Adult Motivational Direction Applied Eyl
ADULT MOTIVATIONAL DIRECTION:
BY ZAINURRAHMAN (2010)
ArticleBase Publishing
Adult Motivational Direction Applied English for Young Learner
Zainurrahman
In learning process, especially English for young learner, motivation is one of the aspects must be considered as important by teachers. Young learner's motivation is a kind of gift that should be kept, developed and directed by teacher as adult. This paper is intended to introduce the Adult Motivational Direction (AMD) as an assistant to teach young learner language, especially English.
What is motivation?
Motivation, as defined in Oxford Dictionary, is basically defined as the reason which is taken by someone to do something. McDonald (1959:74-75) gives examples of how motivation can be understood. Firstly, let say, Nathan wants to achieve "A" grade in English grammar because he has failed last semester. Secondly Julia wants to be an English teacher so that she now is learning how to teach English perfectly. Concerning to both students motivation, Nathan's and Julia's reason to learn the subject are different. Both are motivation, however both are different. Nathan's motivation comes from his worry to be failed again; something comes from his or her experience or not naturally. Meanwhile Julia's motivation comes from her expectation to have certain property; in this case to be an English teacher for young learner. Julia's motivation is naturally built from her expectation. From those examples, simply, it can be assumed that there are at least two types of motivation: external (Nathan) and internal (Julia) motivation.
Motivation is observable from person behavior. What the person like to do and in what way the person is doing that. Motivation is energy of learning and must be maximized and optimized by both learner and teacher. Motivation is energy of behavioral change and must be directed. However, this case is different if the learner is young learner. They know that they are motivated, but they, of course do not understand how to employ the motivation to maximize and optimize the learning process. Here, adult plays important role to direct young learner's motivation and the direction is called "Adult Motivational Direction" or AMD.
Types and Components of Motivation
As mentioned above that there are external motivation (EM) and internal motivation (IM). EM is built non-naturally, by employing external reasons like value, grade, gift, money, gold, occupation, and so forth. Meanwhile IM is built naturally and it is closely related to the learning style and individual characteristics like introvert, extrovert, visual, audio, bodily kinesthetic, ambition and so forth. However, it is possible that a person has both EM and IM; it depends on what is doing or what is intended to be achieved. The motivation type is heavily depended on the goal and type of activity is doing.
Components of motivation, as mentioned by McDonald (1959:79), consist of inner and outer component. Inner component is the change that takes place in the person, the state of dissatisfaction, or psychological tension. The outer component is what the person wants, the goal towards which his behavior is directed.
McDonald seems like associate motivation with satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the person. It seems like motivation is pure psychological case. Person who has satisfaction within certain behavior will repeat the behavior to attain particular goal needed, and person who has dissatisfaction within certain behavior will avoid the behavior to attain particular goal needed. Here, it is obvious that the person who has motivation (EM or IM) must know how to behave, what is their need and how to attain goal (repeat or avoid certain behavior); and also how to improve or to change learning strategy and so on. Nevertheless, it will be different case if the learner is children or young learner. Again, teacher as adult (or adult as teacher) must direct them, by employing their motivation.
Stating Children Motivation
As mentioned before that motivation is observable personally, and it will be different from person to person, from activity to activity and from goal to goal. Here, the emphasized point is children learning style. Teacher must know their students as well as their children, because they are different in some terms (Caroline, 2003). How to know that? Teacher can observe their students visually; sometimes testing will be valuable before stating children motivation. The most important consideration suggested by Caroline (2003:21) is that the teacher must know that children are (mentally) active learners, who will try to find a meaning and purpose for activities that are presented to them. By considering the statement, teacher is proscribed to place children as passive learner that only sit, hear and do what the teacher ask.
Children are different in some terms; here we put the difference of age and learning style to help you stating children motivation. It is possible to say that teacher can build children motivation and it will not be classified as EM or IM, but both EM and IM. The motivation built by teacher is an integrated learning motivation (ILM). This will stimulate students and direct them into an effective learning, especially language learning.
Children ages and ILM
Children are different in term of age. They behave differently and learning something differently. In other side, they do something also differently. However, those are not the case; the case is that in what extent their cognitive capacity works well in certain age. Piaget (1981) distinguishes children cognitive development into four stages, namely: sensory-motor (0-2 years), pre-operational (2-7 years), concrete-operation (7-11 years) and formal-operation (11-15). Piaget then schematizes four stages of cognitive development as follow (Suparno, 2001:25):
Stages Ages Characteristics of Development
Sensory-motor 0-2 years Action based Step by step
Pre-operation 2-7 years The use of symbol/sign language Intuitive concept
Concrete-operation 8-11 years Logic Reversible
Formal-operation 11-15 years Hypothetic Abstract Deductive and inductive Logic
It seems different with the scheme presented by Mooney (2000:64) as follows:
Age
Birth-18 months
Stage
Sensory-motor
Behaviors
Learn through senses
Learn through reflexes
Manipulate materials
Age
18 months-6 years
Stage
Pre-operation
Behaviors
Form ideas based on their perceptions
Can only focus on one variable at a time
Over-generalize based on limited experience
Age
6 years-12 years
Stage
Concrete-operation
Behaviors
From ideas based on reasoning
Limited thinking to objects and familiar events
Age
12 years and older
Stage
Formal-operation
Behaviors
Think conceptually
Think hypothetically
McCloskey (2002) tries to simplify Piaget categorization of children cognitive development (and I elaborate and give examples) as follow:
- Sensory-motor: children interact physically with (within) environment and develop idea about how things work. I consider this as a clue that children in this stage should be taught physically, means that children should be included and involved directly. Let them touch, see, hear, smell and so on.
- Pre-operation: children are not able to think abstractly, but need concrete situation to process idea. Pre-operation is the continuation of sensory-motor stage, where children are able to concretize object they interact with. However, they cannot think the object abstractly, they can imitate a tree by drawing it while seeing it, but they cannot draw it without seeing it.
- Concrete-operation: children have enough experiences to begin to conceptualize and do some abstract problem solving, though they still learn best by doing. As the continuation from the previous stage, children begin to make abstraction of object, they can draw tree without seeing it at the same time. However, this stage is considered by Piaget as trial and error stage; means that children are still not able to do it perfectly.
- Formal-operation: children are able to use abstract thinking like adults. In this stage, children are perfectly built by their environment and interaction with object they meet every time.
It seems like "abstraction" is the main meter used by Piaget to state children cognitive development. The more mature children is the more able to make abstraction of things. However, in language learning, we need to specify our focus and if it is needed, we also create new understanding of ages and learning suggestion.
Now, we turn to the state of children motivation. By paying attention to the stages above, it can be assumed that:
- Sensory-motor: children are motivated to learn with physical object: ball, stick, key, boxes, things with shapes and colors and so on.
- Pre-operation: children are motivated to learn with concrete and physical object: picture, sound, gesture, number and so on.
- Concrete-operation: children begin to be motivated to learn with abstract things: composing words and sentence, guessing name of sound, learning calculation, singing and so on.
- Formal-operation: children are able to do tasks given by adults and employing concrete and abstract things like adults. Here adults can use a lot of objects to teach language to children.
It is now obvious that children in certain age need integrated learning motivation that built by adults differently. Adults should be creative in building motivation and teaching children by employing those inner and outer components of motivation.
The Role of Adults in Children Language Development
Children knowledge development is heavily influenced by their interaction and involvement within environment where their learning process takes place. Although in some extent children develop themselves, by what Piaget called as assimilation and accommodation process, mostly, adults play important role to assist children to develop.
Vygotsky (1896-1934) influential work namely Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) has significant impact in education field. Mooney (2000:83) explore ZPD as follow:
Vygotsky defined this (ZPD; Ed) as the distance between the most difficult task a child can do alone and the most difficult task a child can do with help… he believed that a child on the edge of learning a new concept can benefit from the interaction with a teacher or classmate.
Children, in learning process, should be positioned as a part of society, part of environment and part of the object learnt itself. Children should be positioned in the world; imaginary or real world, it is up to you. It is important because social experience, as the consequence of children interaction with the object learnt and children personal cannot be separated (Mooney, 2000:84). Adults, as part of learning environment that surrounds children, play important role to support children learning process, especially in language learning process. Adults have to invite children to create language, use it and respond it. It is necessary because children in lower level of competency in adult-assisted learning will develop to higher level; Vygotsky call it the development from actual competency to potential competency.
In connection with children learning motivation, it is obviously seen that adult must observe what kind of children they deal with. They may have different age, social background, their favorite manner, learning style and strategy and so on. If children are visual, then adult must employ visual object and if children are audio, then adult must employ audio object.
Adult Motivational Direction
Adults direct children in the teaching-learning process. Children do not accept what adult say and take it altogether; they do what adult say as what they can understand. Because children make meaning for every object they interact with. Therefore, the most important role of adult is directing children and teaching them (integrated) altogether. So that, adult must know who is their children. From age, Harmer (2002:82) suggest as follow:
While pupils who are 10 and 11 years old like games, puzzle and song most, those who are 12 and 13 years old like activities built around dialogues, question-and-answer activities and matching exercises most.
Age is not the only one aspect must be observed by adult, but also learners' other differences as described by Harmer (2002:85) that they are different is aptitude and intelligence. Some children have different natural skill (indigo is not included here), some of them may be good in visualization and some of them may be good in other. Some of them may have multiple intelligences and some of them may have only single intelligence. Willing (in Harmer, 2002:88) state at least four categories of learner as follows:
- Convergers: these are students who are by nature solitary; prefer to avoid groups, and who are independent and confident in their own abilities. Most importantly they are analytic and can improve their own structures on learning. They tend to be cool and pragmatic.
- Conformists: these are students who prefer to emphasize learning ‘about language' over learning to use it. They tend to be dependent on those in authority and are perfectly happy to work in non-communicative classrooms, doing what they are told. A classroom of conformists is one prefers to see well-organized teachers.
- Concrete learners: though they are like conformists, they also enjoy the social aspects of learning and like to learn from direct experience. They are interested in language as communication rather than language as a system. They enjoy games and groupwork in class.
- Communicative learners: these are language use oriented. They are comfortable out of class and show a degree of confidence and a willingness to take risks which their colleagues may lack. They are much more interested in social interaction with other speakers of the language than they are with analysis of how language works. They are perfectly happy to operate without the guidance of a teacher.
By observing learners (young learners) individual difference, it is hoped that adults are able to manage their learning and most important one is what kind of integrated learning motivation must be built. By considering that, creatively, adults as teacher (vice versa) can employ strategies, objects and media to teach young learner effectively. Adult motivational direction, finally, can be illustrated like this: see graphic…
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Illustration of AMD (revised from AMD in http://zainurrahmans.wordpress.com)
This illustration is the ending of this paper, it is hoped to the reader to develop this theory, retest it and revise it if needed.
References
Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching Languages to Young Learners. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Harmer, J. 2002. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Pearson. Longman
McCloskey, 2002. Seven Instructional Principles for Teaching Young Learners of English. TESOL Symposium. San Diego
McDonald. F. J. 1959. Educational Psychology. Wadsworth Publishing, co., Inc
Mooney, Carol Garhart. 2000. Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget and Vygotsky. Redleaf Press.
Suparno, Paul. DR. 2001. Teori Perkembangan Kognitif Jean Piaget. Penerbit Kanisius.
See also Zainurrahman's writings on Ideolinguistics, Pragmatics, Research Paradigm, Literature, Language Philosophy, Metaphysics Philosophy, and so on.
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Questions and Answers
Article Tags:
learning motivation
,children learning
,language learning
,english for young learner
,piaget
,vygotsky
,mcdonald
,educational psychology
,components of motivation
,age and motivation
,mccloskey
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