Motivation - a Brief Explanation

Motivation is a simple word which means a lot. From “Motivation Theory for Teachers” book written by Madeline Hunter, motivation means state of need or desire that activates the person to do something that will satisfy that need or desire. Well, what I want to do now is giving summary about what I have read from that book. This book is simply told us, teachers or teacher candidate on how to motivate students. The most important point I got from this book is, you will never make children learn. No one can make a child or anyone else learn. What we could do is only encourage them to learn, not make them learn.

This book also explained about some variables which related to motivation, like the degree of concern or tension, the feeling tone, interest, success, difficulty, knowledge of result, and relation of the activity to an internalized goal. Well. Let me explain this one by one.

First is the degree of concern or tension. How come this degree of concern or tension influence motivation while some of us think that tension (or anxiety) is not good? Well, actually feeling anxiety is somehow important. Why? Because sometimes you just need the feeling of up and down. Just imagine that everything goes right on your life without any tension or anxiety. It will be boring, right? Because you do not need a big effort to do things, you just keep it that way so you will have less motivation. Just take a look at this example. Suppose that it was a lovely Sunday morning, you were lying on your bed, reading a book or watching movie you love the most, and suddenly got a text from your friend that you had to bring a course book. You might do nothing because you just need to look for the course book after you finish reading your book or watching movie. But it will be different if you got a second text from your friend said that you have to analyze that course book and explain what the content and assessment used for one chapter in that book. You might just finish your activity and start to analyze that course book. But I don’t really think about it. I still can do it later after I finish reading my book or watching a movie. Yes! You can. I am sure you can. But you cannot lie that your degree of concern or anxiety has increased so you will keep thinking about your task and cannot feel comfort to read your book until you do your task. So this is how degree of concern or tension relates with motivation.

Second is the feeling tone. What feeling tone is? Feeling tone is the feeling of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. This feeling tone could influence the motivation. The pleasant feeling will increase the motivation in a good way, the unpleasant feeling will increase the motivation in a bad way (or you might say that it decrease the motivation in a good way) and neutral feeling will bring no impact. See this example. Suppose that you were a new English teacher. You did all the method you get when you were studying in university. You try to look for the best method to teach, improve your pedagogy skills, involve students in all activity, and also create a comfort and safe classroom for your students. When you did so, I am sure that all of your students will feel pleasant. They will wait for your class with a happy face. And this condition will increase their motivation in a good way. But then suppose that you did not do anything like what you did in the previous example. What you did is only ask them to read a book and keep giving them a lot of assignment to do without explaining why they should do all the things. This condition will lead to unpleasant feeling, where they thing you were not capable enough to teach. And it will decrease their motivation (or demotivated them), they will not wait for your class with their happy face. They even might wish that you will not come to the class to teach. Why? Because they feel unpleasant in your classroom. For neutral one, well, it will not do a thing.

The third is interest. All of us will be motivated to do the thing we are interested in, right? And so do the students. When they are interested in doing something, their motivation to do that thing will increase. For example I love to write a story, and I am interested in writing story for kids. So when the teacher gives me a task to write a story, I will do it happily. Although the teacher gives a time bound for example two days, I still able to do that task because I already interested in writing a story.

The fourth is success. As a sentence I sited from Motivation Theory for Teachers book, “You are usually more successful in activities that interest you, and your success in turn tends to stimulate increased interest.” What I mean by success is when you get a task you are interested in, you will feel success when you successfully accomplished the task. The feeling of accomplishing the task could increase students’ motivation in doing the next step.

The fifth is knowledge of result or simply a feedback on what students have done. This knowledge of result can increase students’ motivation as written by Madeline Hunter that “Giving students highly specific knowledge of result usually yields increased motivation.” Giving them complete and specific feedback will really help students to learn. Suppose that you just give a big circle on your students essay and ask them to re-write their essay without telling them which part should be corrected. I am sure that your students will get confused and they might do not want to re-write their essay because they are afraid of making the same mistakes. Or maybe you just give a word “good” on your students work. I am also sure that they will get nothing. They must think, “After the teacher write “good”, so what? I just know that mine is good without knowing which part I should improve.” Another story would happen if you tell them specifically which part should be corrected or improved. Your students will know what to do next and will feel motivated to do the task because the more specific you give the knowledge of result, the more students will improve their performance as an indicator of the motivation.

The last is relation of the activity to an internalized goal or we might say as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Well, talking about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is fun. One question which always come up, which one is the most important, the intrinsic or extrinsic motivation? For me of course the intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is motivation which comes up from your self. It is important for having intrinsic motivation because having intrinsic motivation will make you depend on yourself and your own capability to achieve your goal. But when it comes to extrinsic motivation, you do things because other people want you to do it. This extrinsic motivation will not really work because the power of extrinsic motivation is controlled by the environmental circumstances and changes with the environments. So when the condition changed, you will not feel motivated anymore.

So, the main core of my writing is, being teacher is not easy though. There must be a lot of thing to be considered. One of the things is motivation. And in motivation, there are still a lot of variables related to each other which can influence the motivation itself. Our task is not to make students to learn, but how to make students encourage to learn by increasing their motivation.