 7. Effective Ways to Motivate Students in a Diverse Classroom Having experienced campus life as a non-native English speaker and foreign student in Canada, I have learned a few key aspects that affect the overall learning experience in a diverse classroom. The effectiveness and efficacy of the teacher primarily hinge on their ability to engage the students enough to maintain a reasonable level of motivation. I have observed a few ways that would increase the motivation of the students, especially within a classroom full of students from diverse cultural backgrounds and language levels. 1. Stay Relevant By using real-life examples, current affairs, personal testimonies and even the current happenings in pop culture, the teacher can quite easily engage the students because of the relevance the students can draw in their own lives. The relevancy of the course materials will invite the students to participate in the classroom. 2. Stay Connected To encourage students to interact with one another and practice a language, the teacher may create an ongoing interactive activity to help the students to remain connected. These activities may include letter writing to a buddy student paired up at the beginning of the class, or a brief weekly sharing of highlight of the week in one or two paragraphs. 3. Stay Competitive The teacher may also use interesting and relevant materials that challenge the students to earn for more in their learning. Healthy and friendly competition through team games, debates and group activities can help the students to spur one another on, and to increase class bonding and camaraderie. Team games such as pictionary and charades can be fun and meaningful activities that can be used to promote healthy competition in the classroom. 4. Stay High Tech In this day and age, it is not surprising for the students to enter the classroom with basic expectations of seeing some form of modern technology being used. Tools such as PowerPoint, overhead projectors, iPads, TV and speakers can be used to keep the students appropriately stimulated and engaged to increase motivation and participation in the classwork. 5. Stay High Touch By taking some time to get to know each student's personal interests, fears, language fluency, strengths and weaknesses, the teacher can gain the trust of the students and therefore increase the motivation level in the classroom. 6. Stay Tuned By highlighting the special interests, skills and talents of the students, the teacher may be able to incorporate those areas in the coursework. For example, the teacher may pair up a student who enjoys playing the ukulele with another student who enjoys singing to prepare a song in their native language and or the translated English version of the song and share during a class. 7. Stay Modern I remember attending a class in the 90s where the teacher would use multiple video lessons produced in the 70s to illustrate some concepts. Though the content was relevant, the presentation was not. The motivation level in the classroom dropped over time because the outdatedness of the videos had distracted the students' attention and focus. It would have been a lot more effective for the teacher to use more current visual materials to accomplish the course purpose. Are you ready to motivate an English language classroom? There are many more ways to increase and maintain the motivation level in a classroom. I have only pointed out a few ways above drawing from my personal experience as a foreign student. I look forward to continuing my quest and exploring more effective ways to teach students from diverse backgrounds. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.