Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual, which means there will be no external incentives involved. That is why intrinsic motivation is deemed to be more long-lasting and self-sustaining.
Extrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic motivation comes with external stimuli like parental expectations, fame, rewards, grades, etc. Extrinsic motivation is also needed in a language classroom especially in situations where educational activities such as drilling and repetition of exercises are tedious.
Integrative Motivation
Students with integrative motivation are eager to learn as they learn the language to take part or to be involved in the cultures on its people
Instrumental Motivation
Language learners with instrumental motivation learn a language for practical reasons like career.
When I was a tuition teacher in the MRC Tuition Centre, we were trained to give extrinsic motivation most of the time as the students are relatively younger.
Each grade has their own reward chart and the students need to participate actively in class or perform extraordinarily good to "earn" their reward stickers. By the end of each month, the student with the most reward stickers will receive a gift during the assembly.
However, the students will showcase their intrinsic motivation from time to time
Language Learner Styles
Visual Learners
Auditory Learners
Kinesthetic Learners
Read / Write Learners
Learning styles are the general approaches preferred by a student to learn or acquire a language.
Visual learners learn better with the involvement of visual aids
They tend to think in pictures rather than words
Colors, tone or brightness help them to recall information
Graphs, tables, presentations
Auditory learners learn best by listening
They have strong listening skills so they prefer to listen to a lecture instead of writing notes.
They might be easily distracted by sound, especially if the learning environment is noisy.
They benefit for auditory repetition, better information retention rate
Kinesthetic learners learn by hands-on activities
They retain information of what they did, instead of what they see or heard
They need frequent breaks to stay focused
They may move around and interact a lot with the others, which in turn improves social skills
Read / write learners learn mainly by reading and writing
Learners learn primarily by reading and writing.
They retain information by reading textbooks and notes.
Tend to rewrite and reread notes
Learning Styles for Successful Language Acquisition
Tolerance of Ambiguity
The ability to deal with uncertainty or unplanned situations without feeling stressed and uncomfortable.
Field Independence
A student's ability to separate information from its surroundings and process the information critically.
Reflectivity
Reflective learners tend to think before acting. They will make more calculated and slower decisions as they take everything into consideration. They will take their time to construct a sentence with suitable choices of words before espressing their thoughts.
Impulsivity
Impulsive learners tend to act before thinking thoroughly. They would solve a problem within the shortest time but it might be inaccurate. Instead of focusing on the accuracy while delivering their thoughts, they are more concerned with speaking fluently.
Language Learner Strategies
Cognitive Strategies
Cognitive strategies enable learners to improve their understanding on a new language and eventually produce their own. Repetition, reflection, visualizing, organize information by making mind maps and self-test are involved for learners to learn more effectively.
Metacognitive Strategies
Learners are given the chance to control their own learning by organizing, planning and evaluating. Students will be more aware of their thinking processes while they learn. They are self-regulating and they think independently.
Affective Strategies
Affective strategies are learning strategies that are related to emotions, motivation, or attitude to promote positive learning environment in order to lower anxiety level while learning,
Social Strategies
Social strategies include communicating with other language learners or native speaker. Social strategies promote better language understanding and enhance learners' cultural-awareness.
