The Savior of Motivation

Professionally and personally, I struggle with motivation.

As a teacher, naturally I come across students with a wide range of motivational issues, though some are not necessarily issues. There are the over zealous ones who just cannot seem to get enough work and put very high demands on my already heavy workload. Others seem empty of even a soul, let along a cognizant brain capable of producing more than double word sentences. Of these two evils, of course the former is much easier to accept and handle while the latter... well, the latter seems to take its toll in a rather serious manner.

But, I'll get to that.

Far better are the middle ground students: highly motivated yet able to fend for themselves with the expert (?) direction I give them. They can take my seeds and grow their own mustard plant. The mental soil is rich, and knowledge just seems to grow naturally.

When I began working at my current job, a private language school, I brought with me the assumption that since the students have elected out of all the other options life has to offer to study English at this school, that they would inherently bring with them a high level of motivation and for learning, speaking, and studying the English language.

Indeed, I was sadly mistaken.

Though there are a large number of students who meet my expectations for motivation, a surprisingly large number of students fall into the unmotivated side of things. Why, I always ask myself, do they want to come here if they have no intention of taking my advice or working hard to study on their own. And work hard, they must.

On average, it takes 4-6 years for a fresh non-native English who lives in an English speaking country to become moderately fluent in basic interpersonal communication. It takes considerably longer if that same person were learning English in their home country. In order to reach that 4-6 year mark, that student must spend an incredible amount of time just being with English every single day.

60 or 90 minutes a week just ain't gonna cut it.

And so, I am bombarded with patrons of the school who have been students there for 7-10 years or more yet are still wallowing in the beginner and false beginner zone. I tell them how to improve, yet my words fall on deaf ears. They choose not to work. Eventually, that leads me to stop trying. Their lack of motivation has infected me and now I could care less what they do.

In that professionally lethargic state, I still ask the question; why do those students come in the first place? And maybe, just maybe, I have an answer.

I think that a common reason that people sign up for these kinds of schools is that they believe spending money will force them to see the value of their study. Especially in these economically dark times, they dare not waste a single coin. Their hard earned money will finally be matched with hard work for their hobby. While that may work for a select few, for the most part, it is a lie.

My sister-in-law is an amazing person when it comes to showing appreciation for other people. Whenever we visit her or send her some gift, she always sends us some kind of thank you, either in the form of a short note or a small present. And it comes quickly, too, not four or five months later. She also has a blog she created for family to keep track of her life and new son. She updates it regularly with pictures, video, and running commentary on the growth and development of the child. My own wife, who took more than a year off from work, toyed with the idea of doing that since she "had so much free time." But she never did.

I don't blame her one bit. I myself have serious problems keeping this blog up-to-date. But her inability to do that despite her time off from work brought me to understand the plight of my own students.

She did not have the motivation to do that to begin with. And so, just because she was able to, did not give her the motivation to do that. For my own students, it is very much the same. They had no impetus to study on their own at home before signing up. Their hearts were not directed toward the study of language.

But they wanted it. They wanted to want it.

And so, they come to me, in droves, seeking salvation from their unmotivated lives. They seem to believe that taking my class will magically transform their non-desire to white-hot desire.

It just doesn't work like that.

If you weren't doing it or truly open to it before, no amount of cajoling or advising is going to change those hard hearts.

Go away. Find some tangible motivation within yourself and then come by. You'll be happier, more proficient, and a little richer for having not wasted so much money.

Unless, of course, you just want to spend $100 bucks a month to have tea with me. Then I'll gladly take your dough.