Motivation in the ALT classroom In the academic field of Learning Science, “motivation” is a broad set of technical metrics that attempt to capture the amount of a student’s willingness to engage with educational material, varied by all sorts of minute-but-interesting factors. When talking about ESL education as a JET, however, I blend the technical term and the connotative meaning with a spin unique to Japanese culture. As grating as it is to those raised in Western education environments, you have to take into account a student’s willingness to do what you are asking them and in what circumstances. In Japan, being the hierarchical culture that it is, straight up refusal is rare compared to American classrooms, and the ways it manifests are striking. The classic example is the students who are usually sleep during class. Every ALT finds their own ways to deal with them. Dealing with different levels of motivation For example, the typical dream classroom is high ability and high motivation. These are those classes where you bring in an activity that is challenging for students in general, but this group can handle it with ease and does so with relish. Then you have the low ability but high motivation classes. These groups are also pretty fun, even if you have to adjust your activities for lower expectations or rely on goofy games. Of course, why a group has high motivation matters. Is it because they like you or English, or because the JTE is a draconian disciplinarian? Or they’re merely obeying commands without much joy or engagement? Whatever the case, any high motivation group is easy to work with. Low motivation classrooms, on the other hand, can be hell. High ability and low motivation is workable, especially if their abilities are high enough that you can just use direct questioning, call-and-response techniques, and other such classroom methods where basic communication is a given. But with that worst of all possible worlds—low ability and low motivation—what can you do?
One important technique is to establish a baseline of expectations that you do not waver on. For example, if I am directly talking to a student, I do not allow them to ignore me. I prefer not to be strict or stern in getting a response out of them because that breeds resistance. It’s better to be friendly or energetic or charming. However, I make sure it is clear that if I am speaking to a student, they are expected to respond with English, even if it’s really bad English and even if I have to help them along with some mental scaffolding in Japanese. When everyone knows that I am not going away until I get a response, and instances of turning away or pretending to sleep are cut down dramatically. Students will naturally rise to meet your expectations, a well-documented phenomenon known as the Pygmalion Effect. With high-achieving classes, you have to provide them with the tools to match your high expectations. I try to keep my motivations similar between classes for the sake of promoting equal opportunities with students. This means that with my low motivation classrooms, rather than foregrounding how high I expect to aim, I let them know that there is a floor beneath which they cannot drop—and then provide them with the tools to meet those minimum expectations before starting to reach higher with their capabilities. Even with this norm set, it is almost impossible to keep some low motivation classrooms on task. You can expect any individual student to respond and engage when you’re directly focused on them, but the rest of the class feels free to goof off. With some classrooms, you can get around this problem by constantly providing group leadership through a heavily-supervised activity. For example, leading students in group call-and-response drills, or working them through a set of worksheet problems works well. But there are some absolutely empty-spirited classes that will do nothing without your direct attention on each individual student—and since you can’t be everywhere at once, you have to structure your lessons in a specialized way.
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