Suwat Phiewsawang and Sunisa Samapatch prepare for their Future Careers in English course.

Motivation of lower level learners

Lack of incentive is a major reason why
Thai students of English often don't succeed

Designing success into the course

My opinion is that their resentment is caused by a lack of success in English over the years, and that this failure of achievement leaves them unmotivated to continue studying English in university simply because it is required by the school's curriculum, when they really want to concentrate on excelling in their major.

With this in mind, I designed an English for Future Careers course at the Language Center at Udon Thani Rajabhat University that is built upon the premise that students will be successful at different stages, and that any success will further motivate students to attain good grades and discover their hidden talents in English. The last two years have been spent fine tuning it.

Aims and expectations

The aim of the course is for students to be able to write a resume and cover letter in English and to attend a simulated job interview conducted in English. A secondary aim is for students to reflect on their personal skills in Thai and English, and in doing so, feel good about themselves and thus find motivation to complete the tasks.

The vocabulary to do these tasks initially was well beyond most students; but soon the vocabulary to perform the tasks was developed and a course was created. A student book and workbook were designed using by permission materials of a UK-based company. The materials highlight personal qualities and skills necessary to complete resumes.

What makes Carlos achieve?

My Tesol training teacher is named Cammy. She is from Belize. In an early lesson, she asked the class to think about one of her first students, Carlos, an airline pilot. Like most students, he had special needs for learning English. She believed that if she could discover and satisfy those needs, Carlos would be motivated to learn.

Buoyed by Cammy's example of meeting the needs of Carlos the pilot, I tried to discover my students' needs for studying English and match those with the requirements of the university curriculum. If I am successful, then surely my students would be motivated to study English.

The first major challenge for the course was how to prompt vocational machinery majors to take and successfully complete an English course. Eventually, the all-male class, which severely lacked motivation, made modest achievements but in the end successfully completed the 16-week English course.

Lessons learned

Though modest, the achievements were made possible because the goals were broken down into small increments that students could see were achievable. Each time they successfully completed a small but doable step, they were further motivated to meet and complete the next small challenge.

I think this was probably the first time some of the students achieved any measureable and practical success in an English course.

Constant feedback on an individual and group basis maintained the motivation. The outcome is that all the students completed and passed the course. I made a CD of some of the students during their interview and used it to motivate subsequent classes. Other students and teachers sometimes mistake the course graduates as English majors.

Teachers of compulsory English courses must be motivated too. Teachers can sometimes rely too heavily on the course materials; instead, they should use the materials as merely resources. At the end of the day, it is the teacher who must jump-start the motivation within the class.

Steve Graham is an English language teacher at the Language Center, Udon Thani Rajabhat University in northeast Thailand. If there are any comments or areas for debate that you would like to discuss, you can contact Steve at: shed_chelsea@hotmail.co.uk .