Learner observation tasks as a learning tool for pre-service teachers

After the lesson student teachers are recommended to comment on all the tasks mentioned above immediately. During further post-observation discussion they continue their reflection on the relationship between seating arrangement and social climate in the classroom. Analysing gender-related differences in physical behaviour pre-service teachers will infer learners’ attitude to each other, the te

acher and studying process in general. As it was mentioned above analysis of the type of utterances and their amount will lead student teachers to infer the influence of seating arrangement on learners’ involvement into the lesson and their progress in learning accordingly. Finally, student teachers will plan their future lesson in accordance with learners’ comfort and preferences for seating positions that provides effective classroom management and eventually enhances pupils’ learning progress.

5.2. Learner motivation

5.2.1 Types of motivation

Motivation is an internal drive that encourages somebody to pursue a course of action. If we define the goal and if that goal is sufficiently attractive we will be strongly motivated to do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal. A positive relationship between motivation and second language achievement is arguable among researchers but in general language teachers acknowledge that strongly motivated learners are easier to teach than those who have no such goals.

The best known categorization of motivation in language learning is the distinction between integrative and instrumental motivation. An integrative motivation involves an interest in learning foreign language because of ‘a sincere and personal interest in the people and culture represented by the other language group’ (Gardner 1985:6). The term ‘instrumental’ describes a situation in which students believe that mastery of the language has ‘some practical value and advantages of learning a new language’ (Gardner 1985:10). The language is treated as an instrument in their attainment of such a goal. Learners can, of course, have both integrative and instrumental motivation as it is impossible to separate two kinds of motivation in every situation of the learning process. Muchnick and Wolfe (1982:273) found evidences of both strong integrative and strong instrumental motivation in the same students.

5.2.2 Constituents of motivation

Constituents of integrative motivation

Motivation is ‘subjective experience’ (Good and Brophy 2000:217) that cannot be observed directly, but it can be inferred from students’ physical behaviour. The key dimensions that demonstrate strong motivation are ‘effort’ which learners put into their learning, ‘persistence’ with which learners continue doing their work in a determined way, and ‘activeness’ which is defined as frequency of participation in classroom contexts. But the first two variables demand high inferences from more observable learning behaviours such as working independently on the task for a long time, consulting with the teacher or the peer when uncertain, working at home with additional material, or display of hilarious emotion in response to the teacher’s reward. Although the relationship between frequent participation and second language achievement remains uncertain it clearly indicates interest to foreign language studying.

The choice of tasks according to the difficulty, the level of aspirations, the amount of effort exerted, and the persistence that learners displayed while working on the task reveals one of the variable of learner’s motivation, their sense of efficacy. As Dörney (1998:119) in his review of Bandura’s (1993) article asserts that people with a low sense of self-efficacy tend to dwell on the obstacles they encounter rather than concentrating on how to perform the task. In contrast, people with a strong sense of self-efficacy approach threatening situations with confidence, they are focused on the task rather than ‘self-diagnostic focus during task-involvement’ (Dörney 1998:120). Student teachers can easily infer this variable from overt learner’s cues on their immediate reaction towards the task they face; learners might complain and mumble about the difficulty, or they approach to the task immediately with or without accompanied exclamations about interesting challenge.

Constituents of instrumental motivation

Instrumental motivation variables are in some way more direct, and more observable. Learners’ attitude to teacher’s rewards and feedback make these variables salient. These variables link task performance to the product that students appreciate, and corresponds to the ‘expectancy + value’ theory (Feather, 1982:33) which holds that the effort students are willing to expend on a task is a product of ‘1) the degree to which they expect to be able to perform the task successfully, and 2) the degree to which they value those rewards’ (Good and Brophy 2000:221). Numerous researches confirm that students do not invest much effort in tasks that are not assessed and valued even if they know that they can perform the task successfully. But it must be admitted that rewards are more effective for increasing effort than for improving quality of performance. Moreover, most researchers agree that praise and rewards are motivating with routine work rather than novelty.

Commonly used types of rewards include: 1. material rewards; 2. activity rewards and special privileges (opportunity to play games, use special equipment); 3. grades, awards, and recognition (honour rolls, displaying good papers); 4. praise and social rewards; 5. teacher rewards (special attention, personalized interaction). Williams and Burden (1997:135) in their extensive review of research on the place of rewards in motivating people notice that material rewards gradually decrease interest in the activity. Whereas system of rewards set up as classroom management motivates towards good behaviour and positive changes, informational feedback rather than controlling is likely to increase motivation towards certain tasks as it enables learners ‘to identify specific aspects of their performance that are acceptable and capable of improvement … and helpful to them to move into the zone of next development’ (Williams and Burden 1997:136).

Finally, we should not deny the role of competition which is seen to be the predominant way to encourage learners to strive to improve their performance as the nature of competition with its prizes and rewards drives learners to volunteer an action and actively participate.

5.2.3 Description of the task

The aim of the task (see Appendix 2) is to raise awareness of student teachers about overall role of motivation in the learning process, and the degree of learners’ motivation to the learning process. Another aim is concerned with factors that are likely to exert a significant influence on learner’s willingness to make personal contribution to the task fulfillment and learning process in general.

 Скачать реферат