Tip 1 – Stop People from Giving Up:

It takes a long time to learn English. In fact, for most people, it takes years of hard work and extended practice.  Years. Hard work. Extended practice. Not very sexy, right?  And that’s one of the big reasons why so many give up. It’s just too long a process.

Will power, in part, is the ability to stick to a decision you’ve made and persevere until you’ve reached your objective. It’s the ability to say no to impulses or distractors that would move you away from your objective.  For learners of English, a major impulse would be to give up before they reach the end of their course. But have you ever thought that maybe the way your courses are designed and delivered may actually work against you? That your classes may ignore and actually shut down people’s ability to exercise their will power to stick with you?

Idea: Harness the power of your student’s will power to keep them on board. Here’s how:

• Account for Overextension – It’s valuable to remember that your students are focused on a variety of things outside your classroom. Overextension – or trying to take on too many things at once, reduces ability to apply will power. Look at this article: Blame It on the Brain Though the article is talking about New Year’s Resolutions, the idea of paragraph four is interesting: your brain can only focus on a limited number of things at a time

While you cannot remove clutter from your student’s lives, you can and should focus on making your class as attention grabbing as possible.

Stuff our brain likes to pay attention to:

by gwaar

Brains love the Unusual. In fact, if your student’s brain thinks the grammar rules you’re trying to teach are boring, it will actively work to focus on something else more important or interesting. (Blackberry. A pending report that’s due 2 minutes after class is out. An important email that needs to be written. A facebook or twitter update that could be made about how awful English class is today…)

Keep your students on their toes. Bonus points for keeping student brains on their toes as well. How?  Try pictures. Try powerpoint with pictures and minimal words.  Don’t have a laptop or computer in class? Get a magazine like National Geographic, or even your local newspaper.  Your students and their brains are expecting boring. They’re expecting what they’ve always had.  Can you imagine what would happen if you put a large picture like the one on the left up in front of your class and used it to dive into a quick lesson about conditionals?  (If the lady isn’t careful, she’ll go for a swim.)

Do yourself a favor: get into the habit of presenting your lessons as unusually as you can. Your student’s brain will LOVE  you for it. And their new found ability to focus on their English class will mean their will power is loving it too.

What are You doing to harness your student’s will power today?