I wish I remembered sharing this story in class, but thankfully we have the class blog to share our thoughts. In one of my current classes, I had a Chuukese classmate (I had her in several classes as well) who is an intelligent girl. On the 3rd or 4th meeting, our professor put her on the spot by asking her a question she did not know the answer to. He made a ridiculous comment about how she's supposed to know this information already since there was a prerequisite for the class he's teaching. It was obvious to me that response really affected her that day. I remember thinking to myself "She's going to end up dropping this class because of how he made her feel" and sure enough, she hasn't returned to class since. My professor inquired to the rest of us about her whereabouts because she's still currently registered. I wanted to say to him, "She's going to drop this class because of YOU!" But of course, I kept that to myself.
This is evidence, just like the rest of the stories we shared in class, that negative comments from a teacher truly affects the learner's affective domain and cause demotivation. My Chuukese classmate and I are majoring in the same content and she needs this specific class to graduate, but that still did not stop her from dropping the course and waiting until next semester to retake the class, most likely from another professor.
Active Engagement in Learning!
Role playing, storytelling, drama
Teacher's constructive feedbacks are always crucial to the students' motivation in learning as they put either positive or negative impacts on the young minds. Richard-Amato discussed in the chapter that negative stereotypes that are attributed to the ELLS may become internalized and affect the self-esteem of the learners. Self-esteem is important in building self-confidence with which learners obtain significant self-security which leads to a positive attitude towards and consistent motivation for successful learning. Teachers should be conscious at all times (at least in the class) how they play an important role for the students' affective domain.
ReplyDeleteWhen students have a certain perspective of their teacher, it makes all the difference. When the teacher intimidates the students and downgrades the students, the student will develoop anxiety and it have a negative attitude towards the teacher, even the subject/class. As edcuators we need to establish sensitivity when speaking to our students. ESL students need to be surrounded by professionals and physical environments that are encouraging of the English language. As teachers, we need to create a positive learning environment and we should begin with ourselves.
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