In recent weeks, I’ve come across this mantra on several blogs - everything from sports motivation to HR development experts are coming round to the idea that developing competencies does not simply mean giving staff the tools and technical training. What does this mean for language training at your organization?
Previously commitment, skills and motivation had been considered individual components in determining the successful outcome of a worker’s activities. A more modern idea is to consider them inseparable, interacting aspects of competency. In other words, engagement and motivation are essential features of competency. This makes intuitive sense. Without a reasonable level of engagement, any level of skill is relatively useless or even potentially damaging to an organization or team.
Successful sports clubs, for instance, rely on their teams being:
Engaged - they are completely focused on training and committed to the success of the team
Enabled - they are well coached, both physically and tactically, and have the requisite tools, facilities and time to practice
Energized - they are motivated by the rewards that winning brings, a positive atmosphere within the team and the prospect of a successful future
The same principles can be applied to language or any other kind of training.
It is my experience that commitment and motivation play a much more central role than most language institutes would like to admit. This is because it takes a high level of skill and dedication to ensure that learners are engaged and energized by their language acquisition, something which can’t be guaranteed by institutes with a high level of staff turnover.
We would like our learners to leave class excited about using the target language during the coming week, in other words to proudly display their language ability no matter how low it may be. The role of the teacher is to create a learning culture in which learners feel uninhibited and motivated to interact in English.
The most important prerequisite for this, you may be unsurprised to hear, is a teacher who is ... wait for it ... engaged, enabled and energized!
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