Motivation

 Hello everybody! I prepared this text about motivation mixing some explanations about the theme and translating to English for an oral presentation in an English School I teach at one of our teachers` meetings. It can be helpful to work with the text with your students or simply to practice the language and get more motivation.

Motivation

                The motivation of the students is an important challenge to be faced, because it has a strict relation in the quality of the student´s commitment on the  teaching and learning  process . The motivated student seeks new knowledge and opportunities and shows to be engaged on the tasks with enthusiasm and also shows to be willing for new challenges.

One  of  the motivational determiners on the learning process are the goals that the students have for the future.

According to Kauffman and Husman (2004) the future is the main motivation for students. The perspective of their own future is an important factor to make them able to learn and the commitment to their studies.

Several researches among students , college students ,teachers and professors showed that the future can have positive effects on their  motivation.

We mustn´t forget that the reasons and the commitment are in the person.  Teachers must seek for opportunities that arise the student´s interest and lead them to make responsible choices and get commited to their studies.

The student must notice that the current activities will be very useful to his future professional life.

So the teacher must stimulate the students to plan and adopt future goals by themselves..

There are several beliefs described on the motivational literature as , example, the student´s personal beliefs about his competence, the student must believe he is capable and is  doing what is necessary to do to get want he wants because he really wants and not something self imposed on him.

Motivating students is something complex. The teachers must try to understand and interpret the students actions in classroom.

Teachers  must worth the progress of their students. Praise must be the key to achieve success on the learning process.

Motivational  Strategies

“I prefer to make the people have fun  hoping that they learn instead of teaching the people hoping that they have fun”

Walt Disney

Everybody has “mental programs” or strategies for the most variety of behaviours .

We have strategies that  motivate us to do tasks as study, work, have fun and until sleep. The question is to distinguish these strategies and use them in a useful way to help us to do accomplish actions that are important is our personal and professional life.

Walt Disney for example had a good imagination and used to imagine his stories, firstly facing his character´s feelings, as happiness, fear, astonishment etc. Right after he asked the draftsmen to create the character according to these feelings and from that part on he created the whole story. It was such a fantastic strategy that was capable to influence so many generations until nowadays.

Recipes to develop motivational strategies

One easy way to understand motivational strategies is imagine them as a cake recipe and you are the chef. If you use the cake recipe rightly you will probably make a cake as good as who created the recipe. To make a recipe or develop a strategy with success it is necessary to know three basic things:

 *The ingredients ( mental representations of things that motivate us)

*The quantity of these necessary mental representations.

*The sequence of the steps.

Mental Representations ( ingredients)

Visual representations – there are people that are motivated mainly because see a situation or imagine this situation through images. For example , to motivate somebody to buy a type of car it is necessary that the salesman describe its pictures, films,colors etc. These people react to images.

Aural representations – some people are better motivated through aural  stimulation. Probably that like to do tasks listening to music and need a lot of aura explanations to be convinced to do some task.

Kinesthetic  representations – other people has to touch the things to be convinced of the qualities of a product.       For example a car salesman most describe the qualities of the car as comfort , sleekness , the tact sensation of the wheel and the seats etc.

The person that disturbed your life passed away yesterday…

One day when some employees arrived to work, they found a huge poster on the lodge that said :

“ The person that disturbed your life at the company passed away yesterday. You are invited to the funeral at the gym “

In the beginning  everybody got sad because of somebody`s death, but after some time they got curious to know who was disturbing their lives and blocking their grown at the company. The employees got so excited that they needed to call the guards to organize the funeral.

_Who is disturbing my progress?

_That´s good that this unhappy guy died!

One after the other looked at the coffin and tried to recognize the dead and let the place in silence . They got in deep silence and went to their rooms.

In the coffin there was a mirror and everybody saw himself. There is only one person that is capable to limit himself .  Yourself! ” You are the only one that can do a revolution in your life. Your life doesn´t change when your boss changes, when your company changes, when your parents change, when your boyfriend, girlfriend changes, your life changes…when you change! You are the only responsible for it”.

The world is as a mirror that gives back to each person the reflex of his own thoughts and acts. The way you face life is that makes all the diference . The life changes when “ you change .”

Recognition

Any form of recognition as a simple praise at a good work is the favorite one when employees do a good job. The best praise is done at the moment and it is sincere.

You can praise the people when they are near you or when they are not present (positive gossip). For the employees the recognition that is indirect has more credibility because it is done without any specific interest.

Written notes or cards or e-mails are cheap and efficient ways to worth collaborators. Never forget to give the credit to new ideas and suggestions using names of professionals involved on the tasks you are talking about.