Running Head: HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 1

HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS

IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE
Universidad Centroamericana (UCA)

MEMBERS:

Ramsés Sánchez

Diana Rodríguez

PROFESSOR’S NAME:

Adolfo Aburto

DATE: SUNDAY, MARCH 24th, 2019

HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 1

Abstract

Teaching English as a foreign language in a classroom is a complex task for a teacher.

Language learning should be more fun and enjoyable for students to learn. Teachers need to

have effective teaching strategies in order to make students understand English materials

better in learning process. A teacher needs to facilitate students’ interest towards learning

English. For some students, learning English is one of the most difficult subjects to learn.

Due to the difficulties in learning English, it can make students lose their interest easily. This

research paper is a descriptive study in a university. The result shows that most of the students

tend to have high interest in learning English. Knowing this fact, hopefully, teachers will be

able to stimulate students’ interest more and improve their achievements in learning English.

Would you please highlight the thesis statement of your

paper?
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 2

How to engage students in learning a language

When we think of student engagement in learning activities, it is often convenient to

understand engagement with an activity as being represented by good behavior, positive

feelings, and, above all, student thinking (Fredricks, 2014). This is because students may be

behaviorally or emotionally invested in a given activity without actually applying all the

necessary mental effort to understand the knowledge or skill that the activity promotes.

Students are young learners who have their own characteristics. Young learners take

great pleasure and enjoyment in what they do. Teachers should be able to understand how

their world works. Besides, they also should have the ability to teach them communicatively

and they also need skills to teach English effectively based on appropriate teaching model.

Therefore, teaching English to students must be well designed in accordance with the

characteristics of the students.

Some students determine English as a local content subject or extracurricular.

Moreover, English has been taught in the first grade at the first semester. In reference to some

personal conversations conducted by the writer with some English teachers at UCA, in the

process of teaching and learning in the classroom the students tend be very friendly with their Comentado [AA1]: There is a preposition missing here.

friends and it is hard for them to ask the students to be serious joining the English class.
Putting interest is one of the strongest motivations for learning English, and motivation has
been identified as one of the main factors that affects English language learning (Gardner,
Comentado [AA2]: It is kind of redundant to say friendly
with their Friends, so I’d recomend to use another Word.
Comentado [AA3]: I’d recomend to use another
collocation with the Word interest since the verb “put” does
not soud well

1985).
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 3

Learning and motivation have the same importance in order to achieve something.

While learning makes us gain new knowledge and skills and motivation pushes us to go Comentado [AA4]: Punctuation mistake here. You need a
comma.
through the learning process (Wimolmas, 2013). This paper is intended at exploring the

students’ interest in learning English. It describes about the students’ interest in learning Comentado [AA5]: I don’t think the word describe is
needed.
English, their perceptions in learning English, and their activities in improving English Comentado [AA6]: Wrong preposition.

achievements. While teachers hopefully consider the appropriate English learning that is the
learning that takes into account the students developmental level at university. English is
one of the local contents taught optionally. And a great deal of students includes English as
Comentado [AA7]: I suggest rewording this sentence to
make it easier to read.
Comentado [AA8]: Would you please explain again this
sentence. Remember that when we use the word “While”
there should be two clauses separated by commas.

one of the subjects taught from first grade. While in the level of university, English is also Comentado [AA9]: You may change the word order here.
At the university level
taught optionally. The English goal to motivate students to learn English early. It is also

proposed to introduce some English vocabulary items, hopefully they will be familiar with

the sounds of English and vocabulary items as presented in songs, games, charts, stories, and

the rest. In aiming for full engagement, it is essential that students perceive activities as being

meaningful. Research has shown that if students do not consider a learning activity worthy

of their time and effort, they might not engage in a satisfactory way, or may even disengage

entirely in response (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). To ensure that activities are

personally meaningful, we can, for example, connect them with students' previous knowledge

and experiences, emphasizing the value of an assigned activity in personally relevant ways.

Also, adult or expert modeling can help to demonstrate why an individual activity is worth

pursuing, and when and how it is used in real life. Students look out for intentions and

purposes of how they see other people doing, bringing on their own knowledge and

experiences into their attempts to make sense of other people’s language, in this case,

English.
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 4

The notion of competence may be understood as a student's personal evaluation of

whether he or she can succeed in a learning activity or challenge. Researchers have found

that effectively performing an activity can positively impact subsequent engagement (Schunk

& Mullen, 2012). To reinforce students' sense of competence in learning activities, the

assigned activities could:

 Be only slightly beyond students' current levels of proficiency

 Make students demonstrate understanding throughout the activity

 Show peer coping models (i.e. students who struggle but eventually succeed at the

activity) and peer mastery models (i.e. students who try and succeed at the activity)

 Include feedback that helps students to make progress

We may understand autonomy support as a development of the students' sense of control

over their behaviors and goals. When teachers abandon control (without losing power) to the

students, rather than promoting obedience with directives and commands, student

engagement levels are likely to increase as a result (Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch,

2004). Autonomy support can be implemented by:

 Welcoming students' opinions and new ideas into the flow of the activity.

 Using informational, non-controlling language with students.

 Giving students the time they need to understand and absorb an activity by

themselves.
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 5

Collaborative learning is another aid of engagement in learning activities. When students

work successfully with others, their engagement may be improved as a result (Wentzel,

2009), mostly due to feeling a sense of connection to others during the activities (Deci &

Ryan, 2000). To make group work more productive, strategies can be implemented to ensure

that students know how to communicate and behave in that setting. Teacher modeling is one

effective method (i.e. the teacher shows how collaboration is done), while avoiding regular

groups and grouping by ability, fostering individual accountability by assigning different

roles, and evaluating both the student and the group performance also support collaborative

learning.

In the early stages of their mother tongue development, students are excellent at making

a little language to go along away. They learn language through the hidden or acquisition

process more than the direct learning. If their surrounding provides more encouragement, it

will help them to learn much. Based on the description it can be concluded that learning

English for students needs a fun and enjoyable learning techniques in order to make them

more interested in learning English. Interest in Learning English can be considered as a

process of getting knowledge. Student's interest is important in learning and interests also

play an important role in developing student’s thinking ability. Interests strongly influence

student’s academic and professional choices. That is of course the teacher’s responsibility to Comentado [AA10]: Punctuation

encourage the relations between student's interest and new knowledge. High-quality teacher-

student relationship is another important factor in determining student engagement,

especially in the case of difficult students and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 6

(Fredricks, 2014). When students form close and caring relationships with their teachers, they

are satisfying their developmental need for a connection with others and a sense of fitting in

society (Scales, 1991). Teacher-student relationships can be facilitated by:

 Caring about students' social and emotional needs

 Showing positive attitudes and enthusiasm towards students

 Increasing one-on-one time with students

 Treating students fairly without judgement

 Avoiding deception or promise-breaking

Finally, students' perception of learning activities also determines their level of

engagement. When students follow an activity because they want to learn and understand,

rather than just obtain a good grade, look smart, please their parents, or outperform peers,

their engagement is more likely to be full and complete (Anderman & Patrick, 2012). To

encourage this mastery orientation mindset, consider various approaches, such as framing

success in terms of learning rather than performing. You can also place the emphasis on

individual progress by reducing social comparison and recognizing student improvement and

effort. When students are interested in what they are learning, hopefully they will pay closer

attention, they will also process the information more efficiently, and employ more effective

learning strategies, such as engaging in critical thinking, making connections between old

and new knowledge, and attending to deep structure instead of surface features. Further,

when the students are interested in a task, they will work harder and persist longer, bringing

more of their self-regulatory skills into play. (Idit Katz, 2006) call Interest as intrinsic interest

or intrinsic value defined as “the enjoyment people experience when doing a task, or their
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 7

subjective interest in the content of the task” (Wigfield & Eccles, 1992, pp. 280). Intrinsic

interest may enable students to remain occupied in a task without receiving immediate

feedback because it can allow them to perceive the task as enjoyable and as containing

personally meaningful information. In addition, students who have an interest in a certain

topic, might be able to rely on internal prompts and also to know well what are they doing

due to their experience with similar tasks.

METHOD

This paper is the result of the research conducted through an exploratory research.

The research focuses on finding out the students’ interest in learning English. There are three

data collected in this research, namely: 1) the student’s interest in learning English, the

student’s perception in learning English and the students’ activities in improving their

English skills. The data were collected by using a questionnaire towards some students of

UCA. Fifteen students who were not related at all with the TEFL major were chosen to fill Comentado [AA11]: I suggest changing the preposition.

the questionnaires purposefully. And the data were analyzed and described in forms of pie

charts.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

As mentioned previously, there are three kinds of data collected in the research,

namely: the students’ interest in learning English, their perceptions of leaning English and

also their activities to improve their English skills, and they are presented in the following

descriptions. The data of the students’ interests in learning English were collected through

the questionnaire. The students need to answer the questions if they are interested in learning
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 8

English or not. And the students need to choose the appropriate answer by crossing the

option, namely: 1) very interested, 2) interested, or 3) uninterested. The result can be

presented in pie chart 1.

The student's interests in learning English

Uninterested
3%
Interested
37%
Very interested
60%

Very interested Interested Uninterested

From pie chart 1, it can be seen that the students’ interest in learning English is very

high. There are 60% students who are interested in learning English, and 37% students are

very interested, while only 3% students are not interested in learning English. The Students’

Perceptions in Learning English Beside the students’ interest in learning English, the writer Comentado [AA12]: Wrong preposition

also collected the data about the students’ perceptions in learning English. In this case the

students need to answer the question if learning English is easy or difficult. And the students

need to choose the appropriate answer by crossing the option of 1) very easy, 2) easy, 3) Comentado [AA13]: You may connect this two sentences
to make just one clear sentence.
difficult, or 4) very difficult. The data is presented in pie chart 2.
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 9

The students' perceptions in learning a

language

1%
20%
Very easy
Easy
50%
Difficult

29% Very difficult

Pie chart 2 describes that 50% students tend to think that learning English is easy.

There are 29% students who have perceptions that learning English is difficult, and 20%

students think that it is very difficult, while 1% student thinks that it is very easy.

The other data is the students’ activities in improving their English Skills and the

students need to choose the answer by crossing the option, namely: 1) singing English songs,

2) watching English movies, 3) reading English books, or 4) joining English course, but they

also can add some other activities they do to improve their English skills, just like playing

games through mobile phone, learning through dictionary, or others. The data is described in

pie chart 3.
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 10

The students' activities in improving their

English

35%

57%

4%
4%

Singing English songs Watching English movies Reading English books Joining English course

Pie chart 3 presents that there are 51% students who join English course to improve

their English skills, 35% students sing English songs, 4% students read English books, and

4% students watch English movies. Besides, some students also play games through mobile

phones, learning dictionary, and group work to improve their English skills.

As mentioned previously, students of UCA are mostly young learners who have their Comentado [AA14]: Change the preposition

own characteristics. Young learners take great pleasure in having fun in what they do and

they may like have active classes regarding to English learning. All the data presented above Comentado [AA15]: Not needed.

show that most of the students are interested in learning English, and they also have good

perceptions about learning English. Besides, they also have good activities in improving their Comentado [AA16]: I think using the verb “ have” here is
not a good idea. Yo should change it.
English skills. This condition can support the students to learn English in the process of

teaching and learning in the classroom as explained by Gardner (1985) that Interest is one of

the strongest motivations for learning English, and motivation is one of the main factors
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 11

affecting learning English. When students have high interests in learning English, hopefully

they will enjoy joining English class and they will pay closer attention to the teacher’s

explanation, so they will process the information more efficiently. And it is teacher’s

responsibility to facilitate them the specific resources and material to learn English with fun.
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 12

CONCLUSION

Finally, the conclusions of the research are as follow. The students tend to have high

interests in learning English. There are 60% students who are interested in learning English, Comentado [AA17]: I suggest that you change there are.
Instead you can use “the” to make it sound more academic.
and 37% students are very interested, while only 3% students are not interested in learning

English. They have good perception in learning English. The 50% of students tend to think

that learning English is easy. There are 29% students who have perceptions that learning

English is difficult, and 20% students think that it is difficult, while 1% student thinks that it

is very easy. It is well known that several students of UCA have joined English courses that Comentado [AA18]: Wrong preposition

the university offers in order to improve their English skills. There are students who improve

their skill through singing English songs, students that improve their skills by reading English

books, and also students who improve their skills by watching English movies and T.V series.

While there are also some students who tend to play games through hand phone, learning

new words by the dictionary in order to improve their English skills. In sum, in order for

teachers to engage students exhaustively to learn a new language, they have to implement

new teaching strategies in order to make students have a better understanding of English and

how it works, therefore, teachers might take into consideration telling their students to be

interested in the English learning and also tell them to do certain activities that can reinforce

their English skills such as listening to music, reading books or dictionaries, watching

movies, and most importantly, have an active participation regarding to learning activities in

the classroom.
HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 13

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HOW TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN LEARNING A LANGUAGE 14

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