V. Kasyanova
Kostanay State
University named after A.Baitursynov, Kazakhstan
Motivation
as one of the main factors for increasing students’ interest in studying a
foreign language
One of the most important factors in studying a foreign language is
motivation, which provides students' activity at the lesson, helps students to
develop their attentive attitude to their duties, accurate fulfillment of tasks
and manifestation of their diligence. Students’ independent work can be successful
only in condition of a positive attitude of the students to learning
activities. With such attitude to learning, even the students with low ability
to learn a foreign language can achieve a considerable success.
Therefore, the development of motivation in high school is, in our
opinion, one of the main tasks of educational work, and it should be carried
out in accordance with the specially organized and based on the above
circumstances of the pedagogical process.
In order to purposefully develop activity and interest of students in
training foreign languages, we use some of the most productive methods of
organizing their learning activities in the classroom: 1. Our teachers more and
thoroughly acquaint students with educational programs, stages and subjects of
study. From the first lesson the students see the prospect of their training
and are aware of the requirements for total control of their knowledge and
skills. 2. We specially organize learning activities of students, teaching them
some tricks of its implementation. In this case, we consider the students as
active participants in the learning process, taking into account their personal
past and present experience. 3. The students are timely provided with materials
which meet the current level of teaching. Training is conducted on the basis of
informative, authentic modern texts which allow us to acquaint the students
with the level of economic development and technology of the target language.
We use the latest teaching methods, including computer programs. 4. The
conditions are created not only for the development of academic interest, but
also the overall creative activity of students: the organization of
extracurricular work with the students, engaging them in research work, in
contests and many other activities.
Formation of motivation is a complex process, as not
all the students have a positive attitude to the process of learning, and it is
difficult for a teacher to make those students be interested in the subject,
which is of no interest to them. One should also take into account the
psychological and personal opportunities of both teachers and students of the
university, as well as socio-psychological possibilities inherent in the system
which is specific to the academic staff of interactions and relationships. Therefore, the process of activating the potential of an individual
student is provided by the organization of joint creative activity of a teacher
and a student. After all, many students study a foreign language indifferently,
considering that it is not the main subject at non-linguistic faculties and not
realizing the need to improve their knowledge in order to prepare for a future
successful career. The teacher's task is to
convince pessimistic students that the quality of their work can help them to
win a place in the society in future.
Educators
and psychologists distinguish various motives and incentives for foreign
language learning. In pedagogical literature there is no single approach to
this subject. However, it is still possible to identify some groups of motives:
1. Motives of prospects. This group means a sensible preparation for
future activities, the desire to prove oneself as a true professional.
2. Communicative motives which are associated with the desire of an
individual to self-improvement, to the assertion in the team.
3. Cognitive motives appear when a student gets enjoyed by the process
of learning. This implies the interest in knowledge, the desire to learn as
much as possible.
4. Pragmatic motives. This group means the students' striving to
gain material profit, even in a distant future.
5. Motives of responsibility presuppose a feeling of responsibility to
loved people, fear of disapproval. In addition to loved people the opinions of
those, with whom they closely interact, affect on students' motivation. These
opinions can sometimes be decisive.
The presence in
students at least one of these types of motivation will help the teacher to
create favorable conditions for effective learning a foreign language and to
prevent negative interference in the process of learning because a negative
attitude to language learning is not the thing on which the teacher would like
to waste time during the lesson. Personal
attitude to the studied subject is a significant moment in the formation of
motivation of educational process. Proper organization of the learning process,
the methods used by the teacher, make feel confident in the success of language
learning. Another important factor is the competence of the teacher, his love
to taught language. In this case, both parties will feel comfortable and
confident.
Motives
as a component of the structure of the learning process are closely connected
with the content and teaching methods. The choice of the ways to motivate
depends on the content of the learnt material and methods include in their
structure the corresponding techniques.
As
the cognitive interest is one of the motives, teachers should consider this
factor in their work. Interest as a personality trait is developed in
activities and if the content of lessons is saturated it can be strengthened by
organizing intensive work with the material, using video, internet, interesting
texts, thereby creating a positive physical and emotional atmosphere. It is
only important to think carefully about every activity, choosing the right
goals and methods of teaching.
Offering
for work the theme or text on the students’ specialty teachers can rely on
their intuition, professional competence and experience. However, one should
take into account the age, interests, knowledge, experience and capabilities of
the students. Students of
non-linguistic faculties study popular scientific literature on their
specialty, especially certain scientific publications on the topic, research
achievements of scientists abroad, pick up material for papers, conferences,
etc. The task of the teacher is not only to choose an interesting article, but
use techniques for working with the text that will encourage students to its
analysis and discussion of certain linguistic laws. Working with such material, it is important to teach students to find
and analyze the characteristic features of these texts, linguistic phenomena,
to focus on different meanings of words and phrases used in the language of the
scientific literature. The students face the task not just to translate the
sentence, but also to analyze its grammatical, semantic and stylistic
structure.
To
understand the meaning, it is required to know the exact translation of words
and phrases especially focusing on polysemantic words. And not only linguistic
knowledge, but also the possession of special terminology by teachers and
students are necessary.
Considering
these factors, it can be argued that the work with the vocabulary is essential
when reading scientific texts, and in order to translate the text an intensive
work should be carried out with the lexical material, including teaching
students to work with dictionaries. You can expand your vocabulary with
abundant reading, performing a series of exercises in which lexical units are
repeated. Using a variety of activities that can teach students to understand
the nuances of words, synonyms, ability to guess the meaning of words with the
help of antonyms, describe the meaning of the word, if there is no exact
translation.
Particular attention should be paid to words - false
friends of interpreters. We should not forget about the international words,
since they sometimes can present difficulties for those students who do not
have the language flair.
It should be noted that the study of grammar at
non-language specialties is not a final aim in itself, but it should
organically fit the work with the special literature. From this point of view
it would be better to study grammatical phenomena on the basis of simple
materials with specialized vocabulary. As the style of popular science
literature suggests a precise explanation and description of the scientific
facts, the study of grammar (in particular, at non-language faculties) focuses
on the passive voice, personal and impersonal constructions of complex and
compound sentences, non-finite forms of the verbs and their constructions. Possessing the ability to recognize the
linguistic features of the text and to take into account the specific characteristics
of the style of popular science literature, it will not be difficult for the
student and then even fun to work with the text, to discuss relevant problems.
It is important that students not only considered the proposal as a kind of
grammatical phenomenon, but managed to catch the meaning of the utterance.
Using possibilities of Internet resources, the teacher can solve a
number of didactic problems, and most importantly, develop students' positive
motivation, interest in learning a foreign language. When creating a model of real communication, the teacher expects the
students to find themselves in real-life situations and to learn quickly and
adequately respond to them. They have the ability not only to receive
information, but also to take part in competitions and video conferences,
because the Internet offers a wide variety of information and resources.
Development of cognitive interests
and motivation for learning promotes the involvement of the material connected
with the culture of the country of the studied language. They develop the
ability to communicate in the target language, acquaint the students with
universal values and highlight the features of their national culture.
Thus, in the
conditions of the artificially formed language environment of the educational process
the teacher is given a large and complex role in the development of motivation,
which is extremely important for a positive atmosphere in a creative audience
and eventually for the students’ successful language education.
References:
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С.К. Фоломкиной. Вып.20. – М.: Высш. шк., 1987. – 143 с.: ил. – с.23.
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