Laura Gillett

Language & Language Development

Week 4 - Assignment 7

In my experience, motivation plays a huge role in teaching not only English learners, but all students. I
currently have a self-contained special education preschool classroom, with many English learners, and I use
motivation all the time with my students. I have found that if my students are not motivated, they will not
complete an activity and often exhibit adverse behavior. It was interesting to read about motivation as a trait or
state in the Diaz-Rico text. For a lot of my students in particular, motivation is a state. With a diverse population
of students with unique needs, my staff and I are constantly creating motivation for our students using highly
preferred toys/objects or activities, offering a break, using social praise, using motivating edibles, and using
first/then language/visuals and token systems. Building meaningful relationships with each students, creates
an environment in which social praise becomes motivating, for most, but not all. Each and every one of my
students have speech and language goals, whether or not they are learning English as a second language. My
students have a wide range of language abilities, ranging from students who are non-verbal to students with
only speech delays. I find that motivation is a big part of practicing and eliciting language from my students. My
staff and I use a language prompting system to practice and elicit language from students. Our language
prompting system is meant to practice and elicit language with students as positively and concretely as
possible. We provide feedback by saying we understand or don’t understand a student’s language, and then
prompt language imitation or production as necessary by saying your language is, more language is, better
language is, use/use more/use better language, better speech is. We then always praise all language
attempts, which brings in social praise as a motivator, as well as sometimes the use of more tangible
motivating items. My students respond very well to this prompting system, which was created by Speech
Language Pathologists. For my English learners, it helps provide a structure to make language use positive,
build vocabulary, and increase utterances.

I grew up in a community that spoke only English. I was not exposed to any other language in my daily life.
While I am also not an English learner, I have made attempts to learn different languages throughout my life.
When I was in middle school, we were required to take Spanish class. I learned very little and did not use
Spanish at all in my daily life. I had a few friends that went on to take Spanish language classes all through
high school and then in college as well. They practiced speaking Spanish with each other and traveled to
Spanish-speaking countries. One of those classmates now teaches English and is a Speech Language
Pathologist in a Spanish-speaking country. In high school, I took four semesters of French at a local
community college, as Spanish was the only language offered at my high school. Again, I didn’t use French in
my daily life so I did not retain much of the language. In the beginning, learning French was pretty motivating
for me, as I thought about studying abroad or traveling to use the language. I did not end up studying abroad or
traveling to France so my motivation level went down, especially since I did not use the language in my daily
life or have any reason to.

I’m not sure if I see anxiety to be a positive factor when learning a second language, though I can see stress
as being both positive and negative when learning a second language. I have the same opinion when it comes
to learning in general. Diaz-Rico shared the idea that, “highly anxious learners must divide their attentional
resources into both learning and worrying about learning.” I see this often in my classroom. When my students
are anxious, they are unable to focus and learn. Many of my students have social emotional deficits and have
trouble regulating their emotions or anxiety levels. Much of their anxiety can come from environmental triggers
or stem from their rigidity. Just this past week, I noticed that one of my students was very sensitive to noises,
especially loud sounds. He started covering his ears and sticking his fingers in his ears for large chunks of the
day. I have a couple of young three year olds who are struggling with rigidity and adjusting to the routine and
they often cry to self-soothe. We also had some construction happening at our school site this last week. For
this student in particular, I noticed that when his anxiety level was up, he was unable to self-regulate and focus
on the classroom routines and learning activities. This student is also an English learner and I also noticed that
his utterances in English were shorter when he was anxious. For myself, I do know that a little stress can help
make me more productive, but I also know that high anxiety levels lead to panic attacks and the inability to
regulate my mood. I think that the presence of anxiety and/or stress as a positive or negative factor is definitely
different for each learner. Through experience, I know that a positive learning environment leads to lower
anxiety levels, and for my students, leads to more productive learning.