Study_on_Classroom_Motivation_to_College_Students_

Xianghua WU
Zhengzhou University of Science&Technology
Abstract:Motivation is an effective method of classroom teaching. No matter what grade students are in, they all need motivation. Based on different individual needs, motivation should be practical and contemporary, and requires innovation. With the development of The Times, the particularity of college students requires teachers to motivate them differently according to their different purposes of learning. However, in the actual teaching process, the effect of motivation often falls flat. This paper analyzes and discusses the motivation measures in college English classroom based on the hier-archy of needs theory.
Key words: Private colleges and universities; English classroom; Motivation
1. Introduction
(1)Research Background
A wise man once said, “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” As the soul of society, education needs to keep pace with the Times and the society. In recent years, economic globalization, industrial moderni-zation and educational internationalization have become the trend of development. In order to adapt to the development of modern economy and society, education has been also developing. Private higher education has also joined the army of higher education and gradually developed vigorously, adding strength to Chinese education cause. The About the author: Xianghua WU(1986-6), Female, Han, Qixian County , Henan Province , Lecturer, Master, English teaching theory and practice.
Funded project: This thesis originated from the project of Henan federation of social science: Investigation of Current Situation of Information Literacy of College Students in Henan Prov-ince and its Cultivation Strategies[SKL—2019—2238].
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number of private colleges and universities has been increasing, and colleges and universities are expanding their enrollment, which gives more students chances to go to colleges.
Since 2017, the enrollment of private colleges and universities has been merged with the second batch of undergraduate enrollment, and the basic admission score line has been set the same as the second batch of undergraduate enrollment. Overall, the quality of students in private colleges and universities has been improved. However, there is still a big gap between them and the students of the first and second batch of universities.
(2)Characteristics of Private College Students
The characteristics of private college students mainly reflect in the following as-pects: First, the overall enrollment score of students is low and the learning foundation is weak; Second, Most students who enter private colleges and universities do not have outstanding academic performance in high school, so their outlook on life, values and learning views are different from those of public undergraduate colleges and universi-ties as a whole; Third, quite a number of students in private colleges and universities have good economic conditions, their world outlook and consumption concept are rel-atively natural and unrestrained; Forth, they are weak in independent learning ability. 2. Status of College English Class
(1) Status of EnglishClass Teaching
At present, there are two significant features of college English teaching in Private colleges and universities: large class teaching and multimedia network assisted teach-ing. Large class always has a population of about 50-70 students. The teaching method is also traditional: classroom teaching (mainly including non-multimedia classroom). Due to the large numbers of each teaching class, traditional teaching has its advantages: First,Close distance with students makes it easier for teachers to manage classes; Sec-ond, there is no sense of alienation between teachers and students, so it is more con-venient for teachers and students to interact and communicate. English class needs good interaction between teachers and students, so as to better expose students to the learning environment. Third, flexibility makes more convenient for teachers to organ-ize colorful classroom activities. However, there are also disadvantages: First, Teachers cannot directly show some pictures or videos, which reduces the interest of English learning to some extent; Second, teachers need to write on the blackboard, some con-tents may be omitted due to time limitation; Third, the large number of students cannot be guaranteed to participate in class activities.
Study on Classroom Motivation to College Students in Private Colleges and
Universities: Based on English Classroom Teaching
(2) Problems in College English Teaching
At present, most private college English classes are divided into two parts: read-ing & writing class and listening & speaking class. Reading and writing class adopts traditional classroom teaching, while listening and speaking class adopts an autono-mous learning system under the supervision of teachers. On the whole, students have low interest in learning English and lack of motivation. Some students can listen to the teacher carefully and actively participate in classroom activities. Part o f students don’t understand and do other things, such as reading other books and mobile phones. There are also some students who are totally immersed in their own world without any inter-est in learning. And there are also individual students who like to do strange behaviors in class in order to attract the teacher’s attention.
Therefore, the reform of college English teaching should start from the reform of classroom teaching. Teachers should take measures to motivate students in the class-room aiming to improve their low interest and learning motivation.
3. Theory about Classroom Motivation
(1) The Hierarchy of Needs Theory
The motivation of different student groups should be need-based, realistic and con-temporary, and requires innovation. Among many motivation theories, Maslow’s hierar-chy of needs theory has wide influence. Maslow believed that people have seven needs: physiological needs, safety needs, needs for belonging and love, needs for respect, needs for knowledge and understanding, needs for beauty and needs for self-realization. He defines these needs in two categories: one is the deficiency need; the other is the need for growth. The former is necessary for people’s survival, while the latter can make our life better.According to the hierarchy of needs theory, only when people’s lower needs are satisfied, can higher needs be generated. (Chen Qi, Liu Rude, 2007).
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is often used as a basis for motivation. Since the 21st century, this theory has been widely applied in the field of education. Xing Xiaodong (2012) believed that Maslow’s hierarchy theory is a theory about the satisfac-tion and development of human needs in various aspects, which is conducive to stimu-late students’ learning motivation, realize individualized teaching, construct harmonious teacher-student relationship and harmonious classroom, and realize effective and effi-cient teaching. Zhu Litao (2011) emphasizes on caring about the physiological needs of college students, paying attention to their safety needs, their belonging and love needs, maintaining their self-esteem needs, and encouraging their self-realization.
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Chen Qi and Liu Rude (2007) believed that the most important deficiency needs of students in schools are love and self-esteem. According to the current performance of private college students, the current social environment of such college students is com-plex, especially the influence brought by the information society on campus, which makes many college students lack of self-realization pursuit of study. Instead, they focus too much on current material needs, which lead to the phenomenon of lacking learning motivation and learning needs.
Therefore, students are divided into four categories according to their different needs and motivations in order to teach students better in accordance with their aptitude.
(2) Classification of Students on the Basis of the Hierarchy of Needs Theory
According to the characteristics of students of the private colleges and universities, students’ classroom performance, and the students’ needs and motivation of learning English, the private colleges students can be divided into four categories: the first kind of students have a clear goal of learning English, in order to cope with final tests, and pass CET 4 and 6, or take postgraduate examination, such kind of students study hard in class, the proportion of this kind of students is about 20%. The second category of students have no grand goals, they learn English just to pass the final exam. However, the purpose of this kind of students to learn English is relatively clear, they will listen to the teachers in class, take an active part in class activities, the number of such stu-dents accounts for about 40%; The third kind of students really have interest to learn English and want to learn, but they have bad foundation of knowledge. Last, a few stu-dents have no examination needs, do not care about the final exam, they have no interest and poor foundation. These students make up about 10 % of the class. Therefore, teach-ers can meet the needs of different types of students in class to motivate students.
4. College English Classroom Motivation Methods
(1) Stimulate Students’ Learning Motivation
Learners’ learning needs and interest can be aroused through effective help so that their academic performance will be improved (Zhu Chun.1994). According to the stu-dents’ classroom environment and classroom performance combined with the particular-ity of the student group, flexible and changeable forms should be adopted in the teaching process to treat different student groups respectively.
Class content should be designed to cater for each category of students. For the first class, in addition to the normal explanation of textbook knowledge, some key words or language points should be appropriately expanded; The second kind of students can ba-
Study on Classroom Motivation to College Students in Private Colleges and
Universities: Based on English Classroom Teaching sically accept the difficult content of the textbook, they can accept the normal teaching process; For the third group of students, to stimulate their interest in learning, some cul-tural comparison analysis should be set in the classroom to explain the content, so that students can express their own understanding and views, let them feel the charm of Eng-lish through passive learning, and then change their attitude towards English. For the fourth group of students with personality, on the premise of not affecting the class order, teachers can ask them simple questions occasionally to attract their attention and im-prove their learning confidence.
(2) Stimulate Learning Interest by Using Information Tools
Under the education information environment, the traditional education sys-tem has undergone an important transformation, and the learning users have more diversified learning methods. After distance learning and digital learning, mobile learning has become a new learning mode attracting learners’ attention (Wang yan, Wu Qinglin:2018). In the process of using information tools, students lack the abil-ity of self-conscious learning. Study duration is not long, it is easy for students to give up study task halfway. Therefore, smart phones and other information tools have become the biggest problem in the classroom. How to guide students to use information tools in class so that students’ interest point can b e transformed from information tools to learning content becomes an urgent problem to be solved. The presentation of classroom content should be combined with information tools. For example, the use of learning apps such as Xue Xi Tong(a learning App in China, which Contains a wealth of learning resources and can be used in and after class) makes class more interesting. Taking attendance, asking questions and uploading learning materials, etc., allow students to use information tools as learning tools. In order to test the learning effect, questions, discussions, presentations and other class activities should be designed to test students’ learning situation.
(3) Give Full Play to the Energy of Positive Reinforcement
Different types of students have different learning purposes, motivations and needs, so teachers should adopt different ways of motivation. Appropriate scores should be given to the first type of students, who have a clear motivation of learn-ing purpose, certain learning foundation and actively participate in class activities (for example, the Number One in each vocabulary or text reciting competition will be rewarded with 2 marks, combined with CET-4 or 6 papers). The second kind of students have weak motivation to participate in the level examination, and they are rewarded with marks of performance or oral praise. As for the third and fourth class students, as long as they participate in, they will be given some marks appropriately. All the students will be noticed their performance points in class before the final exam.
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Students are encouraged to learn English by rewarding their scores and making them feel that their achievements are the results of their own efforts.
(4) Create Teamwork and Competition Situations
Information tools, including mobile phones, computers, ipad, etc., should be applied appropriately in classroom to set flexible classroom activities.
Colorful classroom activities can attract students’ attention, which not only makes students feel the fun of learning, but also makes students fully involve in the classroom activities. Class activities in college English class mainly include: speaking words, memorizing words, reciting the text, debating competitions, TV program imita-tion (a station on earth, who is undercover, broadcasters,etc.), contracting class (stu-dents can contract class time from 1 to 10 minutes before class to explain knowledge related with textbook content, culture, and tell stories, they also can do self talent show, etc.), watching videos, making videos. Teachers also set different activities according to the different festivals: For example, on the Lantern Festival, students can be asked to guess lantern riddles (English vs. Chinese) in class, which not only ignite their pas-sion for learning, but also enable them to know differences between English and Chinese.
5. Conclusion
All kinds of students should be given targeted encouragement. Motivation also requires innovation. The living environment of modern students changes with each passing day, and students’ needs are increasing. At the same time, there are more and more disturbing factors for their study. In order to make students grow healthily, teachers need to pay more attention to students comprehensively, especially in class. Classroom is the main place for students to receive knowledge. So, how to manage classroom and motivate students better deserves further study.
Works Cited
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[2]Xing Xiaodong. “Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory in Senior High School Thought
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Study on Classroom Motivation to College Students in Private Colleges and
Universities: Based on English Classroom Teaching
[4] Zhu Chun. “Foreign Language Teaching Psychology”. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign
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[5] Wang Yan, Wu Qinglin. “Research on Influential Factors and Strategies of Mobile
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