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 learning English becomes practically insurmountable. If this is the genetic memory of years and years of formal education, I cannot say, but what I know for sure after 5 years in corporate education, is that any decent HR department is very aware of this approaching tsunami of learning urge, and gets ready to deliver in advance.

Every August HR will get in touch with a language school providing on-premises lessons, or even hire a staff teacher; wrap their minds around the previous year’s painful students drop-out rate and decide to do things differently this time. That is, to better motivate people to learn. And they will email:

(Hopefully my HR colleagues won’t be angry with me for quoting their by no means well-intended announcement, for it was exactly what inspired me to tackle the problem.)

>> An important piece of information regarding English classes. Please read carefully since we are starting a new academic year and there are some rules we need to implement. We need to mention that previous sessions' attendance was poor (80% were not attending the classes regularly). We need to keep the attendance level higher that is why it is important for us that once you sign up for the class you would participate regularly.

>> In order to monitor the attendance and have a full class the teacher would be responsible to check the attendance. If you miss 50% or more of your classes for 2 months in a row (sickness or business trip is an exception) unfortunately but you would be signed off from the group. In one group at least 4 people need to have 50% or more attendance, if it will be less the group will be closed. You may resign after 6 months.

Well, though a little harsh, that seems pretty fair, doesn’t it? Why would a company want to pay for the classes people are not attending? After all, IT engineers are all responsible, reasonable adults, who should be perfectly capable of motivating themselves for their own good, and what they lack is just a little discipline.

Erm... It’s not that simple. Let’s try to understand what’s really going on here. Before we talk about the email, we’ll step aside a little to see if there is any point in English classes in the first place. Maybe the problem is there’s no need and thus, no motivation?

Why do IT companies teach English at all, if it’s a default requirement for IT engineering positions?

Only several years ago free of charge English classes at international IT companies were considered a cherry on top of a job offer, ranking it higher among competitors for the engineer’s head. Now it has become as indispensable a benefit as a private medical insurance. More and more employee perks is a global trend, especially so in the IT where competition for talent is really high, and candidates - increasingly demanding.

In case when the only purpose of having English classes is waving them at a prospective candidate (and I don’t mean to say, this is not a purpose valid enough!), you don’t really need to care about motivation and attendance. You can stop reading right here and not waste one more minute trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixing.

Most often, though, the company’s need to teach employees English is very real. Historically, our formal education mainly focuses on developing passive skills, and that’s why Eastern / Central European engineers’ fluency in English is generally restricted to reading technical literature and / or consuming educational and entertaining content of all kinds. Outside school, our communities are linguistically homogeneous, which means we don’t get to practice speaking English informally either.

Working in a business environment with English as a Lingua Franca, engineers thus will often struggle with breaking the language barrier, understanding various accents, participating in technically faulty conference calls, having business correspondence. And I’m not even touching upon cultural differences and business etiquette, which usually are expected to be taught in an English class at an international IT company.

This way, teaching engineers all of those things becomes business’s headache, otherwise, however technically qualified the talent pool may be, delivering quality services will be hindered by having to deal with numerous escalations caused by miscommunication.

Maybe, engineers believe they’re already fluent enough in English?

Engineers are actually really insecure about their level of English, regardless of their objective level of proficiency, and there are several reasons to it.

First of all, since communication in English is the tool engineers use on a daily basis, they will be constantly reminded of their skill gaps every time they communicate. There will always be something they can’t express or understand, or even google, because business communication involves a lot of the functional language, which is something that’s hard to learn independently, with no guidance.

This language impotence, imaginable or not, becomes even more frustrating with the impostor syndrome, endemic in the IT industry: when engineers compare themselves to other people, they unavoidably tend to notice their own weaknesses, and the more they learn, the more they realise they still have to learn.

Although an extreme form of impostor syndrome may be unhealthy, it certainly plays a huge role in creating the itch for learning in IT. I honestly don’t know if there is another business area where people learn so much and so hard all of the time. If anyone knows what life-long learning is, this is the IT crowd.

And learning English is no exception. Engineers can’t help but feel the environment pushes them to get better all the time, and most of them have developed Stockholm syndrome with learning. They just love it, and, given the opportunity, they will willingly grasp at it.

(Getting back to the dramatic attendance drop quoted in the email, we could actually flip things around and look at them from a different angle: what if it’s not about too many people becoming demotivated, what if it’s about too many people’s neurotic need to learn in the first place?)

In other words, we can be certain of the engineers’ intrinsic motivation to learn. The big question now is how the motivation techniques quoted in the email above will affect them?

Four motivation mistakes, or What we are not getting right

DISCLAIMER: Having made all of the imaginable motivation mistakes throughout the years of teaching adults, I wholeheartedly believe that all the below measures were invented with good intentions and the engineers’ best interests at heart. 

#1. Filter at the start

When we cry for prudence and self-consciousness by asking people to think twice before enrolling to English classes, we assume there is someone who admits they are likely to quit, and we try to filter them out from the start. Only no one is planning on dropping out in advance, all of the engineers come to class highly motivated and eager to learn, it’s just that their curiosity wears down quickly.

(Why this happens and what to do with it, will be the subject of the following two articles in the series.)

#2. Restrict availability

In an attempt to restrict the access to the resource, we try to increase its value in the eyes of potential consumers - our learners. But this measure is purely disciplinarian and has no objective grounds to justify it (compare with #3), and frankly, won’t work in practice. Who would want to break those news to an engineer: “Hi! You are banned from English classes for two months. Have a great day!”. Who’s assigned to track and regulate those bans? The answer is, no one. This rule is doomed to be broken from the very start, and we don’t want to introduce the rules that can be disregarded.

Besides, by introducing this restriction we bring down the attendance rate ourselves, thus contributing to the imminent death of English classes. Not wise.

#3. Cancel in case of low engagement

I understand the business doesn’t want to pay for three learners what it expected to spend on a dozen, I honestly do. But what we are really doing by dismissing a “smaller than ...” group, is punishing the motivated ones by depriving them of the opportunity to keep on learning. Meanwhile, those who stopped attending don’t really care anymore. Moreover, they know the classes will be resumed sooner or later, and they will painlessly re-join, so the effect of this measure on them is zilch. Zero. None.

Not only this solution is unfair, but it also increases potential risks for our future educational initiatives, because there is a threat we’ll lose the interest and support of those motivated people who may feel their interests were disregarded and betrayed, while they were playing by the rules.

#4. Use the team-spirit with a "minus"

And the icing on the cake, my favourite one is the good old exploitation of sense of guilt. The rule #3 unequivocally implies that by quitting, one becomes partly responsible for the dismission of the group, as it grows smaller. I believe I don’t have to explain why this is not a good idea. It certainly won’t stop people from dropping out, and this is not how group responsibility works.

Even if some of the most conscientious learners would feel guilt, it could be a perfect motivator to ensure the successful formation change from feudalism to capitalism, were we the 17th century protestants, but luckily for us it’s not those times anymore.

IMPORTANT! Although those measures are no use at motivating people, we should not discard them completely. Some of them, if only a little modified, could come in handy to regulate a learning flow, when a sustainable attendance rate has been established and English classes are constantly in high demand among employees. 

OK, now we know how NOT to motivate English learners. What’s next?

If you are positive that English classes are more than just an employee perk at your company, and are supposed to actually serve an educational purpose, you must feel frustrated. How is that possible that engineers know they need English, but there is no chemistry in this relationship? There is a bright sparkle once or twice a year, and then - puff! - all is gone. No fire.

Business facilitates as hard as it can: hires the most experienced and charismatic teachers, collaborates with the most reputable language schools, arranges classes with native speakers; lessons are free of charge, available at any time, during working hours, on premises. But some key element is still missing.

I’m sure you’ve guessed it. It’s not about creating motivation. It’s about sustaining it, and the hardest thing about it is that it’s a never-ending process, not a one-off event. There’s no silver bullet. (Yes, I know you are disappointed).


The good news though is that adult learners’ motivation is very well studied, and there are some tips, tricks and techniques for corporate education and teaching English specifically. I have learnt them the hard way, and I will prepare the essence for you in the next two articles.