SEMINAR ON ELT

FACTORS STIMULATING EFL STUDENTS TO LEARN

GROUP 4:

Nur Amalia ILyas (1652044011)

Irfan Ramli (1652044013)

Arwendha Fentura De. N (1652044014)

ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MAKASSAR

2017
 INTRODUCTION

English may not be the most spoken language in the world, but is official language in a large
number of countries. This one of the reason can make people realize that how important
English to be taught. Although learning English can be challenging and time consuming, we can
see that it very valuable to learn and can create many opportunities.

There are some different contexts of English Language Teaching (ELT) in the world; one of
them is TEFL or Teaching English as a Foreign Language. TEFL is mainly used to talk about
teaching students which English is neither their native language nor the second language. It is
typically take place in a foreign country, usually with students from the same country that have
the same culture and make similar mistakes in the target language, for example in Indonesia.
They are included EFL because we are use and learn English as a Foreign Language.

Because we use English as a Foreign Language, some students did not realize about the
benefit of leaning language itself or they just have no interest to learn it at all. Sometimes the
students only know that English is a school subject. So in this paper, the writer will discuss the
three possible factors stimulating EFL students to learn, which are Motivation, Teacher and
Environment Factor.

Problem Statement

The problem statement of this paper is to know what are the factors of stimulating EFL
students to learn.
 DISCUSSION

Indonesia is a country that belongs as an EFL (English as a Foreign language), because we

use and learn English as a foreign language not as a native language. It is mostly use by the
students in the school or at University, it taught as a school subject. Mostly students in school
have no desire to learning language, they have many reasons like there is no motivation for
them to learn it, English is not their choice, English is difficult and boring and many other
reason. So it is important to know what exactly the EFL students need or want in their language
learning. How can we know that? It can be simple by know first what the possibly factors
stimulating EFL students to learn. Here are some factors:

1) Motivation Factor
The first factor stimulating EFL students to learn is Motivation. The word "motivation" is
typically defined as the forces that account for the arousal, selection, direction, and
continuation of behavior. Actually, it is often used to describe certain sorts of behavior. It is
important in getting students to engage in academic activities of learn, determining how
much students will learn from the activities they perform or the information to which they
will be exposed to. Students who are motivated to learn something use higher cognitive
processes in learning about it.
Motivation is the most important things that every students or EFL students should
have, they all need motivation to have a desire and needs to learn and do their best in
learning language, because without motivation, there is no action. There are two major
recognizable concepts of motivation; they are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.
a. Intrinsic motivation derived from within the individual is especially important for
encouraging students success in learning language. In this type of motivation, the
activity itself, not the reward, interests students to learn the language or making
themselves better attracts them in the language learning. In addition, as viewed by
Vallerand (1997), students are intrinsically motivated in a particular activity when
wishing to experience the pleasure and satisfaction of their curiosity from the activity.
According to Harmer (1991), factors influencing students intrinsic motivation are
physical condit ions, teachers as well as their teaching methods. Physical conditions such
as the lighting, the temperature, the acoustic, the lines of vision, the layout of desks, the
facilities for displaying pictures or charts, materials and so on, have a great effect on
learning.
b. Extrinsic motivation happens when external factors make the person do something and
comes from an external source encouraging or fostering an individual to succeed. In this
type of motivation, learners may make efforts to learn English for some functional
reasons like to pass an examination, to get a better job, or to get a place at university.
Therefore, in second language achievement, extrinsic motivation plays a vital part since
the individual desires to learn because of some pressure or reward from the social
environment. Extrinsic motivation comes from such factors outside the classroom as
parents, teachers, friends, or their previous learning, but most often involves subjects in
a reward and punishment system. In Brophys (1987) opinion, motivation to learn is a
competence acquired through general experience but stimulated most directly through
modeling, communication of expectations, and direct instruction or socialization by
others, especially parents and teachers.
2) Teacher Factor
The second factor stimulating EFL students to learn is Teacher. In learning English as a
second language, not only students need to know about the importance of motivation in
language learning, teachers and parents are concerned about its effects on their students
learning as well. But the teachers seem to be the biggest factor because their roles are very
important in students learning.
Keeping students interested in school and motivating them to succeed are always
challenges for parents, students themselves, and of course for almost all the teachers year
after year because too many students are not sufficiently motivated to succeed in learning
language in school or at university. So the EFL teacher needs to make a good plan to keep
their EFL students to learn language. Here are some ways that every teacher should try:
a. Making a Good Relationship
Skilled educators/teacher knows the value of having a good relationship with
students to improve student engagement and reduce stress for everyone. Here are
some approaches that every teacher should try:
1. Become a popular teacher. Teachers become popular by building a good
relationship with the students by treating them the way they would like to be
treated. Simply stated, students want to be treated with respect. Talking down or
force lecturing them to learn language will only frustrate them. Offering positive
reinforcement, being consistent, smiling, and listening to their concern all help to
make the students want to learn.
2. Get to know the students. The teacher should work at getting to know the students
as individual like find out their interest, initiate conversations about hobby, sports,
TV, assignment and any other so the students will begin to see that their teacher is
not just an adult, but someone who is genuinely interested in them. Once the
students interest to their teacher, they would interest with the learning as well.
b. Pay Attention with the Students
The classroom is likely to be more successful if the teacher keeps the following
principles in mind to make their students to learn the language:
1. Try and maximize eye contact. Both teachers to student and student to student.
In full class phases of the lesson, if the person who is speaking does not have eye
contact with the others, then attention is likely to drop. This is also the main
reason why the horseshoe shape to groups is better.
2. Make sure students are seated at a comfortable distance from each other. The
teacher needs to make sure there is no student sitting alone or outside the
groups. Besides, try to leave a fair empty, but not so much a space because large
distances between the students will tend to lead to a muted atmosphere, low
pace, and less active student participation in the lesson.
3. Think in advance about how you will organize changing partners or changing
groups. This is a stage of the lesson which can potentially descend into chaos if
its not tightly controlled, with students wandering aimlessly around not
knowing where to go or confidently moving to the wrong place.
c. The Error Correction
It is always asked whether the teacher should correct all students errors,
whenever they occur. The reasonable answer is that if they stop at every single
error and treat it with no room for errors to take place, this will lead to a gap of
communication and students will be too much afraid of making mistakes. Hence,
due to being too much obsessed with making errors, students will be too much
reluctant to participate.
Thus, Teachers should be aware of when to correct errors and how to do that
without any hurt and humiliation. In a student- centered classroom, it should be
better to correct errors, which students make unconsciously, whenever there is a
gap of communication or when not treating the error will result in a
misunderstanding of the idea expressed.
 Concerning the ways of how to correct errors, there are several techniques
which the teacher, who is seen as the monitor, should choose from them according
to the type of the error and task where the incorrect form of language occurs.
Among these ways of correction we can state: self-correction, peer correction and
teacher correction.

3) Environment Factor

The third factor stimulating EFL students to learn is Environment. Environment here
means classroom environment such as the teaching method, the material, the facilities and
so on that used by the students, it is also supportive factor for them whether they
comfortable or not with their learning environment, if the students find their classroom is a
caring, comfortable and supportive place where everyone is valued and respected, they will
tend to participate more fully in the process of learning. And Lumsden (1994) added that
classroom climate is an important factor influencing the students interest to learn. Here are
some tips to make positive and ideal classroom environment:

a. Classroom Arrangement
The way the students are seated in the classroom will often determine the dynamics
of the lesson. Indeed, a simple change in the seating pattern can make an incredible
difference to group coherence and student satisfaction, and many other cases where
seating has been a crucial element in the success or failure of the lesson. Doing Groups-
seated round small tables is often one choice for the teacher do in their classroom. This
is probably the best option for the larger classes in this range, but for smaller numbers
and with adult or teenage students, the Horseshoe- shape. A horseshoe may be desks in
a U-shape with a hollow center, students in a semicircle on chairs with arm-rests and no
desks, or students seated around three sides of a large table, with the teacher at one
end.
b. Make the Learning to be Fun and Interesting

Many ways that teacher can give to make comfortable and interesting learning
environment for their students. They are:

a. Using flash cards. It is considered as important tools in teaching especially a foreign

language, since they play the role of a facilitator in teaching new vocabularies such
as fruits, vegetables, clothes items, etc. Besides, they are very helpful in drawing
especially beginners attention to follow and match new words to items.
b. Creating stories. Doing this activity with the students is also another way of
developing speaking and writing skills, because creating stories is grounded in the
students ability to create a story from their personal experience. In creating stories
some issues are revealed such as: a) fluency, b) whether the students have enough
language to create the story, and c) accuracy.
c. Using songs. Teachers are able to demonstrate techniques of using songs in different
ways to teach grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and community building because
the students like songs and they motivate the students to learn the English language
in an interesting way. Teachers can elicit students ideas about the song through
activities such as prediction, mind maps, word splashes, etc. Students discuss
questions such as the feelings in the song, what will happen next, etc. and write
their responses in an interesting manner. Students may write and present how the
song makes them feel and then draw a picture of their feelings while listening to the
song. Teachers respond to this presentation and ask questions. Then, feedback is
provided from the group.

c. Using Media as a Teaching Method

Multimedia provides a complex multi-sensory experience in exploring our world

through the presentation of information through texts, graphics, images, audio and
video. And students learn best by seeing the value and importance of the information
presented in the classroom. If the students are not interested in the material presented,
 they will not learn it. In order to achieve the goal of students learning, it is important to
use it as teaching methods to make the classroom environment interactive as possible.

The media that can be used in EFL classroom such as cassette recorders, videos,
computers, projectors, magic boards and many others, teachers should use these
materials when teaching. Indeed, they should include the appropriate material to use
while planning their lessons. For instance, the teacher should include a cassette player
in a lesson based on listening, while we need to include a computer in any e-lesson or a
lesson about designing a website or an internet page about school. Whereas, they can
use an overhead projector in presenting writing drafts for classroom correction or to
read.

d. Realia Activity

Realia in EFL terms refers to any real objects we use in the classroom to bring the
class to life. It is an authentic material that helps the teacher to overcome classroom
artificiality. The main advantage of using real objects into the classroom is to make the
learning experience more memorable for the learner.

For example, if you are going to teach vocabulary of fruit and vegetables it can be
much more affective for students if they can touch, smell and see the objects at the
same time as hearing the new word. This would appeal to a wider range of learner styles
than a simple flashcard picture of the piece of fruit or vegetable. (With very young
learners, classroom management can become trickier if you bring in real objects as
excitement levels tend to rise. Here are the other activities involving Realia:

a. Tourist Information. Gather some city or town maps from the tourist information
bureau wherever you are. Use them to create role plays that could happen with
English speaking visitors to their town or city. Give students a scenario for them to
build a role play out of. If you had trouble finding your way around their town/ city
when you arrived use your own experiences to create situations.
b. About me. Gather some bits and pieces that you have in your bag, purse and around
the house such as used cinema or concert tickets, train or bus tickets, cards youve
received, passport photos, shopping receipts etc. Stick them on a piece of card or on
a cork board. Get students to ask you about the items to gather information about
you. As a follow up, ask students to do the same and bring in some bits and bobs
they have for their classmates to ask them about.
c. Island survival. Bring in a selection of items such as a coat hanger, a corkscrew, a
packet of dental floss, a clothes peg, a plastic bag, a wooden spoon, some swimming
goggles, elastic bands etc. Put the students into groups and tell them they have been
ship wrecked on a desert island with their group. Luckily there are some random
items on the island they can use to help them survive. Reveal the items one by one
and elicit vocabulary. Then tell students they have ten minutes to think about how
they are going to use the items to help them survive. At the end, listen to each
groups ideas and vote on which group you think would survive the longest.
 CONCLUSION

There are many factors to stimulating EFL (English as Foreign Language) students to learn,
some of them are Motivation factor, Teacher factor and Classroom environment factor. The
three of them have their own important role of stimulating EFL students in learning.

Motivation here functions as to make the EFL students having a desire or interest to learn
their target language. While Teacher functions as the best facilitator and best motivator to keep
their students want to learn by doing some strategies in the classroom. And the last is
Environment functions as to make the students find that their classroom environment is a
caring, comfortable and supportive place so they will tend to participate more fully in the
process of language learning.

REFERENCES

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/english-as-a-foreign-language-teacher
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/alexenoamen/ways-motivating-efl-esl-students-
classroom
https://www.englishclub.com/tefl-articles/motivation-motivating-efl.htm
http://teflbootcamp.com/teaching-skills/teaching-methods-for-tefl/
https://seetefl.com/ppp-tefl-teaching-methodology/
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/realia-0
https://www.nea.org/tools/51057.html