Teachers’ own motivation

The second set of questions intended to explore how motivated the participants themselves were as language teachers. I tried to find out what they generally did in order to remain motivated and asked them to describe a period in their lives when they had been extremely motivated and demotivated respectively. I was also curious to find out whether they thought their students were able to perceive the teacher’s level of motivation, and finally asked them to speak about what they thought about the reciprocity of motivation transfer that takes place between the teacher and the learners.

With the exception of T10 – who was beginning to feel the signs of burnout sometimes – all of the participants turned out to be highly motivated, as T11 said, “otherwise I wouldn’t be able to continue teaching” (p. 1). In T15’s words, “I have found freedom and I can do what I really like. I can find out how I can be creative and how I can develop. As long as I feel I can develop, I will always be motivated” (p. 2). T16 said,

I have always felt motivated, and I think the fact that I haven’t changed my career is further evidence. The number of years I spent in the profession shows that it is important for me to be successful, to derive pleasure from it and to make a living as well. And obviously, learning the language is important for the learners too, in a particular position or life situation, since this is the reason why they enrolled on the course, and it is very important that they should develop. (p. 1)

120 In order to remain motivated, all of the participants underlined the importance of training, development, and change. T18 mentioned, “I consciously change the course books I teach from, the kind of ESP I teach every now and then to remain motivated” (p. 2). T3 has just finished coach training, which motivates him very much, whereas T4 had participated in a training course in Devon last summer. T5 is grateful to the manager of the language school where she works, saying:

He thinks it is essential for us to acquire the latest methods, technical equipment and I’m open to do that. He gives us the opportunity to develop, encourages us and says look, we have this and this and you can learn it here, or we might invite someone to train us and I do my best to attend these sessions. Obviously, on these occasions I learn a lot of new ideas, new approaches and they maintain my motivation. (p. 2)

T9 does her utmost “to get to as many training courses as possible and today, it’s very easy to find something new on the internet. Also, I keep in touch with my former colleagues” (p.

2). T8 seeks to get to know her students more and more so that she can tailor-make the lessons better and better to the needs and interests of the learners, “on many occasions our interests don’t meet, so consequently I get to know unfamiliar areas of life, which motivates me” (p. 2). T10 is motivated by the usefulness of her job:

What motivates me is if I see that my students can use what they have learnt correctly on the job, and they can create an atmosphere where the subscribers feel that they are given the attention they have only dreamed of. (p. 1)

When it came to describing a period in their professional life when they were highly motivated, the most frequently cited reason was attaining mastery of their profession. Half of the participants recalled a period in their lives “when I had been doing it for quite a few years and I felt that I was quite good at it, when I got a lot of positive feedback from many places” (T15, p. 1). T16 recalls a similar period related to ESP:

I have been teaching in the production plant since 2001. At the beginning it was difficult, because I didn’t know anything about production, the technical background, and we were always talking about that. So it was difficult for me to accommodate to the local environment. After a few years I know very much.

It’s a great feeling to chat with my students in such a way that they know I know what they are talking about whether it be a lath or a business process, so we’re on the same wavelength. It motivates me because I like being a real

121 partner in a given topic in a given area, because I have been here for more than 10 years. It motivates me when I feel that I know what they need, even if they still don’t, I know what grammar, what vocabulary they need, what skills need to be developed, and it’s a great feeling. (p. 2)

The importance of novelty in motivation also surfaced in another interview. For T4 it was a different methodology, a different approach that kept her very motivated:

First, I told the teacher who took me there, thank you very much, I have had enough of this and that kind of methodology, but I found it so interesting and I was curious to look into whether it works as well as it is claimed, and I stayed here and have been here ever since. (p. 2)

Some of the participants also mentioned the first few years of their careers when they had to prepare a lot for the lessons: “I had to learn a lot and I prepared very much for the lessons and enthusiastically. When you learn something new, it usually takes a year or two” (T6, p.

2)

As far as demotivation is concerned, it seems to be connected either to the quantity of work or other external circumstances. Too much or too little demand for their work can account for demotivation. Half of the participants cited a period in their lives when there was not as much work available as they would have liked to do. T5 said, “there was a summer period when I had very little work and even that felt like a heavy burden” (p. 2). T8 remembers this as follows:

There was once a more serious period when there weren’t enough clients for different reasons. For example, I can distinctly remember the first half of 2009. Several commissions were being cancelled because of the outbreak of the economic crisis, companies saved money on language education. Then I felt my capacity was underused. It was very demotivating. (p. 2)

As for the opposite extreme, T10 recalled a period when “at the beginning I worked six days out of seven, still I felt I was getting nowhere, I didn’t feel I was developing as a teacher”

(p. 2). T15 mentioned tiredness and exhaustion: “It’s difficult to strike a balance between your work and private life. It happens that I’m exhausted, I’m under a lot of pressure, and I don’t feel I can do a 100%” (p. 2). T1 was speaking about such periods when she feels her life is dominated by work:

122 I get demotivated when I feel my work takes control of the life of my whole family. There was a period when I was physically exhausted. Waves crashed over my head and I felt I couldn’t cope any longer. I felt I was not able to come up to my usual standards and I felt I had enough. (p. 3)

Apart from the quantity of work, other external circumstances also seem to influence teachers’ level of motivation. T16 mentioned that, “The syllabus we had to follow was provided by the HR department of the company and it had nothing to do with the lives of the participants” (p. 2). T6 recalled a time when she had a group of four ladies, “whose level was very different, and on top of that there was a lot of friction between them” (p. 2), whereas T18 referred to a course when “the circumstances were not right, we were in a warehouse, sometimes we got frozen, sometimes it was boiling hot in there” (p. 2). T2 recalled a course when several external factors contributed to a demotivating influence:

I felt that it was a burden for them to a certain extent. It was obligatory for them, they weren’t very motivated at 6.30 in the morning before their work started. It was all yawning and elbowing. They didn’t feel like being there, and neither did I. (p. 1)

The overwhelming majority of the participants (except T4) are convinced their students perceive how motivated they are in a given lesson. In T11’s words “people are not stupid, you can’t fool them” (p. 2). T5 said, “I keep getting feedback during the lesson: body language, eye contact, etc. I can size it up very well whether I’m on top or not and they react to it very sensitively” (p. 2.). In T10’s opinion, “as our contact is personal, I can follow the way they perceive my motivation very well” (p. 3). T15 said “my mood and the extent of my preparation are telling signs” (p. 2), while according to T16 it is obvious:

If you are not convincing, if you don’t have this inner conviction, you’ll get it back from your students, too. They know it. Not only from the way you open your mouth, but also from the way you enter the classroom. What you have on your face, what gestures, what enthusiasm you radiate, they can get it in a second. You can’t fake it;

they’ll find it out immediately. Besides, it matters how you hold the lesson, what kind of supplementary materials you use to spice them up, how you meet the group’s needs, because every group is different, you cannot enter with some general stuff. (p.

2)

All of the participants confirmed the mutual transfer of motivation referred to as contagious enthusiasm by Csikszentmihályi (1997) that takes place between the teacher and

123 the learners. They also agreed on and confirmed Carbonneau et al’s (2008) analysis that suggests that teacher enthusiasm and passion function more as antecedents rather than consequences of student motivation, even though this relationship can also be bi-directional.

There is a lot of evidence in the transcripts that underlie this: “Obviously, it is primarily the teacher’s responsibility to motivate the learner, not the other way round.” (T2, p. 2), or T3 on the same topic, “if the teacher is not motivated, and it shows, the learner will never be motivated. Besides, I wouldn’t call anybody a teacher who says that they are demotivated because of a demotivated learner” (p. 2). T4 says the following on the same question, “if someone is motivated and has goals, I can recognise it very well, and I help by giving them a further boost. If someone is just sent to me to learn the language without them wanting to, I can convince them that it’s worth the trouble” (p. 3). T5 speaks about his persistence never to give up, “If I notice that they are tired or sleepy, it makes me try three times as hard. I spot the grumpiest, most tired guy and I’ll try to convert his mood into a laidback, relaxed state of mind” (p. 3). T8 has the same attitude:

I have a group of three, and probably their personalities are very different, but I’m working hard on creating cohesion. It can be demotivating and these lessons sometimes give me a sense of failure. But it makes me try even harder.

I won’t give up until I find the right way. I get embittered now and then, but I won’t give up. They become what I think of them. I imagine their knowledge in the future and try to send signals to them accordingly and they will live up to this image. This is what I believe in. (p. 4)

Above, T8 describes the Pygmalion effect, which works as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and in a language learning context it refers to the phenomenon that McLeod (1995) describes as learners being either positively or negatively affected by their teachers’ implicit expectations, their empathy and their own sense of self-efficacy. The Pygmalion effect was originally studied by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), who demonstrated that students try to live up to their teachers’ expectations.