a lot of teachers.  It’s one that I still don’t have a good answer for, so I wanted to find tips and advice for motivating students to speak more.  With that in mind, I want to first touch on what motivation is and why we want it in the class.  Simply put, motivation is why we want to learn English.  Motivation can be something internal and very personal to us, such as wanting to take a trip to the United States, wanting a job in a foreign company, wanting to meet foreign friends and so on.  Motivation can also be external. …