Understanding Liceo A-100 students´ emotions to foster motivation : implications of emotions in learning

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(1)Faculty of Education English Pedagogy. Understanding Liceo A-100 Students’ Emotions to Foster Motivation Implications of Emotions in Learning. Felipe Avilés.

(2) Avilés 1. Acknowledgments. I want to take this opportunity to thank a group of important people who have been by my side throughout all these years in my teacher formation and whose invaluable support, wisdom, patience, and love motivated me to continue in this enterprise of becoming an Educator and English Teacher. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my friends, Lorena Galvez and Joseline Moya, people whose friendship gave me support and a helping hand when I needed. Secondly, I cannot forget one of my best teachers in this university, the professor Priscilla Echeverria, whose teaching style and human quality provided me with the right model that I would like to follow. In addition, I would like to thank the Professor Mary Jane Abrahams who helped me in my practicum, where I had to polish several details related to my teaching. Finally, I want to dedicate these lines to my family and students who are the reason of doing all this.. Thank you all very much..

(3) Avilés 2. Agradecimientos. Quiero aprovechar esta oportunidad para agradecer a un grupo de personas importantes que han estado a mi lado durante todos estos años en mi formación como docente y cuyo valioso apoyo, sabiduría, paciencia y amor me motivaron a seguir en esta empresa de convertirme en educador y Profesor de Inglés. En primer lugar, me gustaría expresar mi gratitud a mis amigos, Lorena Gálvez y Joseline Moya, personas cuya amistad me dio apoyo y una mano amiga cuando lo necesité. En segundo lugar, no puedo olvidar a uno de mis mejores profesores en esta universidad, la profesora Priscilla Echeverría, cuyo estilo de enseñanza y calidad humana me proporcionó el modelo adecuado que me gustaría seguir. Además, me gustaría agradecer a la profesora Mary Jane Abrahams quien me ayudó a pulir grandes detalles relacionados con mi práctica. Por último, quiero dedicar estas líneas a mi familia y a los estudiantes que son la razón de hacer todo esto.. Muchas gracias a todos..

(4) Avilés 3. Abstract. The following action research was made with High School students from a PrivateSubsidized School in Santiago. It focuses on a problem I faced in my teaching internship when I asked my students to participate in the class, I did not feel too much involvement and interest from them. Thus, I felt deeply disappointed of myself, I wanted to know what the reason of this lack of motivation was, and what I was doing wrong in relation to my lesson plans and my teaching. The research includes data, such as, class observations, students and teacher’s assessments that partly explain the problem’s reasons. Also, this research includes an action plan in order to deal with and eventually remedy the problem connected with motivation that these students have.. Key words: motivation, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, rapport, emotions, affect achievement, positive and negative emotions, self-empathy..

(5) Avilés 4. Resumen. La siguiente investigación-acción se realizó con estudiantes de secundaria de una escuela privada-subvencionada en Santiago. Se centra en un problema que enfrenté en mi práctica docente cuando les pedí a mis estudiantes participar en la clase y no sentía demasiada implicación e interés de ellos. Por lo tanto, me sentí profundamente decepcionado de mí mismo, quería saber cuál era la razón de esta falta de motivación y de lo que estaba haciendo mal en la planificación de mis clases y en mi quehacer. La investigación incluyó datos como, observaciones de clase, a los estudiantes y las evaluaciones al profesor que explica en parte las razones del problema. Además, esta investigación incluye un plan de acción con el fin de tratar y eventualmente remediar el problema relacionado con la motivación que estos estudiantes tienen.. Palabras clave: motivación, motivación extrínseca, motivación intrínseca, relación profesor -alumno, emociones, afecto, logro, emociones positivas y negativas, autoempatía..

(6) Avilés 5. Index. Introduction. Page 6. Focus. Page 7. Participants. Page 8. Problem. Page 8. Ratinalate. Page 10. Benefits. Page 11. Research Question. Page 11. Hypothesis. Page 11. Objectives. Page 12. Theoretical Framework. Page 13. Proposal. Page 23. Research Methodology. Page 24. Time Line. Page 22. Research Methodology. Page 23. Data Analysis Description. Page 28. Proposal. Page 30. Conclusion. Page 34. Work cited. Page 36.

(7) Avilés 6. Introduction This semester I did my last internship in a single sex high school called ‘Liceo A100’. When I started to observe at two ninth grades, there was something that caught my attention, the good environment that there was there, the teachers were warm, and even though, the students came from vulnerable towns, they tended to well-behave. However, once I entered the classroom, I realized that the English class was completely the opposite of what should be. The teacher spent the whole hour teaching grammar, however, the passive well-behaved bunch of girls were there listening bored to death. When I was asked to take the helm at the grades, I thought it was good idea to forget about grammar and try to make the class more interesting. Much to my disappointment, my method was ineffective to motivate these students to participate in my class. Therefore, I started to study about this phenomenon trying to find an answer for this problem. The first clue I got was connected to the improvement of education, Casassus (2007) says that many policies have been carried out in order to improve the quality of education, but these improvement have been focused on the same policies and not on the protagonist, the people who play an important role in the teaching learning process, teachers and students. That is why, I decided to focus this proposal in the relationships that take place in the school context and not in other variables such as, methodology, teacher training, infrastructure, parents’ participation, resources, and so on..

(8) Avilés 7. Focus The school where I did my internship was called ‘Liceo Técnico A-100’ located in San Miguel downtown. This single-sex private-state school belongs to a foundation called ‘Fundación de la Solidaridad Romanos XII’, whose main aim is to train female students for work. Here, there were three specialties, cooking, preschool assistant, and clothes manufacture. The class, which I decided to focus this research, is ninth grade G. In this form, there were twenty-one pupils, who come from neighboring towns such as, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, San Joaquin, La Pintana, and Lo Espejo. These students have especial characteristics. They have moderate results in terms of marks, and they do not tend to misbehave in class. However, they have a passive attitude, which causes difficulties at the time of participating in the activities. They lack self-confidence and their proficiency in the target language is quite poor. Accordingly, all these characteristics make it difficult to set an effective student centered classroom atmosphere. The educational project aims to form autonomous, responsible, respectful and supportive people based on love. Besides, as an institution they want to develop in their students a strong desire to work, allowing them to be valued for their skills, desire to excel and become agents in a ‘competitive society’. This single-sex school covers grades from nine to twelve. There is a standardized curriculum until 10th grade, but starting 11th grade, the students have different classes according to their specialization. English is compulsory for all grades, divided into two 90.

(9) Avilés 8. minutes modules twice a week. My classes with the 9th G grade were scheduled for Thursdays from 09:45 to 11:15, and from 13:00 to 14:30. According to the Educational Project, the 91% of the students belongs to vulnerable areas. Accordingly, their families are classified with a letter D, which means that they belong to a poor social class. Participants The first step of this proposal was carried out on 21 female students who were in ninth grade, however due to bad attendance the data collection counts with the opinion of fourteen students. To develop my research, I used three questionnaires to measure their feelings related to the teacher, material, and activities. Besides, I used checklists in order to assess the students’ participation in the class. This group of students was highly challenging due to their social vulnerability and lack of interest in learning a foreign language that is why I decided to focus this research on them. This is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that even though the odds that these students present because of their social background they can learn anyway because they do not present any cognitive problems.. Problem I personally believe that the main problem that I experienced during my classes at Liceo A -100 in ninth grade is that I did not know which methodology or activities I could use to remedy the problem of lack of motivation they showed during the lessons. They were reluctant to participate in the activities that I planned, and the passive attitude they tended.

(10) Avilés 9. to assume made me feel deeply worried and bitterly disappointed of my teaching style. I did not know how to plan more meaningful and motivating lessons in order to set an effective student centered classroom that requires interaction among them, and I did not know how to encourage a more active participation. When I started observing the English teacher in charge, I realized that the lessons were based on doing mechanic exercises connected to Grammar Translation. Also, I witnessed that the teacher speaking time was considerably longer than students speaking time. They had to sit during the whole class listening to the teacher giving long lectures about the grammatical use of words and the interaction was from teacher to student(s). When my turn to teach came, there were some changes connected to the methodology that I used. First of all, as I was asked to teach grammar by my mentor teacher at school, I thought that it was better to teach grammar in context and in an inductive way, because it is more appropriate in most of the context (Brown, 2007.p. 365) . Therefore, I thought it was a good idea to plan my lessons based on the teaching sequence, ESA: Engage, Study, and Activate. Secondly, I taught reading, listening, writing and speaking by using Pre-, while-, post- stages, instructional sequence (Ur, 2007, p.124) that we are asked to use by teachers from the university. Although, I got some students more involved in the class, I could not make it with the whole class. I faced a feeling of apathy presented in my students that made me wonder how to remedy it. Therefore, I started to use authentic material connected to their lives and concerns, such as party posters, trailers, readings about teens’ lives, and so on, but I felt that my effort was not enough for these students..

(11) Avilés 10. Hence, I started to study the possible reasons of the problem of lack of motivation in my students. In the first place, I started to ask students to assess my lessons by using simple charts. In the second place, I used checklists to assess students’ participation. Last, I started to set group discussions among students about the lesson, teacher and material. The main problems I detected were in relation to students’ English previous experiences: . Poor proficiency level. . Students say that they do not need English in their lives. . No connection between content and students’ lives. In relation to my lessons: . Poor rapport. . Rejection to English class in English. . Lack of interest in the activities presented. . Lack of motivation. Ratinalate I was interested in this problem because I wanted to know what I was doing wrong that I could not motivate my students to participate in the English class. Consequently, I wanted to be able to finish with students’ apathy, evasion, and complaints against the use of English language in class. Also, I thought that I needed to improve my lesson plans and prepare activities that motivate students to learn English because I believed that knowing.

(12) Avilés 11. which activities are more attractive for them I would eventually be able to deal with the lack of interest that they showed in class. Benefits I think that there would be a lot of benefits connected to motivation if I could make students assume a more active participation. On one hand, it is crucial as an educator to understand the reasons of lack of motivation and in that way be able to encourage motivation. On the other hand, this belief is based on the principle that says that learning is not seen as a one-way transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, but students learn from teachers, from classmates, and from the world outside the classroom (Celce Murcia, 2001,p.104). Research question All in all, I came up with the following question; which types of activities can I use to motivate my students to participate in the activities of the English class?. Hypothesis After trying different strategies and techniques, I realized that the problem in my lesson was not connected to the content or methodology itself. I understood that the problem was my attitude towards students. One of the reasons why I had this insight was an author that I was reading who said that the problem with the improvement of Education is that all the policies are focused on the improvement of same policies, but it is not focused on the protagonists (Casassus, 2007, p.241). Thus, I realized that the problem was.

(13) Avilés 12. connected to the students’ feelings, caused by the teacher-students relationship and students-students relationship. Consequently, I came up with the following hypothesis: Students will be more motivated if they feel an emotional security given by a good rapport and positive classroom atmosphere based on a good relationship among all protagonists. Objectives During these years of my teaching training, I have realized that we work with human beings. Therefore, we, teachers, not only have to understand educational matters regarding cognition; also, we have to be concerned about emotional factors that affect our work and students’ learning. The intelligence of good teachers does not necessarily have to do with passing on the knowledge; they also need to be capable of fostering good relationships with the humans they relate. General objetives:  To be able to produce a positive classroom climate that interests students towards their English class.  To enhance my rapport with students in order to motivate them with the lesson.  To improve the students’ interest towards the learning of the target language. Specific objetives: . To identify the reason(s) why I am not motivating my students with the activities that I plan.. . To be able to understand what they need in order to feel comfortable in the class.. . To prepare activities that make my lessons more efficient and motivating..

(14) Avilés 13. Theoretical Framework Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Few people would content the importance of motivation in the Education field. According to Jeremy Harmer (2007) motivation is crucial to succeed; without it people are likely to fail to make the necessary effort (Harmer, 2007, p. 98). Current discussions of motivation, have agreed on an established distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. On one hand, extrinsic motivation is understood as what comes from ‘outside’ of the individual. ‘This motivation is the result of any number of outside factors, for example, the need of passing an exam, the hope of financial reward, the possibility of future travel’, etc. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual. Therefore, ‘a person might be motivated by the enjoyment of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel better’ (Harmer, 2007,p.98). As Jeremy Harmer (2007) points out researches and methodologists have come to the view that intrinsic motivation produces better results than extrinsic motivation (Harmer, 2007, p.98). Sources of external motivation and the Motivational Angel The above-mentioned statement made me think of what I needed to consider motivating my students who lack of both types of motivations. Harmer provides two sorts of sources of motivation, the external ones and the motivation angel. The external sources of motivation are; . The goal. . Society.

(15) Avilés 14. . People around them. . Curiosity. However, Harmer argues that the external sources of motivation are not universal, thus, they vary depending on the students’ culture. That is why, it was essential for me to know the context of the students very well. I would like to point out that even though intrinsic motivation is more effective than its counterpart, it is necessary to foster it in students with poor motivation anyway because Harmer says that such motivation plays as base of the Motivation Angel and students need to bring it to the class (Harmer, 2007, p.100). That is was why, I decided to grade students’ participation through a checklist. I assessed every class student’s work with it, if they did the activities I gave them a tick on the checklist, if they did not I kept the space in blank, and I remained them that they would receive a mark at the end of the semester considering all the tickets. Regarding to the development of intrinsic motivation, Harmer uses a metaphor, the motivational angel. This metaphor explains the main sources of intrinsic motivation according to Harmer. These sources explained by Harmer are, . Affect. . Achievement. . Attitude. . Activities. . Agency.

(16) Avilés 15. Affect Affect is concerned with students’ feelings (Harmer, 2007, p.98). Affect, during my internship in Liceo A-100 was a key issue, because I tried to get involved in all extracurricular activities that students participated. Also, I detected that for the students it was very important that I learnt their names. Plus, I realized that they were very impulsive and they tended to have aggressive reactions due to I change the methodology that they were accustomed to work. Bassano and Christison (1995) mention some reactions of students that arise when they experience the transition from more traditional classroom procedures, such as, aggression, withdrawal, apathy, evasion, complaints, and ‘disorderly conduct’. In my lesson, I had to deal mostly with complaints about the use of English during the whole class, apathy, due to I demand them more participation, and aggression, because they were in disagreement with the ‘new teacher’s style’. But as I said, all these reactions were produced by a methodological change. Besides, we have to consider that violence is a common issue in the places where they come from and the demands from other teachers were quite slow. But, at the moment that the rapport started to improve, students were eager to participate more and the problems that I faced at the beginning started to vanish. - Rapport What does rapport mean? Rapport is understood as ‘the relationship that students have with the teacher as a good leader and successful professional’ (Harmer, 2007, p. 113). This was crucial in the improvement that students had. At the moment they felt more positive.

(17) Avilés 16. emotions toward the figure of the teacher their interest started to increase, as we see later in the evidence I collected and the importance that emotions have in learning. -The role of Emotions in learning As a consequence of this improvement, I realized that maybe the problems of motivation were connected to emotional reasons. I would like to call your attention to the importance that emotions have in students’ motivation and learning. Before dealing with that topic, it is necessary to define how emotions are understood. Pekrun (2002) defines emotions as ‘reactions to important events and states’ (Pekrun, 2002, p.151). Similarly, Maturana (2001) defines emotions in this way ‘biologically, emotions are bodily dispositions that determine or actions specified domains’ (Maturana, 2001, p.8). According to Pekrun and others (2002), there is a strong correlation between emotions and motivation. They point out ‘contingency analysis has showed that emotions were systematically connected to cognition, motivation, psychological changes, and interaction patterns’ (Pekrun, 2002, p.151). In addition, Casassus (2007) argues that learning occurs as part of an emotional relationship between the teacher and a student. ‘Allowing more children's learning is at the emotional level. Emotions are what guide people throughout their lives, which motivate us to learn and to relearn throughout our lives’ (Casassus, 2007, p.249). Therefore, no one could deny the connection between emotions and learning due to the fact that learning takes place in an emotional dimension. To illustrate, Casassus (2007) in the year 1994 studied different reasons that have an important impact on learning, such as, socio-economic students’ background, materials, school infrastructure, teachers’ training, amount of resources per student, parents’ participation, etc. This research demonstrated.

(18) Avilés 17. that the most repetitive cause that explained academic results was the emotions. In the research Casassus did, he says that what allowed best learning in children was in an emotional stage (Casassus, 2007, p. 239). Therefore, it is deeply important to emphasize the magnitude of the relevance that a good relationship between teacher and students, and students among students has. In my experience connected to this issue, I realized the better the rapport and the relationship among students are the better the motivation. As Jeremy Harmer (2007) points out, ‘Students learn better when they are engaged with what is happening’. When the teacher makes a close bond with students makes those links the support of learning. Therefore, affect is crucial in the motivation of students. On this topic, Harmer (2007) says: ‘Affect can have a dramatic effect. In the words of some eleven-years-old students I interviewed, ‘a good teacher is someone who don’t always put their hands up’ and ‘a good teacher is someone who knows our names’. In other words, students are far more likely to stay motivated over a period of time if they think that the teacher cares about them. This can be done by building a good teacher-student rapport’ (p. 100) As I showed, emotions are a key issue to foster the intrinsic motivation, because students have an incentive resulting in more interest and an improvement of their selfsteem, which are important elements in success (Harmer, 2007, p. 100). All in all, in 9th grade students at Liceo A- 100 felt little uncomfortable at the beginning (as we will see in.

(19) Avilés 18. the data) but when we started to get more and more in touch, they felt more secure and motivated as a result of the good climate made by our good rapport. To repeat, I was deeply worried considering their feeling to engage them with the content based on what Harmer says, ‘their feelings and attitudes matter both in relation to their encounters with the language itself, and also in terms of the learning experience in general’ (Harmer, 2007, p. 78). As we will see next, I did a survey where students explained the reason why some activities were not motivating. Thus, I started to use topics that they were interested in, more activities where they could interact, and finally, I started to reduce the teacher speaking time. But, how do teachers create a good rapport? Now, I will describe different elements that answer this question. -Self –empathy and Positive and Negative Emotions Regarding attitude, which is another element suggested by Harmer, I started to believe in the role I had to play, the teacher, but being friendly, I put away my dictatorial manners and I tried to relax, I mean, acting more naturally. I demanded to participate and do all the activities, but being friendly, warm, and nice. Related to this topic, Casassus (2007) says, ‘At early age people assume a variety of roles. We become children, we assume the role of children consequently, the norms that rule children behaviors. In the same way, we become wives and husbands, and professionals. One of each role brings a set of rules that we share and we assume subconsciously. We find ourselves in tension between to adapt ourselves to the norm and what we feel’ (p. 232).

(20) Avilés 19. The above-mentioned statement made me wonder about my personality, did I have to act as a teacher or as myself? I came up with the idea of being natural. I did the best of me to create a good classroom environment and rapport. I was honest with my emotions and did not hide myself behind a teacher’s mask. Not hiding ourselves behind roles is crucial to develop a good rapport. Casassus (2007) talks about the concept of self- empathy, which means the capacity that one has to connect one self, what I really feel in relation to myself. Because, if I am not able to do so, I will be incapable to understand the rest (Casassus, 2007, p. 233). This strong pedagogical tool affects positively on students’ feelings. According to Casassus, teachers and students are always influenced by emotions in the interactions that take place in the school climate. That is why, it is crucial for teachers to be conscious of this phenomenon. So, the question is: How to develop this ‘emotional competence’? Related to the question Casassus (2007) points out that the teacher firstly must worry about the relation that students have with the content. Secondly, the relationship that the teacher has with himself. Thirdly, the relationship that teacher has with his students. According to Casassus, the educator needs to know that when we establish relationships with other people, there are emotions involved, so he needs to understand the emotions that take place in certain contexts, and which ones are the base for the interactions among the characters in school contexts. Our reasonable side allows us to understand the emotions that are affecting us. For instance, it is important to reflect about our and other’s emotions. Reflecting about our.

(21) Avilés 20. feelings, experiences, and our body’s responses as consequence of an emotional stimulus make us emotional competent. To illustrate what is NOT being emotional competent I will use a personal experience. Sometimes, I have experienced a situation that has made feel sad; however, what I showed to the rest of the people was anger. We need to express with our spoken language and body language what we really feel. Nevertheless, this is not an easy task, due to the life style that makes us forget about our emotional side. Casassus gives us a hand to be emotional competent, we can turn to the language and ask ourselves questions such as, What do I feel? What do I want? What am I doing? What am I avoiding? What do I expect? It would be important for teachers to develop the capacity of self-empathy to understand their students’ feelings. Unfortunately, nowadays some teachers never develop this capacity, making students feel rejected and not considered because authorities do not look for the education of integral students. But the authorities’ intentions are related to controlling purposes (Casassus, 2007.p.236) or what authors like Paulo Freire call ‘normalization’ because the aim is to make a passive society. As a result, students develop negative emotions and their positive emotions decline throughout the years in the school system because of the lack of the self-empathy capacity that authorities and teachers have to understand students’ feelings. Pekrun (2002) says that ‘there is converging evidence that motivational experiences relating to positive emotions tend to decline throughout the school years’ (Pekrun, 2002.p. 151). Therefore, this has a tremendous effect on students’ motivation. I would like to point out that this phenomenon also has to do with the power that is managed by the relationships among teachers and students, but this topic escapes from the scope of this research..

(22) Avilés 21. So, how can teachers understand their students’ emotions? According to Casassus (2007), there are four ways of approaching and studying such emotions. First, cognitively, in third person. For example, observe the phenomenon taking distance. Second, by analyzing them, searching in our own experience. For instance, we have experienced something that allows us to understand how the other feels. If the other is sad because he had failed in an exam, we remember how we used to feel when we had bad marks. Third, participating in the other's experience without necessarily having lived it but feel it and feeling affected by it. Fourth, sharing the same emotions as the other. For example, with our friends we share the same feeling for each other. In relation to maintain motivation, what emotions should we teachers be worried about when observing our lessons in order to maintain our students’ motivation? To answer this question, Perkun (2007) divides certain emotions into two categories, positive emotions and negative emotions. These ones are order in the following chart. (p. 151) Positive. Negative. Enjoyment. Boredom. Anticipatory joy Hope. Hopeless Anxiety. Retrospective. Joy about success Satisfaction Pride Relief. Sadness Disappointment Shame/guilt. Social. Gratitude Empathy Admiration. Anger Jealously/envy Contempt Antipathy/hate. Task and self related Process Prospective.

(23) Avilés 22. Achievement Another important feature in improving students’ motivation described by Harmer is achievement. As Harmer (2007) says, ‘nothing motivates like success’. ‘Nothing demotivates like continual failure’. Therefore, it is part of the teacher’s work to provide students with a sense of achievement in every task. ‘Because the longer their success continues, the more likely they are to stay motivated to learn’ (Harmer, 2007, p. 100).. Time Line The whole action research consists of six parts, however due to a lack of time this paper contains the first four steps explained above, 1. Identification of my teaching problem regarding problems of motivation. 2. Focus groups and surveys for the students focused on my teaching style to confirm the problem I had found. In addition, these surveys answered by students were focused on their feelings towards teachers’ performance, classmates, activities and materials. These second observation helped in the formulation of the hypothesis. 3. My reflections focused on the class participation and feelings related to my teaching style, relationship with my students and the different activities carried out during lessons. 4. Data analysis and results..

(24) Avilés 23. 5. An action plan to remedy my problem. 6. A final observation, to portray the situation after the solutions were applied. Research Methodology. This proposal was based on a qualitative system that refers to the observation of the particular context where I was immersed. This investigation was carried out with instruments especially adapted and designed by me, based on other authors’ researches. These instruments, such as journals, focus groups, and questionnaires aim to provide evidence and help to study the phenomenon of emotional factors that affect these students’ learning and motivation towards English. I decided to work based on this type of research because my goal was to understand a problematic situation which does not count with many studies related to emotional factors (Pekrun, 2002, p.153). So hoping to be an useful ‘first step’ to start doing more investigations connected to this matter I would say this is a research that needs to be understood and thought thoroughly, because finally the idea is to improve the learning in these particular students. In addition, this research begins from the need to understand what is it needed to set a good classroom environment. To begin my investigation, I thought it was a good idea to expand the boundaries of possible causes connected to motivation. However, in the first place, I started to make changes in terms of methodology and the activities that I brought to class based on surveys that I carried out by asking my students’ opinions connected to the material and activities..

(25) Avilés 24. The observation chart for this research was taken from Cabañas (2011), but it was adapted due to the original survey focused just on the productive skill, speaking. a. ¿Participas siempre en las actividades? si ____ no___ si la respuesta es no ¿cuál es el motivo? No es interesante___ El material no es atractivo__ Nunca lo utilizaré__ Me cuesta Hablar___ No me siento cómoda___ No me interesa___ b. ¿Las actividades de ‘speaking’ las haces generalmente en español o inglés? Si la respuesta es en español ¿cuál es el motivo? No es interesante___ El material no es atractivo__ Nunca lo utilizaré__ Me cuesta Hablar___ No me siento cómoda___ No me interesa___ c. ¿Qué consideras que necesitas para mejorar tu inglés? Más actividades de ‘speaking’___ Aprender más vocabulario__ practicar sola__ Practicar más diálogos__ practicar con mis compañeras___ d. La actividad que más me gustó de la clase de hoy fue: _______________________________________. Besides, in order to measure students’ participation and interaction a checklist was applied every class. This checklist was borrowed from the web site http://iteslj.org developed especially for teachers, this survey was designed by the researcher Sasaki from the University of Tokoha Gakuen located in Shizuoka, Japan. This checklist was originally designed to assess the communication in the classroom with Japanese students. With the same purpose of measuring different aspects that take place in any classroom, I decided to use the following checklist..

(26) Avilés 25 CLASSROOM INTERACTION School:______________________ Class:_______________________ Date : __________________ Always. Usually. Sometimes. Rarely. Never. 1. Students volunteered to answer the teacher's questions.. -. -. -. -. -. 2. Students say their opinions freely in class.. -. -. -. -. -. 3. Students interact in pairs about the questions ask for the teacher.. -. -. -. -. -. 4. Students speak only when the teacher calls on them.. -. -. -. -. -. 5. Students tell the teacher in class when they don't understand.. -. -. -. -. -. 6. Students listen quietly when the teacher talks.. -. -. -. -. -. 7. Students listen quietly when classmates talk.. -. -. -. -. -. 8. Students speak loud enough for the whole class to hear.. -. -. -. -. -. 9. Students consult with classmates before answering teacher.. -. -. -. -. -. 10. Students are afraid to make mistakes.. -. -. -. -. -. 11. Teachers encourage students to risk making mistakes.. -. -. -. -. -.

(27) Avilés 26. 12. Students are over 15 minutes late for class.. -. -. -. -. -. 13. Students ask teacher for help.. -. -. -. -. -. 14. Students ask for the teacher's opinions in class.. -. -. -. -. -. 15. Students look at the teacher when he speaks.. -. -. -. -. -. 16. Students want to sit in the front rows of the room.. -. -. -. -. -. 17. Students sleep in class.. -. -. -. -. -. 18. Students are easy to talk to after class.. -. -. -. -. -. 19. Students go easily to the front of the class. -. -. -. -. -. 20. Students participate in reading and writing activities.. -. -. -. -. -. 21. students participate in speaking activities. -. -. -. -. -. 22. students participate in listening activities. -. -. -. -. -. Since I could not improve my students’ interest employing changes in terms of methodology and I detected that problem was not totally connected with the activities because the majority of the answers were related to emotional factors, I started to read more about human learning and motivation. My guide was the question: what makes human.

(28) Avilés 27. beings feel motivated to learn? As a result, I had the idea of focusing my research on the relationships between the teacher, my students, and me. Once the problem was identified my students filled a survey anonymously (to guarantee students’ honesty) based on Reinhard Pekrun’s table The Domain of academic emotions (Pekrun, 151) the idea was to detect the emotions that were present in the different aspects detailed below.. Marque con una ‘X’ la alternativa que más la refleje y explique su elección. 1. Al inicio de la clase frecuentemente me siento: ___Entusiasmado ___Ansioso ___Desganado ¿Por qué?____________________________________________________________. 2. En las actividades de ‘reading’ me siento: __ Alegre __Aburrido __Disgustado __Asustado __Ansioso ¿Por qué?____________________________________________________________. __Tranquilo. 3. En las actividades de ‘ listening’ me siento: __ Alegre __Aburrido __Disgustado __Asustado __Ansioso ¿Por qué?____________________________________________________________. __Tranquilo. 4. En las actividades de ‘speaking’ me siento: __ Alegre __Aburrido __Disgustado __Asustado __Ansioso ¿Por qué?____________________________________________________________. __Tranquilo. 5. Por mi profesor siento: __Gratitud __Rabia __Simpatía __Cariño __Antipatía __Odio __Admiración __Desprecio __Empatía ¿Por qué?____________________________________________________________. __Envidia. 6. Por mis compañeras (no amigas) siento: __Gratitud __Rabia __Admiración ¿Por qué?. __Simpatía __Desprecio. __Cariño __Empatía. __Antipatía. __Odio. __Envidia.

(29) Avilés 28. Data Analysis Description As already explained, since I realized the problem was not connected to the methodology but in the relationship developed between teacher and students, I collected the answers that my students gave. There are interesting conclusions that we can analyze.. First of all, I will analyze the answers that students gave in relation to the emotions that the receptive and reproductive skills that we work the most, listening, reading, speaking, generate in them. The reading skill is represented in blue; listening is in red, and speaking in green. Graph 1. 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Enjoyment. Boredom. Hope Reading. Anxiety Listening. Speaking. Anger. Calm.

(30) Avilés 29. In graph number one, we can appreciate that the skill that students enjoy the most is speaking. On one hand, reading has the highest level of disapproval by students. But, on the other hand, students feel more relaxed with reading activities. Also, we can appreciate moderate levels of anxiety in speaking activities. Graph 2. STUDENTS' EMOTIONS IN RELATION WITH THE TEACHER admiration gratitude antipathy/hate. simpathy/love. Graph number two shows the good rapport that I have with my students due to the positive emotions that I generate in them..

(31) Avilés 30. Graph 3. STUDENTS' EMOTIONS IN RELATION TO THEIR PAIRS gratitude hate. simpathy/love. anger. antipathy. In graphic number three, we can appreciate a predominance of negative emotions among students where anger is the emotion with highest score. Proposal With the data analysis and the answers that my students provided, I could affirm that my hypothesis was correct because the lack of motivation to participate actively in the class was caused by emotional factors caused by the different interaction that took place in the class. But, on one hand, the first changes were connected to methodology I started to use ESA to teach grammar. I reduced the teacher speaking time, and I considered their concerns and tastes to plan my lessons. Also, I used lots of warm up activities in order to generate positive emotions during the class, such as enjoinment. According to the idea of fostering a sense of achievement in my students in Liceo A-100, I changed the focus of the.

(32) Avilés 31. lessons they were accustomed to. For instance, I started to provide them with a context to use grammatical structures and I avoided explaining structures, I preferred not to correct the grammar mistakes if the ideas that they were trying to express were comprehensible, so that, make them feel they were improving, and achieving others’ understanding. The previous experiences were focus on grammar translation. They could not understand the use of the structures, because ‘language was treated at the level of the sentence’ only (Harmer, 2007, p. 63). As a result, they could not communicate. They felt it would be impossible to move forward and reach communication. Besides, they were demotivated because the lesson was not attractive. There was no emotional engagement that made students feel motivated to study or learn that particular piece of content or structure, in other words the content was ‘outside’ their lives. In response to this problem, as I said before, I used the teaching sequence ESA, in order to contextualized the content and connect it with their concerns, tastes and lives. On the other hand, as they did not have any motivation to learn English I started to provide them external stimulus to make them participate. To illustrate, I used extrinsic motivation to build an intrinsic motivation later. Each class, I checked their participation by using a checklist and remind them that the class participation would be evaluated with a mark at the end of the year, the more tics the better would be the mark. As I already explained in the theoretical framework the development of an extrinsic motivation acts as a base to foster an intrinsic motivation. Then, it is necessary to build the ‘trunk’ of the intrinsic motivation, which is affect. To work efficiently with the affect, it is important for an educator to be emotional competent, so, he needs to work on his own emotional.

(33) Avilés 32. competence and understand the implications that emotions have in the motivation of his students and did so. Thanks to the answers that pupils gave in the first survey, I was able to detect that the answers were connected to emotional factors, such as ‘I do not like English’, ‘English is boring’, ‘I do not like my classmates’, and ‘I feel afraid and embarrassed’. That is why I understand that I have to make a change in first place from me. Therefore, I started to improve the rapport we had. I realized that I had to change the distant way I related with them accordingly, I started to be friendlier and act more naturally, meaning, I used humor in the class, I used jokes, when problems with discipline arose, I avoided telling students off, but I asked them the reasons they had to not participate in a particular activity and together tried to find a solution. Besides, I tried to show them that I cared about them, such as learning their names, talking outside the class, share experiences, consider their opinions about a topic they wanted to talk in class, and so on. In addition, I smiled more in the class all these changes caused a tremendous impact in our relationship. After each class, I started to reflect about my feelings and reflect about problematic situations I experienced. For example, if a difficult situation made feel a particular emotion, I wonder why I felt in that way, what I was doing to remedy it, about the reasons that caused this feeling, and so on. In addition, I gave positive comments to my students if they complained about something. For instance, if they said ‘speak in Spanish because we do not understand English’ I replied ‘ I talk to you in English, because I think you are intelligent and I believe in your capacities. Finally, I shared some responsibilities with my students to make them participate more in the class. For example, I asked them to do self-assessments and pair assessments..

(34) Avilés 33. As their previous experience was connected to grammar translation method used by their previous teacher, I used lots of authentic material that made them feel interest in the class. At the end of each class I asked them which activities were more interesting and in the next classes I considered their answers to apply them, meaning I based my lessons plans in their tastes and concerns in order, as I said, to make the content more attractive and meaningful. Certainly there were several changes related to the disposition towards English thanks I was trying always worried of producing positive emotions in the different activities I used. What made me blissfully happy was to have evidence that the rapport was immensely better due to little but crucial changes in my attitude, lesson plans and the language I used to talk to my students. With the data I collected at the end I realized that these changes caused an incredible impact in my students’ feelings and consequently in their motivation..

(35) Avilés 34. Conclusion. Thanks to the different strategies learnt throughout this research, I am able to appreciate an improvement of rapport and interest for learning English. Currently, we can see that the lack of motivation, the passive attitude assumed by students and their poor participation in the class is not due to a bad rapport or lack of interest in learning English anymore, but there is still a problem connected to the relation they have among them. Now, I can attribute another reason of why they have a poor participation, the fear of being bullied by their classmates. It was not I only, who had to become empathic, warm, and nice, they have to change as well. Unfortunately, the semester finished and I was not able to continue with this improvement. However, what I learnt from this research was immensely valuable; understanding the different phenomena that take place in the school context related to interaction and the emotional factors that affect it makes me absolutely a better educator now. According to the new findings there are no problems connected to motivation towards learning, but there is a problem of climate, that would be good to solve it. This hostile environment makes students to be reluctant to participate actively in any activity. Once again, the problem is related to emotional factors. If I generated a positive atmosphere among students, the participation would increase much more. Once, I learnt how to improve the rapport and plan more attractive lessons the challenge now is improve the relation among my students..

(36) Avilés 35. I cannot forget Casassus’ words, ‘everybody wants to improve education however the focus of that improvement is the policies and structures and not the people who are the protagonists’ (Cassasus, 2007, p.249). Nobody would deny the need of improving Education, but I strongly believe that the first thing we have to wonder is if we, teachers and authorities in charge, are providing our students the basic needs that they require to feel secure and willing to learn wherever we think is important to teach them. During these years studying Pedagogy, I have seen different kinds of teachers. On one hand, there are some of them, who see teaching just as a job among many others and they do not really understand the importance that it has. On the other hand, there are some teacher that understand their work as a way to change their students’ life but they unfortunately have the good intentions only because they do not have developed the pedagogical skills to do so. Finally, there are those teaches who mark their students’ lives because they are full of pure love and educate and form people in the best environment surrounded by the feeling that guarantee any type of learning and motivation and make his students to get along..

(37) Avilés 36. Work cited Books Bassano & Christinson, 1995. Community Spirit. NY: Alta Book Publishers.Print Brown, Douglas. Teaching by Principles. UK: Longman, 2001.Print Casassus, Juan. La Educación del ser Emocional. Chile: Editorial Cuarto Propio and Espacio Indigo, second edition, 2007. Print. Celce Murcia, Marianne. Teaching English as a Second or Foreing Language. Boston: Heinle, Cengage Learning, 2001. Print. Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching. China: Pearson Educational Limited, fourth edition, 2007.Print. Maturana, Humberto. Emociones y Lenguaje en Educación y Pólitica. Santiago: J.C. Saéz editor, 2008. Ur, Penny. A course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print Chapters Pekrun, Reinhard.. ‘Positive Emotions in Education’. Beyond Coping:Meeting goals,. visions, and challenges. Ed. Erica Frydenberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 149-169. Print Websites Sasaki, Catherine. ‘Communication in the Classroom’. Itelsj.org. 10 October 2012. Web. 11 November 2012.

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