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M O T I V A T I O N I N S T U D E N T S W I T H L E A R N I N G P R O B L E M S | 1

CHAPTER 1

1. INTRODUCTION

When we put ourselves in an educational context and observe what happens in the

learning process of students, especially in English class, we will observe that everyone can

have some trouble; could be a little mistake in the pronunciation, or a huge problem in the

grammar structure, but with help from the teacher they can over it. In the case of children

with special educational needs, this obstacle becomes more complex and more difficult to

solve, therefore, the role of the teacher and his or her methodology should be according to

their necessity. Even though we know that methodology teaching has an important place in

Acquisition of a Second Language, we should also know that motivation may be the main

role in this process because everyone is affected by an internal or external factor. But what

do we understand by motivation?

Motivation could be understood as an internal drive which pushes someone to do

things in order to achieve something (Harmer, 2007). If we separate motivation in parts, we

can find two main factors: those that comes from inside(intrinsic) and those that comes

from outside (extrinsic). These two forms of motivations are closely related with the

educational context and the methodology of learning used in the classroom.

1.1STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The motivation for learning English of children with cognitive and social problems

is affected by the methodology of the teacher of English in the classroom in 4th

grade

students.

1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

In order to support the statement of the problem, this study will work with three

research questions, these are three questions:

- Research Question 1: Is motivation for learning English in children with

cognitive and social problems affected by methodology?

- Research Question 2:Do the cognitive and social problems affect motivation for

learning English?


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1.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROBLEM

The relevance of studying this problem is that nowadays Chile is trying to

incorporate inclusive programs in order to increase the acceptation and tolerance among

students and teacher. It is true that in every school you may find some students with

special educational needs and unfortunately they are not inserted in a special school and

they must be embedded in an environment which provides them the facilities and tools

to achieve a good students performance expected for children at each age. Therefore,

what this study is trying to do is show how the panorama of this reality can affect the

motivation on those who present cognitive and social problems and if the methodology

that the teacher uses inside the classroom may affect this process of learning a second

language through motivation.

1.4 DEFINITION OF TERMS

In order to have a better understanding of some of the terms that are part of this

research paper, below you may find the definitions of each word:

1. Motivation is the effort learners put into learning an L2 as a result of their

desire or need to learn it. (Ellis, 1997)

2. Intrinsic motivationis the degree of effort a learner makes to learn an L2 as a

result of the interest generated by a particular learning activity. (Ellis, 1997)

3. Extrinsic motivationis a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in

order to attain some separable outcome. (Deci and Ryan, 2000)

4. Methodology: It is defined as the study of the practices and procedures in

teaching, and the principles and belief that underlie them. It is the development

of teaching routines. (Richards et al. 1985: 177)

5. SEN Special Educational Need: This term refers to children who have needs

or disabilities that affect their ability to learn. For example: behavioral/social (egdifficulty making friends), reading and writing (eg dyslexia) understanding

things, concentrating (eg Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), physical

needs or impairments. (GOV.UK, 2013)

6. School Integration Program (SIP) or in Spanish Programa de Integracin

Escolar (PIE) is a school system strategy, which aims is to contribute to the


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continuous improvement of the quality of education provided in the school,

favoring the presence, participation and achievement of expected learning

"every and one of the students ", especially those with special educational needs

(SEN), whether permanent or temporary. (MINEDUC, 2013)

7.

Asperger Syndrome(AS) is a neuro-developmental difference that falls within

the autistic spectrum. (Winter, 2011)

8. Dyslexiadifficulty with decoding single words, making reading, writing and

spelling difficult. (Winter, 2011)

9. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is a brain disorder that includes

difficulty staying focused and paying attention, difficulty controlling behavior,

and hyperactivity (over-activity). (NIH, 2013)

1.5 SUMARY OF THE CHAPTER

So far we have mentioned the problem and the questions that will guide our

research in which we have considered the importance of investigating how important is the

motivation and the methodologies used by the teacher when teaching children with special

needs. For the next chapter we will revise the literature related to our investigation in order

to clarify and define the main concepts of the study.


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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 INTRODUCTION

This literature review explores the main topic of this research paper which is

motivation. Motivation has two different classifications: intrinsic and extrinsic.

It is true that one of the main factors in order to learn any subject at school is

motivation. The question is what motivation is, and why it is so important in the learning

process of students. According to Cambridge Dictionary, motivation is defined as the

enthusiasm for doing something. Therefore, we can say that it is a kind of power unit which

drives us to want to do or learn something in life. This review of literature has as a purpose

to show how motivation has been defined by many researches in order to clarify the

concept and therefore make a consensus about the best way to define motivation according

to the context in which its involved; finally to conclude why motivation is so important in

the classroom.

2.2 DEFINITIONS OF MOTIVATION

As it was said before, motivation works as a motor that moves us to do or learn

something. Some researchers as Richard M. Cash (2011), divided this word in two parts:

motive and action, in which action means doing and motive refers to something that

causes a person to act in a certain way or do a certain thing (p:37). In that way motivation

may be seen as a desire and also the attribute that drives people to get something. Also

motivation can be distinguished between two basic distinctions that give us the reasons or

goals that drive us to go forward, these are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation

(see table 1). As Deci et al. (2000) explained, intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of

an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence. This

means that whenever we do something just because it seems fun or we like to do it, we are

in front of intrinsic motivation, therefore we could say that intrinsic motivation comes from

curiosity. In education, intrinsic motivation is the ultimate goal and purpose at every level,

because according to the Asia E University studies in ideal classroom, students pay


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attention, ask questions and want to learn. They do their assignments without complaint and

study without being coaxed and cajoled. (p:200)

Although, teachers prefer to use extrinsic motivation in order to stimulate learning

or make students to do the activities, in this way teachers reinforce or reward the positive

attitude that the student has to face and do the activity. In other words, extrinsic motivation

as Morris & Maisto (2002) said, refers to rewards that are obtained not from the activity,

but as a consequence of the activity. Deci et al, defined what extrinsic motivation is, saying

that this kind of motivation come from external factors, such as rewards and outcomes. For

example, children who do the activities in class just because they know that they will have

extra points or a positive reinforcement.

Intrinsic Motivation External Motivation

Arousal of curiosity. Parents, teachers, peers.

Feelings of competence. The nature and amount appropriate praise

and feedback.

Personal relevance. Rewards.

Realistic awareness of personal strengths

and weaknesses in skills required.

The learning environment.

Table 1. Some examples of both Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

(Williams and Burden's, 1997)

In the educational context, it is important for teachers to be aware about these kinds

of motivation in order to know how to improve the class and the students motivation. A

lack of motivation can affect how students approach the school in general. For this reason is

necessary that teachers find out techniques or method in which they can generate an

appropriate atmosphere where the students feel comfortable to study and get motivated to

the schools subjects. This process is so far from easy, because teachers have to deal with a

lot of students each one with different likes, competences, and multiples intelligences as

well. However, this challenge of keeping the student motivated to learn another language


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than the mother tongue becomes more complicated since learning second language (L2) is

not easy as this implies more effort and learning new grammar structures that for students

may be interesting or boring. Hence, teachers should keep in mind some keys in which they

can get the students involve in the English class (Drnyei, 2001):

Point out challenging, exotic or satisfying aspects of L2 learning;

Connect L2 learning with activities that students already and interesting or hold in

esteem (e.g. computer-assisted learning);

Highlight the variety of activities that L2 learning may involve; and

Provide a demonstration of some particularly enjoyable tasks.

According to Banduras socio-cognitive theory (1997), students motivation is a

construct that is built out of individual learning activities and experiences, and it varies

from one situation or context to another. Regarding this, we can say that is the educational

context that provides the motivation that children need, since we are social human beings,

communication and connection among others play a fundamental role in the process of

acquisition of motivation. On the other hand, Krashen (1981, 1982) postulated that

students motivation goes beyond the educational context, but motivation comes from the

affective filter and how this affective filter intervenes in the process of the acquisition of a

second language. He postulated through his Affective Filter Hypothesis (1981, 1982), that

motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety all play a prominent role in language acquisition.

2.3 SUMMARY

To sum up, the concept of motivation and the impact of this feeling in the normal

development of classes has been studied and analyzed by many specialized authors and

professionals. It is an important topic in education that many people, especially teachers,

have tried to understand in a better way in order to make more dynamic, attractive and

meaningful classes. In our research, motivation is an important part of the learning

processes of students with social and cognitive problems, because they need to be part of

the class in order to learn the contents and teachers can motivate them using many

techniques and procedures. In the next chapter is going to explain the method used to for

our investigation, showing the instruments and the procedures that was carried out.


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specially focused to students with cognitive and social problems, and we can ask students

about their level of interest on the learning process of English. Voice records are mainly

used as a support of the interviews, so we can write in our research the specific information

that we got from the interviewees using their voice records. These materials will help us to

make an objective and accurate research.

3.2 PROCEDURES

The uses that we gave to the instruments were followed step by step in order to have

accurate information.

The most important use of the instruments was to gather data and information about

what motivates students with social and cognitive problems. For this purpose, the study had

one main instrument: questionnaire.

First of all, we asked for permission to the teacher if we could make a questionnaire

to each children inside the classroom, in this case there were only eight students and this

took between ten and fifteen minutes. The goal of this instrument was to collect general

information about what they like or dislike about the class or how they will increase their

motivation if they had the chance to change the methodology inside the classroom. The

questions had the purpose to know whether their motivation is extrinsic or intrinsic. It was

important to know that we cannot give them so many questions because that may change

their answers (probably they could feel tired if they read two pages).

Second and thanks to the previously questionnaire, we did interviews (which lasted

4 minutes each) to the children base on the answers that were given before. The objective

of the interviews was to know each reality individually; this means that we were able to

know why some children have more motivation than others despite of their social or

cognitive problems. The importance of this instrument in the clinical aspect was that

interviews provided us a truly comprehension of the childs psychology and how h is or her

mental process affects his or her motivation (whether is extrinsic or intrinsic). In this part it

was important to take notes during the interview because the child may not be answered

with verbal language, but with his or her body language.


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Finally we used voice records to register all the answers provided for the children

during the interview. This instrument gave us support in our investigation because proved

that the results are based on their answers. The voice records were transcript in order to be

annexed at the end of the investigation paper.

3.4 SUMMARY

To sum up, this chapter provides the basic information about the school, the

students that are part of the investigation and also the procedures of this research. For the

next chapter we will present and discuss the results of the data collected.


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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS

4.1 INTRODUCTION

According to what was mentioned before, this research paper and collection of data

is going to be carried out though questionnaire which was applied in a 4th grade primary at

Irarrzabal School. The population involved in this instruments were 6 students who had to

answer a questionnaire of 8 yes/no questions and in additionally they were asked the reason

of their yes/answer in order to know what kind of preferences the students have.

4.2 PRESENTATION OF DATA

Detailed below are the results of each question which are presented though pie

charts. It is important to say that the questionnaire was applied in Spanish because the idea

was to know what the students think about the English class, not to know if they know

English or not.

Figure 1. Results of question n1

83%

17%

Te gusta la clase de ingls?

S No


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29%

29%

14%

14%

14%

Qu te gusta de la clase de ingls?

Libros de clases

Actividad que da la

profesora

Actividades grupales

Escuchar canciones

Otros

33%

17%

50%

Cmo te gustara que fuesen las clases de ingls?

Entretenido

Fines educativos

Sin respuesta


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83%

17%

Te gusta el horario de ingls en tu colegio?

S No

67%

33%

Estudias ingls en tu casa?

S No


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50%50%

Te ayudan tus padres a estudiar ingls?

S No

67%

33%

Cuando tienes buenas notas en las pruebas te gusta

ms el idioma?

S No


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4.3 ANALYSIS OF DATA

The objective of this analysis is to determine whether the motivation that the

students present come from intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation and explain why

this happens. The questionnaire was done by six students since two missed the class that

day. The conditions where this questionnaire was done were suitable because was during

the morning hence the classroom had good ventilation and natural light.

Question 1: This first question had the objective to determine if the students enjoy

the English class or not. Since here we could be able to see some patrons that will

help us to understand what factors affect their motivation; if it is the teacher, the

resources, the hour of the class, etc.

Question 2: The answers provided for the students indicated that the common

methodology, such as activities that the teacher gives, or the activities from the

textbook affect their motivation for learning English, so we could say the research

question 1 is already answered as well: Children are affected by the teachers

methodology. However, we can infer that students think it is more important the

textbook than what the teacher does in the class, because 29% of the students like

83%

17%

Crees que estudiar ingls es importante?

S No


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the textbook instead of the activities that the teacher provides, thus the textbook has

to be interesting and meaningful for them.

Question 3: In this question the students had to give a focus of how should be the

English class in order to improve their enthusiasm on the subject, but as you can

see, the half of the students do not answer it. This can have an explanation; they are

so use to have the same routine of classes in which the teacher enters to the class,

say hi and ask to pull the textbook out from the backpack, so they cannot imagine

a different way to do the classes. This question is closely related to the question 2

since the alternative that had the highest result was the one that they are more

familiar with it. The rest of the answer was related of how they imagine an English

class: entertaining and that is helpful to learn; as any English class should be.

Question 4: This question explains that external factors, such as the schedule of the

English class does not affect the students motivation, therefore it does not matter if

they have class in the morning; this factor will not affect their performance.

Question 5: This question was formulated in order to know if children study

English at home. We can observe that more than the 50% of the children asked

answered that they do study English at home, and we can explain using our main

concept: motivation. If children study at home a specific subject, they are putting

effort to improve their skills in that subject, and that improvement can help children

to motivate themselves to learn more of that subject. If a subject is not interesting to

the students, they probably will not focus their attention on that subject in classes,

and less at home. By asking children if they study English at home, we can observe

their level of interest towards the subject.

Question 6: This question was formulated in order to know the real participation of

parents in the process of learning. This question is related to the fifth question,

because the work level of students is highly determined by the encouragement of

the parents and other members of the family. Although the positive answers were

lesser than the previous questions positive answers, we can still observe that

parents have a great role to help the half of the students that answered positively.

Question 7: Intrinsic motivation plays a huge role in the answers of this question.

Obtaining high grades in a subject can be a determinant factor of the motivation of


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the students. Generally, if students obtain low grades in a specific subject, their

level of interest towards that subject will decrease, because they would feel so

annoyed by their calcifications that they probably will focus on those subjects that

they think that are easier to understand. In this question, the 67% of the students

answered that they feel good when they get high scores in English and these

answers reflect what we have said before.

Question 8: The personal opinion of each student that were asked by us to answer

this questionnaire about English is as important as the other questions, so this final

question had the objective to know if children believed that English is important.

The answers were mostly positive, with a percentage of 17% of disapproval, which

demonstrate the level of importance of the language on these children. If this subject

really matters to them, this means that they are going to be motivated to learn

English as a second language.

4.4 CONCLUSION

As a conclusion on the analysis of the surveys that were applied to the students, we

can say that the motivation that drives these children is more extrinsic than intrinsic,

because there is a motivational factor as a result, like to please parents with good marks. In

addition, we can also say that students with learning problems have the same kind of

motivations and likes as any other student. They do not show any difference and bad

predisposition for the English class, so this mean that they can be able to learn a second

language no matter their cognitive problems.


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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSIONS REMARKS

5.1 INTRODUCTION

In this chapter is going to be exposed the final conclusions that were drawn from

this research, giving the answers to the research questions that guided this investigation and

also showing and explaining the limitations that were implied at the time to develop the

research procedures and data collection. In addition, we will present suggestions in order to

improve future researches related to this topic and also a summary to point the most

relevant ideas that were concluded in this paper.

5.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS INTRODUCTION

The research question that were carried out in this paper were focused on motivation

in students with learning problems in order to discover whether motivation is affected by

cognitive and social problems or teachers methodology. The two specific research

questions related to the topic motivation are:

1. Is motivation for learning English in children with cognitive and social problems

affected by methodology?

2.

Do the cognitive and social problems affect motivation for learning English?

Their respective answers and significance on this paper are presented below in order

to give a better understanding of the results and analyses that this paper developed.

5.2.1 RESEACH QUESTION 1

According to what we had analyzed from the data collected and the results of the

instrument we applied on students from 4th

grade, we can say that the answer for the first

research question of this research paper which is Is motivation for learning English in

children with cognitive and social problems affected by methodology?is a resounding yes.

The methodologies that the English teacher uses are extremely important when teaching

English in order to get students attention, moreover when those students have learning

problems and it is difficult for them to understand the contents because of concentration or

lack of motivation. As it was possible to see in chapter 4, the question that was related to


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the materials that the teacher uses to teach English, such as the textbook, songs, flash cards,

etc., showed variable preferences as it is shown in figure n2. We can say that a mix of

those material would be suitable for the English class in order to make the English subject

friendly for students and make it motivated for them as well. Students with learning

problems in particular feel that learning a second language should be taught in a

comfortable environment, in other words, learning and teaching in a funny way as this is an

effective way to make the students feel confidence and moreover giving them positive

feedback, showing them they are able to learn as any other student.

5.2.2 RESEARCH QUESTION 2

The last research question that guides this research paper gave us an unexpected

answer. The question was if cognitive and social problems affect motivation for learningEnglish, and we concluded that those elements do not affect motivation for learning this

second language. It is true that this investigation was applied in a grade that has no more

than 8 students, but it still being a curious finding. The students answers showed that no

matter what kind of cognitive or social problems they have, what really affects their

motivation is the teachers methodology. This proves what it was pointed in chapter 4, that

children with learning problems may be capable to learn and do things despite their

limitations.

5.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

During this whole experience, the research has suffered some limitations that

became a little bit more complicated to obtain accurate results. Next, it will be presented

the limitations that we had to affront over this process.

1. Since the children have social and cognitive problems, the real reason of their

motivation was complicate to define. While we observed their behavior inside the

classroom, we could noticed that sometimes they have good reactions to activities

related with the textbook, but also observed that they improve their motivation with

group activities and they rejected the textbook. This does not mean that this affect

their learning process in second language since it was proved that even though they


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have social and cognitive problems, they do not present a lack of motivation

because of it.

2. The questionnaire did not provide accurate results. The problem was that when the

questionnaire was made, in the classroom there were only six students, and not the

eight that they are. For this reason, we could not have the exact results.

3. The children were not motivated when they answered the questionnaire. We

observed that while they were answering the questionnaire, no one did with

enthusiasm; therefore the answers may not be completely honest.

In general, the limitations that we found were related with their motivation, whether

it is honest or it is according with their mood.

5.4 SUGGESTIONS OF THE RESEARCH

Throughout this research, we could perceive that motivation on students is not only

affected of things that happen in school: motivation can be altered by the influence of

students parents, relatives or friends that surround them in their common environments,

such as their homes and school, and also the level of stress can highly affect students

motivation. While perceiving this reality, we can state that many factors, besides social and

cognitive problems in students and methodologies used by teachers, may influence

motivation, by improving, decreasing or starting it. So that future researchers wouldinvestigate those factors that were mentioned before in order to know exactly the reasons of

why levels of motivation vary in each student in a determined context, and how this may

affect their performance at school.

5.5 SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER

In this chapter, we showed and explained the final conclusions that we as

investigators made from this research. We explained the answers to our main research

questions that guided us during our research. We also showed the limitations that were

found in our data collection processes when we used some research tools and procedures to

obtain that information. Moreover, we presented some suggestions in order to realize other

researches related to motivation, which was our main topic. To sum up, this chapter was the


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final procedure of all our work and the main ideas of this chapter were the result of our

research.


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CHAPTER 6

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

6.1 INTRODUCTION

The goal of this chapter is to introduce and invite the reader and future researchers

to investigate a new branch of the topic that this research has already talked in this paper in

order to deepen in motivation in educative contexts.

6.2 REASEARCH QUESTIONS

In order to provide an propose ideas of a new investigation related to this paper,

below you may find some proposals of research questions connected to how levels of

motivation vary in each student in a determined context, and how this may affect their

performance at school.

- Research Question 1: Does the educational context affect students performance

at school?

- Research Question 2: Which are the reasons of why levels of motivation vary in

each student in a determined context?

6.3 INSTRUMENTS

For your research, you can use the same materials that we have used for our

research, which was a questionnaire, but also you can use interviews and voice records to

gather data and information of the objective participants that you want to investigate about.

In addition, you can use observation journals to increase the quantity of your gathered data.

The main idea is to use those instruments correctly and obtain the clearest information that

you will need to do your research.

6.4 PROCEDURES

The procedures of your research must be determined by the instruments that you

will use and also by the participants reactions to the process. For e xample, you must ask

the teacher for permission if you want to do a questionnaire to his or her students. Then,

you must record those answers by using notes or a voice recorder, in order to not miss


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essential information. Finally, you have to analyze your gathered data and compare the

results with theories of education to answer your research questions.


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VanPatten, B. (2002).From input to output: A teacher's guide to second language

acquisition. (1st ed., p. 26). Mcgraw Hill Book Co.

Williams, M. and Burden, R. (1997) Psychology for Language Teachers. Cambridge,

England: Cambridge University Press. In Drnyei Z., (2001). Motivational Strategies in the

Language Classroom.

Winter M., (2011). Asperger Syndrome - What Teachers Need to Know: Second Edition

(Kindle Locations 178-179). Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Winter M., (2011). Asperger Syndrome - What Teachers Need to Know: Second Edition

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