“Motivating adolescents is a concern that middle and high school educators grapple with constantly. More decision-making opportunities for students is one solution to increasing motivation.” (Brown, 2011, p.201)
I could not agree with this quote more. Of course, as teachers, we want our students to be engaged with the material and enjoy their experience learning our subject. Motivation is at the core of this goal, which is highly weighed on the individual interests of the students. Keeping this in mind, it makes complete sense that allowing students to make their own decisions concerning what kinds of activities they would like to engage in, as well as the material they would like to focus on, sparks motivation because it is based completely on their own interests. I have told some classmates this story before, but in one Spanish class I student teach in, my cooperating teacher had stations in which students could choose to participate in a diverse array of activities at different levels. One student, who is at a fairly lower level and who has a hard time focusing, chose to participate in the activity that would be a bit tougher for him. Since he liked the concept, he chose it and realized it’s difficulty level once he arrived at the station. Although it was a large challenge for him, he remained focused and did his best fueled by the fact that he chose to be there rather than at any other station.
Allowing students to make key decisions gives them agency over their own learning experience, which I am certain would be a positive attribute in any classroom, especially at the middle school level. My question is how far this decision-making can go in a language classroom, especially at a novice level where basic vocabulary and conjugation structures are the main focus in order to form a strong base to build speaking, reading, writing and listening competencies upon. The idea is that students can have almost full control of the classroom and its content, therefore I would like to know more about this concept and how it has possibly been used in foreign language classrooms.
I think the experience you shared is a wonderful example of how all students can benefit from activities that both interest them and challenge them, not just the “smart kids”. To give an opinion in response to your question, perhaps in a foreign language class for people experiencing the language for the first time, the concept could be adjusted although I’m well aware that that sort of breaks the rules.
Perhaps students can choose cultural practices or themes that interest them and then the teacher can incorporate that into the contextualization of the grammar portion of the lesson. A way this could work in a Spanish class could be giving the students the weekend to look up an assigned country and find something interesting they’d like to know more about. This could also be a great way to introduce the cultural diversity in the Spanish-speaking world and the numerous variants of Spanish.