"Nine tenths of education is encouragement."
-- Anatole France
While it is true that students need to put effort into their work, they will do so far more readily when they receive positive feedback. Providing positive encouragement is, nowadays, generally accepted to be good teaching practice.
But when I was a graduate student learning about different approaches to teaching English to speakers of other languages, one of the approaches we studied was The Silent Way. Developed by Caleb Gattegno in the early 1960s, it teaches pronunciation by using charts that display the English sound system in colors.
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Sound/Color Chart for The Silent Way; source: Wikimedia Commons |
Then reality interfered with theory, as is often does. A few years after beginning my public school teaching career, I found myself teaching English Language Arts to a class of sixth grade ELLs. Even though there were only six students, two of whom were identical twin boys, it was difficult keeping control of the class. Then I attended a workshop and got some advice on how to handle the situation. What was the solution? Praise the students when they did something well and focus on the positive instead of harp on the negative. I starting giving compliments to the students, who earned prizes when they reached a certain number of points on the behavior chart that I created.
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Use of behavior chart in my classroom; source: The ESL Nexus |
But it worked and ever since then, I have made sure to encourage my students by giving them praise whenever it was warrented. I have since read up on the importance of motivation and the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which I believe are intertwined with encouragement.
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Suggestions for intrinsically motivating students; source: Te@chthought |