Supplementing the teaching material with authentic texts and task

Students often develop negative attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language due to the lack of stimulating, authentic teaching material and tasks. Authentic material is meaningful to students, challenges their cognitive abilities, engages them personally. It also increases interest and intrinsic motivation. If you feel that your English coursebook contains few authentic texts, then you need to provide your students with authentic texts and activities. Authentic material and tasks should be selected based on the following guidelines:

a) They should be related to the students' interests, knowledge and everyday experiences.
b) They should foster learner autonomy by providing activities and tasks that require students to use English for authentic communicative purposes.

Conclusion

The above parameters, which have a great impact on promoting positive attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language, are essential by themselves. However, they overlap, and fostering of positive attitudes is a complex mixture of all the features described.

English teachers should also note that the principles and techniques described above are general. Teachers need to adapt them according to their students' needs and the specific teaching context.

Finally, apart from the above principles, it is worth mentioning that fostering positive attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language is a dynamic process. Teachers should be constantly observing their classrooms and their students. In this way, they will be able to identify sources of discontent among students, recognize the reasons why they misbehave, are unwilling to participate, and have low performance.

References

·         Brophy, J. (2004). Motivating Students to Learn, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

·         Dörnyei, Z. 2001. Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

·         Ebata, M. (2008). Motivation Factors in Language Learning. The Internet TESL Journal, 14 (4). 

·         Frymier, A. (1993). The impact of teacher immediacy on students’ motivation: Is it the same for all students?. Communication Education, 41, 454-464