Dear Students and Parents,
GCE O Level Examination is just 2 months away and many Singapore students might have finished their Preliminary Examinations. There are still a group of students that will only start their Preliminary Examinations in 2 weeks time and unfortunately, based on their schools’ planning, it will eat into their September 1 week holiday. For those that have not done well for their Prelims, hang-on there! Keep Your Faith & Keep The Fighting Spirit Going – it is not your final marks for GCE O Level. There is still time for you to find the effective method to achieve grades that your truly deserved. And for those that are sitting for Prelims in 2 weeks time, revise well. It wont be easy but you can do it! Keep motivating yourself!!!!
Motivation has been identified as a very important factor to achieve work excellence and career success for adults. We have heard of some many motivational seminars and workshops from those motivational gurus, that helped shaped the success of many individuals and corporations.
It has been clearly identified by many that motivation itself will determine the how successful a person is in his or her life, be it career, relationships or health.
I would like to emphasize that with no exception, motivation and inspiration is a primary factor in shaping the success in childrens’ studies. Children are our champions of the future, and education and academic success will largely determine how well they can contribute towards the society.
It is for this very reason, that we should look more in-depth into this field of Motivation and Inspiration. Motivation can be the Intrinsic – those that comes within us internally, and Extrinsic – external sources and influences, or both. They are the reasons that compel us to work towards our goal. The strength of this motivation depends on how badly we want to achieve the desired outcome.
For Intrinsic Motivation, it can be having a desire to prove your worth or having a genuine interest in learning something well. For Extrinsic Motivation, it can be aspirations to perform well in exams with excellent grades to show others (i.e. your parents, siblings, cousins, friends, etc).
Many believe that Intrinsic factors play a stronger role in producing the desired results compared to Extrinsic factors. In terms of our teaching methodology and practices, it means that the teacher or coach should take an initiative to understand the motivational communication and close rapport with the students. Effective coaches should possess the ability to build up the motivation of their students by helping them to see clear cause between their own actions and getting the desired benefits. Coaches should empower the students to feel convinced that their goals are achievable through commitment, hard work and perseverance.
Many schools have adopted the overly critical approach in “motivating” their students to do well, many in order to fulfill their quota of having a certain percentages of As students. This is something that i believe we need to ponder and look into because after some time, the students would start to grow towards a dislike to study and to learn more knowledge.
Educators should instead create learning opportunities in an environment that can likely to evoke positive feelings and learning enthusiasm through constant encouragement and caring, and steer away from being overly critical. Feelings of achievements will definitely lead to increase motivation. It is certainly the roles and responsibilities of the coach to maximize the chances of academic excellence to motivate students. But this must be done with great care, by tailoring the lessons to suit the levels of competency of the students. If exercises are set at levels way above the proficiency levels of students, this will lead to frustration, sadness, anger and de-motivation of students who have to struggle with them with no chance of success.
For a more motivating experience for the students, the coaches should put a great deal of thought into developing programmes that maintain student interest and have obtainable short term goals. Encouraging students to become more active participants in a session can sometimes assist them to see a purpose for improving their studies. In our workshops and bootcamps, we would always like students to also have the chance to lead the class, by being the leader during break-state exercises. In this way, it will also build up their confidence, and thus will help him motivate him to do his best within the class.
This article written by Sean Chua has been featured in Ezine Articles
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