Saturday 30 October 2010

Growing up students’ motivation in learning English through any useful activities

One basic aspect in learning foreign language, in this case is English, must be kept by foreign language learners, our students, since it has become an important role for learning and knowing it more. It is a motivation. This word is used to explain how far our students commit to learn English and be success or failure in studying English. The discussion among linguists had been done since it is debatable. It is divided into two categories namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The concept of motivation has been discussed and formulated by three different perspectives of behaviorist, cognitive and constructivist. It is a key, to make students success or not in studying English, enjoy learning English, doing, and finishing English task given by teacher. In Indonesia, as we all know, students learn English when they study at primary school, junior high school, and senior high school. They study English years by years, however, we often hear that they say English is difficult. This problem is caused by first, they are passive student. It means that they want to study because of the curriculum without any eagerness. Second, they don’t know clearly about its function and benefit for their future.

This non research paper discusses about the way how to increase our students’ motivation through any useful activities. By doing interesting and useful activities they feel better to learn English. Their motivation increases because they learn and apply English in a reality. Those activities are being a member of any social networking online, writing a letter or postcard to an institution, visiting foreign embassy (U.K, U.S.A, Australia etc), talking to native speaker at school, translating and interpreting selected poplar song, short story, drama, poem, and novel and doing extensive reading.



Key words: motivation, learning English