Motivation-Based Bonding Activities in an EFL Writing Classroom: A Case Report from Mainland China

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1 ELTWorldOnline.com February Special Issue on Bonding 2014 : A Case Report from Mainland China by Xinghua (Kevin) Liu Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Shanghai, China) Introduction Bonding, the theme of this special issue which, for the purpose of this issue, refers to the process of minimizing social distances and maximizing a sense of belonging among students in a class with the purpose of creating a friendly, non-threatening and relaxed atmosphere conducive for learning, contributes to the cohesion of classroom group and catalyzes the success of classroom teaching and learning. A bonding process draws in a number of variables, such as teaching and learning cultures, teaching and learning styles and teachers and students motivation. However, from my experience as an English teacher in the UK and China, motivating students, over other factors, creates a particularly positive classroom learning atmosphere and a bond between teachers and students. In short, motivational activities have a bonding effect. In this paper, I would like to share with readers my experience in creating a bond with my students and introduce a number of motivational measures I took in my 2013 EFL writing classes in mainland China and how they have led to bonding. In the following section, I will first sketch the theoretical framework from which I have designed these motivating activities. Process-approach motivating teaching practice One of the methods that I found useful and user-friendly for ELT purposes is the processapproach motivational teaching practice proposed by Dörnyei (2001), the components of which are shown in Figure 1. Dörnyei holds that this motivational practice is a dynamic process involving inter-related motivational strategies at various stages in the course of teaching, which normally starts from the initial arousal of motivation, namely the stage of Creating the basic motivational conditions and completes with the evaluation of motivated action, namely the stage of Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation (Dörnyei, 2001, p.28). Of course, as Dörnyei emphasizes, it is not necessary or sensible to stick to this sequencing or apply strategies within all the four stages. Instead, it is advisable to select motivational strategies appropriate to the specific classroom context. Copyright 2014, ISSN

2 Figure 1. The components of motivational teaching practice in the L2 classroom (adapted from Dörnyei, 2001, p.29). Creating the basic motivational conditions Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation Generating initial motivation Maintaining and protecting motivation Within each of the four stages in this step-wise framework, many hands-on motivational strategies have also been suggested for language teachers. Largely drawing on this framework, I designed a couple of motivational activities, which have implications for bonding with my classes. As language teaching and learning happen in a cultural context, I will discuss briefly in the next section some cultural information about the EFL students I taught. Contextual information of the EFL writing class I taught a year-long course of Intermediate English Writing for about 100 second year English Major students from Shanghai Jiao Tong University from September, The basic aim of this course was to acquaint students with some fundamental knowledge of English writing for specific genres. In particular, the curriculum required students to know concepts such as purpose and audience in English writing and techniques in writing narrative and argumentative essays before they took an Advanced English Writing Course taught by native English-speaking teachers in year three and four which mainly dealt with writing for academic purposes and special purposes. ELTWorldOnline.com 2

3 Motivational practice In this section, I will introduce some motivational bonding activities that I used in the 2013 autumn term. As mentioned, these activities were inspired by Dörnyei s (2001) framework as shown previously in Figure 1. Creating the basic motivational conditions There is much truth in the Chinese saying that a good beginning is half way on the route to success. Because developing a personal bonding relationship with students is a gradual process (Dörnyei, 2001, p.36), it is wise to start this journey right from the first session. On the very first day of class, I introduced a warming-up self-introduction activity to break the ice. It is routine for me to ask students to give a self-introduction in the first session, but I found two things that made this activity more interesting. One is to ask students to talk about their most recent life experience. As our students just came back from summer vacation (July to August) and compulsory military training (late August), I found them eager to share with others what they did during these times. Another method is to encourage students to perform. In each class, there are always students who mention in their self-introduction that they like singing or dancing. Whenever this happened, I would ask those who looked daring to perform for the class. In the class in question, most of the students happily accepted the invitation to sing or dance. This performance was welcomed by warm applauses and wild laughers from their fellow classmates. From that very moment, it was obvious that all nervousness and tension disappeared. Generating initial motivation Dörnyei (2001, p.51) emphasizes the importance of initiating students motivation to learn. Unless you are singularly fortunate with the composition of your class group, student motivation will not be automatically there and you will need to try and actively generate positive student attitudes towards learning. ELTWorldOnline.com 3

4 In the first session, after the self-introductions, I let students watch a TED video to arouse their interest and build up their confidence in English writing. In this video, the speaker Matt Cutts talks about trying something new for 30 days, and emphasizes that the newly-set objectives do not all have to be grand or serious, and what matters is the process of developing and improving skills. The overall theme of the video is encouraging, thoughtprovoking and funny. However, the most relevant thing for my writing class was Cutts anecdote on his personal writing experience. By persisting on writing 1,667 words a day, he succeeded in producing his 50,000-word novel from scratch in 30 days. This story reflected the core values of my writing class: practice and persistence as keys to writing success. I remember when the first session was over, one student approached me and said, I really enjoyed your class and it was very interesting and stimulating. I shall try my best to learn English Writing well. What inspiring feedback for me! Maintaining and protecting motivation One prominent element in Dörnyei s (2001) model (see Figure 1) is the actional stage designed to nurture students motivation (Dörnyei, 2001, p.71). Dörnyei (ibid.) observes that in the course of learning, the natural tendency to lose sight of the goal, to get tired or bored of the activity and to give way to attractive distractions will result in the initial motivation gradually petering out. Hence, it is imperative to have a set of new motivational influences come into the force in order to maintain and protect students motivation (ibid.).for this purpose, various activities were used. If a teacher teaches a large number of students, say more than 100 students, it would be a challenge to try to remember all their names. In the last autumn term, apart from the 100 or so students in the writing class, I also taught General English to another group of 60 students. Concurring with Dörnyei (2001, p.38) that to greet students and remember their names are small gestures that do not take up much time which can convey personal attention and can touch the lives of every student in some way, I was determined to remember students names by having a name-list with students recent photos. On the first session, I asked students to give their recent photos to the class monitor who then prepared a class name-list with their photos. With the help of this name list, I got to ELTWorldOnline.com 4

5 remember our students names easier and quicker. Remembering students names helped me monitor their performance. Most importantly, in a long run, it builds trust and creates bonding relationship between teacher and students. One motivational strategy suggested by Dörnyei (2001) is to make the teaching materials relevant for the learners. To this end, I paid particular attention to designing the writing topics and tried to make them related with the subject matter to the everyday experiences and backgrounds of the students (Dörnyei, 2001, p.66). To be more specific, I mainly referred to Zheng s (2008) book Write to Learn for topics to write about. The idea was to encourage students to write long essays on the given topic. This approach seemed useful in generating students interest in writing and maintaining their motivation. The resultant effect is reduced students resistance to writing tasks and thus bonding relationship between the teacher and students. Topics I chose from the book include: a story about a sum of unexpected money; a new flavor to life; a story with an unexpected ending; introducing a festival; the profits of doing something. Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation At the end of the teaching circle, Dörnyei (2001) suggests providing motivational feedback to students to prompt the learner to reflect constructively on areas that need improvement and identify things that he/she can do to increase the effectiveness of learning (Dörnyei, 2001, p.123). The most distinguishing feature of this feedback is to provide students with information rather than judgements against external standards or peer achievement (Dörnyei, 2001, p.124), which can reduce language learners anxiety over their own performance and ease tension from peer pressure, contributing to bonding in the classroom. To provide feedback, I held one-on-one meetings with all the students at the end of the term. In the last three weeks of the term, I met with each student individually. The objective was to give them an opportunity to talk about their writing. Before each tutoring session, they were asked to prepare a summative statement describing their individual achievements, progress, attitudes and difficulties in English writing. Each student came to the meeting with a folder containing all the writing assignments they did. While presenting their summative statement which had been prepared in advance, each student was also encouraged to support their ELTWorldOnline.com 5

6 statement with evidence taken from their writing portfolio. I took notes while listening to each student and tried to answer all their questions. For me, the meeting was an opportunity to examine each student s work and listen to their reflections. For the students, it was an opportunity to receive individual attention from the teacher and have their questions about writing answered. Overall, the activity offered a gold opportunity for me to establish personal rapport with students. I noticed that each student left the meeting happy and contented. Summary Of the many factors that contribute to successful English language teaching and learning, bonding between teachers and students, and among students, plays a very fundamental and important role in creating cohesion. From my teaching experience, I see bonding as the end product and motivating students as the process. What I have presented above are some of the motivational and bonding activities that I have designed on the basis of Dörnyei s (2001) dynamic model of motivational teaching practice and used in my English language writing classroom in a Chinese university. These activities were well received by my students. However, it is worth pointing out that language teaching takes place in a cultural context and not all teaching practice/strategies are readily applicable to another cultural context. Therefore, it is always advisable to evaluate carefully the teaching practice discussed in this paper before using them in a different cultural context. References Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. TED Talks (6 th September, 2013). Try Something New for 30 Days [Video file]. Retrieved from Zheng, C. (2008). Write to learn. Beijing: Science Press. ELTWorldOnline.com 6

7 About the author Xinghua (Kevin) Liu is a Lecturer of Applied Linguistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China and the Chief Editor of TESOL Journal (published by Asian EFL Journal group). He obtained his Ph.D degree in 2012 from the University of Reading, United Kingdom and his research interests include second language acquisition, systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics and psycholinguistics. ELTWorldOnline.com 7