The reason behind motivation has always been connected with something that a person has on the inside, something that allows him or her to feel the thirst to get better, to achieve, to evolve. For example, for me, the reason I decided to teach is that it inspires me to write new songs which makes sense to me.
“I am a musician and I also enjoy teaching English. Teaching inspires me to write new songs; it also makes me happy. When I see a person learn or discover something new during my classes it brings me back the moment when I was experiencing this myself and I relive it again through the personality, it is very fulfilling.” (from “The Story of My Relationship with English.”)
So when I teach I know what motivates me and I am curious to find out what motivates a student. One of the secrets of having a clear or ambiguous idea of what motivates you is to try to do something that makes sense to you in a way that makes sense to you.
if it has meaning for the teacher it will have meaning for a student, if it has meaning for a student his connection with the language will be deeper. English is not number one in my classes, number one is personality, creativity, meaning, passion - it instills love of the subject in students.”
When we learn something that has meaning for us we learn life which is deeper (introspective method) than learning just language, the main thing - it should mean something to the author, if it means something to the author it will mean something to a student. Humans are very perceptive, they can feel it, students can even find answers that are different from what the author was meaning to express, in other words the story starts to live its own life and students can interpret it in a way that is relevant to them.
Since this method of teaching/learning language implies having original stories created by the author based on his philosophy, experience, something that happens in his life daily, students have direct access to the author’s motivation through the materials that represent this aspect - stories. When students learn English using these materials they always stay connected with the author's motivation which helps them to focus on their own driving force and have a clue of what moves them on the inside.
This approach is called ‘introspective’, meaning the attention is turned to the inside, in other words students learn English through the things that are relevant to them. ‘Introspective’ - meaning, tending to think too deeply about oneself. Where ‘Introspection’ is the habit of looking into one’s own thoughts and feelings to find out their real meaning, the reasons for them etc. As we know, ‘Introspection’ has been considered an important method in psychology and linguistics.
English Via Storytelling 2023 Doggedly Extracted From The Adventurous Midst Of Turquoise Imagination Via Sergey Denisov
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