Hi guys, how are you going? It’s been a while again. Today, I am going to talk about a means of boosting motivation towards your English learning. Are you always motivated? Some of you guys don’t recognise the importance of having motivation and confidence for your English learning. That’s ok, because they tend to emerge quasi-naturally, not intentionally nor purposefully. To elaborate further, I’d like to delve deeper into this sort of stuff.
Keep in mind the fact that motivation is not driven by your friends or peers, but yourselves
This is of paramount importance in making sure you always try to motivate yourself whereby you gamify the study of English language such as using learning apps or websites. The worst thing you could perhaps think of is asking your teacher or tutor to motivate you to enjoy English learning and develop your English skills, which is out of the question. What a teacher or tutor does is guide you to learn English properly, and maybe to some extent encourage you to concentrate on studying; however this is not exactly the same as boosting motivation. It’s probably similar, but it’s turning to others for help, which is not really good way for yourself. Stopping relying heavily upon your teacher or tutor, but instead you positively learn from them and keep yourself motivated by self-training.
Don’t think about boosting motivation until you’ve rocked the foundations of English language
What do I mean by this, in the first place? Well, first of all, motivation comes after you’ve mastered all basics such as grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. You have no time to think about how to keep yourself motivated until you’ve nailed them. The reason why I am saying like this is that the mastery of the basics is kind of mandatory to be able to communicate with others smoothly without having significant problems. Therefore, even if you’re not motivated towards learning or hate English grammar, you have little alternative but to learn it no matter what. Let’s learn it until you can confidently use it for your speaking, writing, reading and listening practice. After smashing the basics, you perhaps commence strategising your further study with the control of motivation, in which case you need motivation to continue to study.
Stop comparing or contrasting your English ability with that of your friends or peers
Comparison and contrast with your friends or peers in terms of English ability might have a positive impact on the boost of your motivation towards English learning; however, it is highly likely that you tend to be demotivated further once you’ve realised that it is almost impossible for you to defeat or surpass the ability of other people. Of course, this could be the driving force for some of you guys to motivate themselves to put more effort to tackle, which is an undeniably desirable outcome. To be fair, this could rarely be seen. The best solution to this is that you could compare and contrast yourself with the past yourself, which is precisely what you should be doing in order to motivate yourself.
Renounce a deep hatred of your poor understanding of English basics, instead embrace the sense that you don’t have to be a genius to do that
The more you think you don’t understand something, the less motivation you will have, which is the nature of learning process. You need to be more positive towards anything you come across for the duration of English learning. Having any negativity in your mind leads to the further deterioration in the condition of whether you’re motivated or not. So, you should keep thinking of having ‘can-do-attitude’ towards everything even if you reckon it’s going to be very hard to figure out. You don’t have to be super knowledgeable whatsoever under any circumstance. There is absolutely no room for you to be demotivated when it comes to learning English. Your motivation or confidence emanates mainly from the continuation of your learning efforts. Nothing else, I reckon.
Change your learning style from jotting down or writing to speaking, which makes you motivated
Of course, this change depends upon individuals whether this affects positively or negatively. But, from my past experience, I would say like I want to underscore the importance in shifting written learning style to spoken one in order to streamline the process of mastering the basics, and also to motivate yourselves towards further learning. When you’re learning vocabulary, for instance, it is most likely that you jot down every information about the word you’re referring to, which is great; however, it’s a bit time-consuming, and in fact it’s not really effective way to get used to the word.
Personally, I don’t particularly like the method called ‘rote learning or memorisation’, which typifies the learning style of Japan’s education for university entrance exams. Memorising something is beneficial for a kind of question type such as multiple choice, but it’s a bit tricky to apply this method to essay questions or critical thinking realm, both of which are perhaps the weakest points when it comes not only to English learning, but also to motivating yourselves. Things stemming from rote memorisation will probably fade away, whilst things from practical learning like using new words or grammatical structures for speaking everyday will enable to get accustomed to them and hence you won’t easily forget. Writing is fine as long as you review it periodically and use it for written training; however, if you don’t review it, then it doesn’t really make sense at all. And, it is highly likely that you won’t see your note anymore, and you are subconsciously satisfied with the fact that you’d put much effort into writing itself.
In a nutshell, your motivation comes from yourselves, not from others. And, it also does not come from naturally, but your conscious effort and perseverance. But nonetheless, the timing is critical when it comes to motivating yourselves. You should motivate yourselves once you’ve cracked all English basics, because they are mandatory, so you need to master them no matter what.
That’s all for today. Thanks for reading!
Have a lovely day, everyone.