Motivation, Part 1: That'll Teach 'Em, or How to Kill Motivation
I used to believe, motivation is about realising the need. If you are reasonable enough to understand you really need something, you'll do whatever it takes. But then I started teaching English to IT people: incredibly motivated and curious, unbelievably hard-working. Their need to communicate in English on a daily basis is as real as it gets. And yet they couldn't last a month, they would quit English classes and then come back, and quit again, and attend an intermediate level group year after year, feeling more and more frustrated. I know many English teachers and HR departments are as puzzled as I used to be. And that's why I decided on writing the series of posts to share what I know now. The first one is about the needs that create motivation to teach and learn English in the industry and about how we, teachers and HR, completely misunderstand motivation and thus fail everyone. How we encourage learning In September people’s urge to make a fresh start learni