MOTIVATING YOUR STUDENTS 
Ahmed A. Moustafa, MLI, UAE

1.   Teach students to accept and learn from their mistakes.
2.   Show your students that you accept and care about them by knowing and using their names and viewing them as individuals. Pay attention and listen to each one of them.
3.   Find out about your students’ needs, goals, interests and experiences and try to make the subject matter as relevant as possible to their lives.
4.   Provide students with different ways to succeed in the language class starting with easier tasks and proceeding to more difficult ones.
5.   Adjust the difficulty level of tasks to the students’ abilities and mix demanding tasks with more manageable ones.
6.   Prepare the students and assist them to know exactly what success in the tasks involves. Introduce them to new learning strategies to facilitate the intake of new materials.
7.   Use written procedures to help students remember the steps to perform tasks.
8.   Make task content attractive by adapting it to the students’ natural interests or by including novel, intriguing, exotic, or fantasy elements.
9.   Allow learners real choices about as many aspects of the learning process as possible, such as the topics of their own presentations.
10. Try to capture the interest of your own students with an interesting introduction.
11. Teach by asking lots of questions and by encouraging students to ask questions.
12. Use appropriate humor in your teaching and in tests to relieve anxiety.
13. Praise students in front of the class, discipline them in private.
14. Move around the room as you teach; walk energetically and purposefully among learners.
15. Use demonstrative movements of your head, arms and maintain eye contact and occasionally nod your head to show understanding while interacting with students.
16. Put some excitement into your speech; vary your pitch, volume and rate.
17. Make sure that your tests are current, valid, reliable and transparent.
18. Provide regular feedback about the progress that your students are making and about the areas, which they should particularly concentrate on. Keep parents informed.
19. Avoid face-threatening acts such as humiliating criticism, comparing students’ abilities, or putting the students in the spotlight unexpectedly.
20. Be enthusiastic about yourself, your students, and your profession.

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