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 facingteachers today (Scheidecker and Freeman 1999:116, cited in Dörnyei 2007:1).This quotation covers the importance of motivation for successful language learningin the modern classroom. There are several ways of enhancing students motivationin the EFL classroom but an important one is to create the lesson on the basis of thelearners interests. Everyone, who looks back on their former school days, mightremember that learning was more enjoyable when the topics were interesting andfurthermore, when they were handled in an exiting way.The intention of this paper at hand is to present several ideas of improving thegeneral motivation in the classroom according to the consideration of learners interests. In addition to that, the current interests of students from German secondaryschools and the consideration of the interests in the common English classroom willbe presented with the help of a questionnaire.This paper consists of six main parts. Part one is an overview of the terms motivationand interest. At first, motivation and interest will be defined in their psychologicalcontext and in the following these terms will relate to their meaning in the Englishclassroom. It is necessary for the further content of this paper because both of theseterms appear frequently throughout the text. In addition to the first part, the secondpart will mention the importance of incorporating students interest in the learningclassroom.The third part of this paper will deal with several possibilities of creating motivationalconditions in the L2 classroom. Therefore, this paper brings four main factors intofocus: the role of the teacher, the role of the student, the atmosphere in theclassroom and the lesson itself. In all four sections several ideas will be given how tocreate a language learning atmosphere that is motivating to the participants of theEnglish classroom. In addition to the third part of this paper at hand, part four is about a research whichis 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 ofstudents of secondary schools according to different factors of the English learningclassroom and furthermore the handling of students interests in the lessons. [...]