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Motivation:
The Key to Classroom Management Success in ESL Classrooms

Cathryn Hoard
TED Ankara Koleji
Ankara, Turkey
cbondhoard@gmail.com
Anita Tjan
TED Malatya Koleji
Malatya, Turkey
anita.tjan@gmail.com
August 31, 2013
(Submitted to ELT Journal but not accepted.)

Motivation: The key to classroom management success in ESL

classrooms
This article emphasizes the importance of motivation for effective classroom management
leading to greater student success in the ESL classroom. The discussion of motivation is based
on Abraham Maslows Theory of Human Motivation focusing on the middle three stages of
safety, love/belonging and esteem. The meaning of each stage is explored with practical
examples given as to how a fundamental sense of safety, love/belonging and self-esteem can be
engendered and maintained with young learners. Relying on David Hawkins I-Thou-It
educational relationship triangle, this paper also emphasizes the importance of the teacher
(I)student (Thou) relationship with the shared experience of an engaging subject matter
(It). Awareness of this triangle helps teachers listen to students and to see each one as a whole
person. Teachers who listen to students hearts have fewer classroom management problems
and are better equipped to motivate students for life-long learning and success in English.

Introduction
Motivation is a key to classroom management and success in the ESL classroom, especially for
young learners. This is because unmotivated and demotivated students do not learn. Bowing to
external pressures, students may pack away into short-term memory enough information to pass
an exam but, without internal motivation, there will be no on-going context in which to wrap and
nurture a growing body of knowledge and experience. It is therefore imperative that teachers
first understand what does motivate the students and then strategize how to turn this
understanding into actual behaviours and activities that touch the motivational core of each
student. This is especially necessary for the ESL teacher of young learners who must convince
the children of the relevancy and usefulness of the targeted subject (English) .
Classroom management is often an issue for ESL teachers, especially those teaching in cultures
which emphasize heavy external control instead of development of internal control. Young ESL
learners, unlike adult students, rarely make a choice when it comes to studying English.
Consequently, the unmotivated and demotivated young learners may disengage or disrupt the
class as a way to register their discontent. Again, no learning takes place.
Abraham Maslows hierarchy of needs (1943) states that if a lower need is not met, then the
motivation to go to a higher stage is absent. For example, if the student is extremely hungry
(physiological need) then the student feels no motivation to encounter any other input until this
basic need is met. This example, of course, is obvious but the same is also true for the higher
and more abstract needs of safety, love/belonging and esteem. To address these needs this paper

suggests that teachers must understand the importance of their relational role in what David
Hawkins (1967) called the I-Thou-It triangle. I is the teacher; Thou is the the student and
It is the subject matter.
Once a teacher understands students felt (and real) needs, he/she is ready to remove barriers to
learning and enhance motivation by pursuing strategies and behaviours that will address those
needs within the effective bonds of Hawkins I-Thou-It triangle, thus greatly increasing the
probability that true learning takes place

Understanding w here students are on the motivatio nal grid

Maslows first essential stage for motivation is physical need. It is always hoped that childrens
parents send their children to school with their basic physical needs met. This may not always be
the case, however, with food and it is helpful for teachers to remember that a students
inattention could be due to too much or too little appropriate food. There is another important
aspect of a childs physiology which must be considered as well and that is the possibility of
various learning disabilities. Most students with some form of learning disability are labelled
simply as naughty, bad or stupid, certainly a discouraging factor for students in any class!
The teacher who refuses to label any student as such, but leaves room for physical neurological
differences i and uses appropriate referral, support and lesson modification is validating that
student as a worthwhile individual and laying an important foundation on which the child can
grow and thrive in the classroom.
Maslows next stage is safety. It is usually assumed that places where children are educated are
sufficiently safe physically. This paper focuses on psychological safety. Anyone who has ever
attended school knows that the classroom can be a very cruel place. Children who have not yet
developed a mature sense of sympathy and empathy often prey on the weak, teasing them
mercilessly into silence or tears. It is the teachers responsibility to firmly establish from the
outset that such behaviour is not tolerated, that in fact the classroom is truly a safe zone from all
forms of personal attack.
The bedrock of the safe zone is respect. This article will talk about different techniques for
establishing respect as the overarching principle. From the very first day the teacher must both
model and monitor respect.. Respect must first be modelled by the I (teacher) and emotionally
experienced by the Thou (student). This is needed in order for all members of the class,
especially the students among themselves, to consistently show respect to one another. To
understand what respect looks like, the students with sufficient vocabulary in English can
brainstorm and share what it means for 1) the teacher to respect the students, 2) the students to
respect the teacher and 3) the students to respect one another

With this in mind, below are some classroom practices that have been effective in creating the
safe zone for classrooms. They were used consistently with a total of 600 secondary students
over a period of three years.
1.
As a teacher, do not interrupt students who are speaking in turn. If interrupting is needed,
apologizing for the interruption is needed.
.
2.
Do not allow students to interrupt each other. If students interrupt each other, remind them
that this is not respectful and not allowed.
3.
When students are being quiet and respectful towards any speaker (teacher or student)
praise them with appropriate rewards according to your classroom management system. One
strategy is to give and record extra minutes on the board when rules related to respect are
obeyed. An extra minute means that class will end a minute early (or more if the class has earned
more extra minutes). The intent is not that students respect one another only for the reward.
Consistently, it has been seen with the use of this strategy that the quickest and most effective
way to encourage students to follow the desired rules is to make the rules a game in which
students have some control over how many points they can earn and the way in which they can
earn them. This is especially important when the students are not used to such rules in any other
school or home context.
4.
As a teacher who promises somethingdo it!
Again, returning to the example of extra minutes, saying that extra minutes will be given (or
whatever reward chosen) for attentive, helpful class behaviour, then make sure to give those
extra minutes. The tension comes when there is a lot of material to cover and time is short. It
may seem counter-productive to give extra minutes and actually stop the lesson early when the
full lesson has not been covered. This, however, is a short-sighted view. The few minutes of
lesson time rewarded are more than made up in later lessons attended by students who are truly
contributing and listening rather than disrupting the class. The teacher becomes the teacher they
can trust, one who keeps his/her word. It has also been found that those few extra minutes of
freedom turn out to be some of the best one-on-one conversations to take place between student
and teacherin English, as students have an opportunity to ask questions and talk about what is
on their hearts without being heard by the whole class. By keeping promises, a teacher
demonstrate respect for the students and they will return the respect. Thus the teacher is also
reinforcing the foundation of a healthy I Thou relationship between teacher and student as
well as laying a strong foundation for the psychologically safe environment. In this classroom,
words are meaningful, powerful and prophetic in the sense that what is said will happen. If a
promise cant be kept, giving an understandable and timely apology reinforces the safe zone.

The establishment of psychological safety in a classroom is closely tied to the next stage in
Maslows hierarchy, love/belonging. Every society, no matter where they fall on the
individualistic/collective spectrum, is tribal to some degree. People want to belong to something.
The need to create a strong sense of belonging for students in an ESL classroom is even more
important since the subject matter is not their language. Belonging to a group means if one falls
or succeeds, the group is there to support or to cheer. So too in the ideal ESL classroom, when a
student makes a mistake, he/she is not ridiculed or laughed at, but rather corrected with dignity.
It is important to emphasise to students that mistakes are your friendsboth for the students
and the teacher. Students are pleasantly surprised when the teacher responds, Im glad you
made that mistake and then the teacher follows up with a fuller explanation so that the
student (and probably other students in the class) understands. When students are treated with
dignity and the ESL classroom is seen as a safe place to make mistakes, more communication in
English is attempted. Students find themselves actually communicating in English without fear
and English begins to belong to themthey begin to love English. Another opportunity to
reinforce a sense of being loved and belonging is in celebrating the successes of each student
whether that success is specifically in English, or football or chess. Every student is good at
something. Find out what it is.. In this way the teacher is tying the students passions (an
integral part of Thou) to the study of English ( the It.).

How to Li sten to students hearts

As humans, we listen to those we respect. We of course want the students to listen to us; but if
we are aiming to have them do more than hear and forget , we must earn the right to be listened
to by listening to them. True listening involves much more than hearing words or sounds. Just
as we teach our students, it includes paying close attention as well as thinking about and
evaluating what we are hearing and seeing. It is a holistic approach to listening that we as
teachers must practice when students are speaking (in the broadest sense of the word). As
teachers, of course we need to focus on the academic goals of the lesson but we also need to keep
our antennae up to catch the unconscious messages students are constantly sending out through
their verbal/nonverbal and written behaviour.
For example, after class, take a look at the L1 notes you intercept. A lot of them are simple
doodling but some may cryptically expose the throes of pre-teen drama, falling out with friends
that could point to a growing depression at not being considered one of the cool kids in class?
Are they silly notes that should tell you that, at least in this lesson, you lost their interest. Are
they pictures of things seen in nightmares--whose nightmares and why? How can your lesson on
the present touch and awaken these students to both English and life? If your lesson in some
way doesnt touch on or at least temporarily free them from these internal world issues, you may
cover the material but the educational goal for the lesson will not be achieved. Briefly, here
are some other ways to holistically listen to students:

1. Respond thoughtfully and positively to most comments, even if they are off topic. For
the rest, respond with good-natured humour.
2. When they write something happy or sad relating to their lives, write affirming
comments. An affirming comment is not the same as praising the academic merit of the writing.
It is acknowledging that you heard the students heart about something important in his or her
life, regardless of the correctness of the grammar. For example, if a student writes, Last week is
bad because dog die, you might give the work a lower than excellent mark because of the lack
of the past tense and a possessive pronoun, but be sure to comment on the event. You might say
something like, Im so sorry your dog died. That was a bad week! In this way you are
validating the students feelings (under the circumstances something much more important that
the past tense) as well as taking the opportunity to model the correct grammar.
3. Note their posture in class. If they are disengaged, draw them in again with goodnatured, non-threatening humour. For example Tell them Its all about me (the teacher) and
youd hate for them to miss the show. If a student is continually disengaged, dont get angry,
talk to them privately and ask them, why. Ask for suggestions of what you can do that would
make them want to participate.
4. Note if there is a change in performance either up or down, find out why. If the
change is positive, capitalize on the new found motivation and bring it into the classroom more
often (sports, science, a particular series, game). If the change is negative, talk to the student in
private. Let them know you noticed and you care. Most often the reason has nothing to do with
your class but more to do with home or friend problems. This is a time when you can affirm
your belief in them and help them understand and believe that even if much of the world around
them is not safe psychologically, your class, your subject is! They may end up as English
teachers if you do this.
One of the most important reasons for establishing a safe and affirming classroom atmosphere is
that this is the kind of atmosphere in which students speak the most and in which teachers can
truly hear, not just the words, but also the hearts of their students. The issue of students
speaking can be problematic for any teacher, as students love to speak in class but not always
about the subject, in turn, or at a reasonable level. The problem is magnified in the ESL
classroom of young learners when the language spoken is also a bone of contention between
teacher and student. Yet, to silence students verbal expressions is to block the development of
one of the essential skills in learning English. Separately, if students are not allowed to speak,
what will the teacher listen to? How can a strong bond between teacher and student (I and
Thou) be established if the teacher hears nothing more than patterned responses to irrelevant
workbook questions?

For this reason, some ESL teachers advocate allowing a significant amount of L1 in the
classroom (spoken by both teacher and student) so that instructions can be clearly understood
and what is on the students hearts and minds can be expressed. If the subject matter of the class
(It) were not a foreign language for the students, we would agree. Certainly the higher goal
of education is broader than the teaching of any one subject but, in agreement with David
Hawkins I-Thou-It triangle, the subject content is just as essential in the classroom as the
presence of teacher and students. Hopefully students will encounter many adults in their lives
who will listen to the things they have to say. The ESL classroom teacher, however, has the
unique opportunity to demonstrate to students that they can be heard even in the challenging
context of limited vocabulary and understanding of a foreign language. Success under these
circumstances greatly supports the development of the higher goals of education.
We have found that framing the classroom as English World provides an engaging
atmosphere in which students are invited into another dimension, as it were, and invited to play
along. It is of course very helpful if the teacher has his or her own classroom that can be
decorated with an exciting array of realia related to English language and culture. Even if this
isnt the case, however, there is much the teacher can do to bring students into the English
World game and trigger a neurological response that creates and builds an English World
section of the brain out of which they can function for the duration of the lesson. For example,
one of the authors write Welcome to English World on the board and then start every lesson in
front of the class, counting to three and leading the class in a chorus of Welcome to English
World! This is the signal that the game has begun.
As with any game, the rules for English World are essential. The first rule, not surprisingly, is
RESPECT. What this word actually means, especially with regards to speaking and listening is
carefully and playfully demonstrated through words and mime. The second rule is: unless
theres an emergency or unless permission is given, only English is spoken by both students and
the teacher throughout the lesson. Many techniques are available to positively enforce this rule.
Two techniques we use are the before mentioned, Extra Minutes and English Passes. Extra
Minutes is a kind of reward (and sometimes punishment) system between teacher and the class
as a whole. If the students are participating well and on task for a good amount of time, the
teacher puts a mark on the board indicating that he/she will stop the lesson a minute early (or
however many Extra Minutes the class earns). Negative Extra Minutes either take away a
positive Extra Minute or add minutes to the class after the bell. Students are often delighted to
find that the teacher is also affected by Extra Minutes. If the teacher forgets the English Only
rule and speaks L1 in the classroom, he/she is obliged to give the class a positive extra minute.
We find that many students carefully pay attention to every word the teacher says if only to catch
the teacher uttering a word in L1.

English Passes (which allow students to pass on using English) work well for students
between the ages of 9 and 18. The teacher explains that there may be times when the student
desperately wants to express something but simply cant do it in English. To accommodate this
situation, each semester every student is given 12 English Passes that have their names on it,
look a little bit like money and are not transferable. If a student feels the need to use L1, he/she
may ask for permission and surrender one English Pass. There is no punishment for using an
English Pass but any unused English Passes at the end of the semester are added as bonus
points to students oral grade or evaluation. Also, students who dont use any English Passes
are given a certificate stating that they are a Super Speaker of English. Thus the use of L1 in
English World becomes a strategy decision in the hands of the student. Most often, students
choose to make the extra mental effort to make themselves understood in English rather than
surrender their passes.
One more important aspect of the English World game is the practice of taking turns. Children
who are never given a chance to make their move in a game quickly give up playing at all.
The same is true in the ESL classroom for any student who is rarely asked to take his or her
turn by answering a question. Too often it is the case in any classroom that the most confident
students answer all the questions while the rest sit frustrated or opt out of the game/lesson
completely. To avoid this and make sure that every student has the opportunity to speak and be
heard, we use a random card system rather than calling on those who raise their hands. At the
beginning of the year we have students write their names on a small card and also draw a simple
self-portrait of themselves. Interestingly, the self-portrait students draw often speaks volumes
about who they are and how they view themselves. Every lesson the cards are shuffled.
Students are thus called on randomly and cant hide behind the confident hand-raisers. A plus is
recorded on the card, not so much for the right answer but for simply reading the right question
or in some way indicating that he/she has been following the exercise. This practice again
reassures students that mistakes are not to be feared, gives even the most struggling student a
sense of competency and reinforces the important sense of belonging as every member of the
class has an opportunity to participate in the game/lesson. In order to develop students peer
listening skills, students can also be asked to summarize what the previous student said before
earning the right to share their ideas or answers. This is particularly helpful for the ESL student
who must move beyond memorization to understanding. By putting a classmates comments
into their own words they are producing a kind of original language that demonstrates a higher
level of acquisition and thinking.

Conclusion: Motivated Students Manage Themselve s

Dornyei and Czizer (1998) surveyed over two hundred ESL Hungarian teachers on effective
motivation strategies. They distilled the results to the top ten strategies for motivating language
learners. Out of those ten, six of them intersect with what this article has covered: Setting a

personal example, developing a relationship with the students, increasing the learners selfconfidence in speaking English, making classes interesting, personalising the lessons, and
creating a welcoming atmosphere. The outcome of using effective motivating strategies are
students who can manage themselves and make choices as they interact with the It, with each
other (Thou) and with the teacher ( I ). And learning takes place.
WORD COUNT is 3668
Includes abstract (146 words)

10

REFERENCES
Dornyei Z. and Kata Czizer K. 1998. Ten commandments for motivating language learners:
results of an empirical study. Language Teaching Research 2/3,: 203-229.
Hawkins, D. 1967. The Informed Vision: Essays and Learning and Human Nature. Algora
Publishing..
Maslow, A. 1943. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-96.
Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm