English Learning Interest Of Junior High School Students

After reading “On Becoming a Better Student” by Donna Farhi Schuster, I started to think about some of the idea she mentioned. I have always been a curious person. I have always wanted to learn more about what I was interested in, but that stopped in high school. Expressing interest in something in high school was not something I did often. I was so overwhelmed with busy work in school that I was exhausted by the time I had time to actually sit down and research something I was interested in.

During my high school years, I can confidently say I have excelled in my academic endeavours. This success is partially due to my desire to learn. I am always intrigued by the lessons and concepts that are at the core of assigned work. My passion for learning has facilitated my learning process; because I am usually interested in the material that is being taught, my ability to retain and understand information is heightened. My academic success is also due to my drive to do the best I can. Since grade nine, I have demanded excellence from myself in all academic subjects. I strived to perform to the best of my abilities in the first high school years so that I would adopt that habit early and take it with me through the senior high school years. Finally, my academic excellence

“ Students do become behaviorally, emotionally, and cognitively involved in the learning activities their teachers provide (e.g., write an essay, solve a math problem), and their extent of effort, enjoyment, and strategic thinking does predict important outcomes, such as achievement. But students also do more than this. Students also, more or less, proactively contribute into the flow of instruction they receive as they attempt not only to learn but also to create a more motivationally supportive learning environment for themselves ( Bandura,

Intrinsic motivation is a key aspect of student success in school. Van den Broeck, Vansteenkiste, and De Witte (2013) define intrinsic motivation as, “the engagement in an activity for its own sake, that is, for the satisfaction and enjoyment experienced during the course of the activity itself” (p. 4). Educators encourage intrinsic motivation within their students as it boosts

As a non-traditional student, I have experienced so many interests in my life, but as stated by Eleanor Roosevelt being interested in one thing will lead to new interests. I found this to be very interesting because although I had never really thought about it I found it to be true because being interested in my education has brought many new interests to me and will continue to bring many more. Some of the interests that I have gained during my academic career include things such as the masters of accountancy program, supply chain management, volunteer work, teamwork, and leadership skills to name a few of the most important that will carry on with me after graduation.

It's hard to believe that it’s already time for Midterms in my English 101 class. The adventure has been a lot easier than I at first anticipated. In any case, I am happy that I am taking the class and learning from it. In the beginning it appeared somewhat hard however I was resolved to compel my way through this class regardless of what difficulties I needed to persevere.

Introduction/background information: Susanna Chao is fourteen years old, of Asian ethnicity, English is her second language but she does not require any English Language Learners Programs. She did attend preschool at ages three and four. Susanna’s home life seems stable. However, it is not that of a typical living situation. She lives in an apartment with her mother and grandmother. She has two younger siblings, a sister and a brother. Susanna has attended several different schools in her life, primarily elementary schools. According to past teacher comments and grade reports, her grades have suffered due to tardiness, absences, and lack of engagement in subjects that don’t peak her interest. She has, however, improved her grades in reading, language arts, science, technology, and social science. Her teachers in extracurricular classes comment about her being a joy to their class, and being eager to learn from them.

Educators throughout the nation have become frustrated with the demand of how to encourage and motivate their students especially those that are not prepared academically and socially. In this case a student will generally display disruptive behavior, a lack of interest, and unrealistic ambitions. Once an educator is able to identify the different factors that affect a student’s motivation along with a few helpful strategies he or she will be able to create the educational motivation needed for effective student learning.

In order for one to be able to remain focused, and attentive on the topic, it is important that the person gains the interest of whats being taught. A man with the name of Franic Lockwood stated: “In the long run the secret of study resides in our ability to bath our thought, our task, our lesson in the stream of interest”. Essentially what this is indicating is that in order for us to be strong in our studies, with must be able to surround ourselves with interest, we have to make being interested in our topic our number one priority. Another way to reword Franic Lockwood’s statement is that we as students must expose ourselves to the exciting facts of the topics first before we gain knowledge of what we’re studying. Although gaining

One major problem in the student body today is the lack of motivation kids have in their schoolwork. The most effective way to keep them motivated is an inner motivation within themselves, or an interior motivation, rather than parents and teachers pushing them to do their best, or an exterior motivation. The best ways to do this is to make learning fun and interesting (not boring), and to help them understand why they will need the skills they are learning are for.

The greatest struggle in our educational system is the lack of educators that are willing to activate the students’ interest in the subject. Instead of increasing the students’ motivation to learn, students are being presented with material that is meaningless to them. I believe that effective teaching starts by presenting students with material that seems relevant to them. Presenting fresh ideas to students increases their motivation. Breaking the monotone routine makes students willing to explore new content. It is the teacher’s responsibility to provide students with some motivation that augments the students’ willingness to learn a topic. Learning is a step by step process that will not occur over night. This process requires great effort from both the teacher and the

(2017), educators play a key role in motivating students to learn (p. 234). Understanding the interests of students can help educators to develop motivating and engaging lesson content. Forming a syllabus around student interests is called an interest-based curriculum (Hedges, 2011, p. 25). Hedges (2015) states that building an interest-based curriculum is an effective way to engage students in meaningful learning experiences (p. 25). For example, when students show an interest in sport such as rugby league, educators can assist students to create a leaderboard that explores mathematical concepts like addition, subtraction, ordinal numbers, and chance and data. By adopting an interest-based curriculum, students are motivated to learn. In addition to curriculum strategies, students are motivated to learn through the law of effect. O’Donnell et al. (2016) describe the law of effect as the notion that positive outcomes of behaviours increase the frequency of the behaviour, negative outcomes from behaviours reduces the frequency of the behaviour (p. 241). Praise, privileges and attention can be used as positive reinforcers for desirable student behaviours (O’Donnell et al., 2016, p. 241). Educators can prompt students to demonstrate appropriate behaviours and engage in learning by publicly praising students who exhibit desirable behaviours. For example, a teacher can motivate students to sit quietly on the mat by saying ‘Thank you to those students

They can also help motivate student’s desire to learn by being engaged with both the content and students themselves.

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)

ESL students are students that speak English as a second language. Presently, there is many different system to characterize this type of students (qtd in Shi, Steen 63). For example, they can be seen as “English Language Learners (ELL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English Language Development (ELD), English Language Service (ELS), and