This document discusses factors that affect learner motivation and engagement at different ages. It notes that: - Children learn best through visual, auditory, and tactile activities that keep them engaged as they have short attention spans. Stories, pictures, and games appeal to young learners. - Teenagers may lack motivation if classes are boring or uninteresting to them. Relevant material on topics they enjoy can boost engagement. - Adults are generally more disciplined and motivated learners as they have clearer goals and understand the purpose of learning. - Individual differences between learners must be recognized and teaching methods adapted accordingly through varied activities and grouping strategies. The teacher plays a key role in initiating and sust

1. Learner’s characteristics.
Knowing the age of our students is a pretty important factor in our decision about how we are going to plan
our class. Due to the fact that “people from different ages have different needs, competences and cognitive
skills” (Ur,1992,130)
Around how people learn depending on their ages exist many beliefs the most common one is that children
learn a new language faster that adults because children can acquire almost in a natural way. The belief that
teenagers are less motivated is also very common.
However teachers have to consider each student as a individual and “much also depends upon individual
learner’s differences and motivation”. (Harmer,1983,37)
Young learners
In a class with children you need to be creative and try to include activities that keep your students attention
and maintain them doing something interesting for them and be able to be flexible to move on to the next
activity because they tend to get bored easily.
Three very important sources of interest for children in the classroom are pictures,stories and games: the first
being obviously mainly a visual stimulus;the second both visual and aural; and the third using both visual and
aural channels as well as activating language production and sometimes physical movement. Penny130
Children take information from all sides, everything around them rather than only focusing in the specific topic
they are being taught, also tend to understand better if they have the chance to interact with.
Adolescents learners
Teenagers in the classroom may be disruptive and sometimes less motivated because of the boring that they
find the class or when they bring problems into the class from outside the classroom.
As a teacher it is important to bring to the class relevant material and that is according to your students tastes
to make it interesting for them because when teenagers are engaged, have a great capacity to learn, a great
potential for creativity and a passionate commitment to things which interest them.
Adults
Adults represent a good type learners because they are more disciplined and have better expectations of the
learning process. They possess a wide range of experiences that can be involve in the class and they a clear
understanding of why they are learning and are able to keep a high level of motivation.
On the other hand they may present some problems such as being critical of teaching methods because of
their past experience in which teachers used to apply different ones.

4. WHAT TO DO ABOUT INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
We have to start with the recognition of students as individuals as well as being members of a
group, not everyone in the group will have the same knowledge of English. Some will be better
writers than others and some will have greater oral fluency than others. We need to establish who
the different students in our classes are.
To ascertain their language level, for example, we can look as their scores on different test, and we
can monitor their progress though both formal and informal observation. This might involve the
way we organize groups in order to satisfy people who prefer working on their own or, people
who benefit most from interaction. We will want to offer activities which favour, at different
times, students with different learning styles. They will almost certainly change in some way as a
result of their learning environment and the task they perform.
MOTIVATION
Motivation is some kind of internal drive which pushes someone to do things in order to achieve
something.
Marion Willians and Richard Burden suggest that motivation is “a state of cognitive arousal” which
provokes a “decision to act” as a result of which there is “sustained intellectual and/or physical
effort” so that the person can achieve some “previously set goal”. They go on to point out that the
strength of that motivation will depend on how much value the individual places on the outcome
he or she wishes to achieve. Adults may have clearly defined or vague goals. Children´s goals, on
the other hand, are often more amorphous and less easy to describe.
There are extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivation is caused by any number of
outside factors, for example, the need to pass an exam or the possibility of future travel. Intrinsic
motivation comes from within the individual. Thus a person might be motivated by the enjoyment
of the learning process itself or by a desire to make themselves feel better.
Sources of motivation
The society we live in: some views of language learning will affect the student´s attitude to the
language being studied, and the nature and strength of this attitude will, in its turn, have a
profound effect on the degree of motivation the students brings to class and whether or not that
motivation continues. Apart from the culture of the world around students, their attitude to
language learning will be affected by the influence of people who are close to them.
Teacher: clearly a major factor in the continuance of a student´s motivation is the teacher but is
vital that both teacher and students have some confidence in the way teaching and learning take
place. When either loses this confidence, motivation can be affected.

5. Initiating and sustaining motivation
A student´s initial motivation need not stay the same for ever. Increasing and directing student
motivation is one of a teacher´s responsibilities but it does not mean that the teacher is
responsible for his students’ ´motivation. However, there are three areas where teachers´
behavior can directly influence their students´ continuing participation.
Goals and goal setting: we have said that motivation is closely bound up with a person´s desire to
achieve a goal. A distinction needs to be made here between long- and short- term goals. Teachers
need to recognize that long-term goals are vitally important but that they can often seem too far
away. When English seems to be more difficult than the student had anticipated, the long-term
goals can begin. Short-term goals are by their nature much closer to the student´s day-to-day
reality. If the teacher can help students in the achievement of short-term goals, this will have a
significant effect on their motivation.
Learning environment: when students walk into an attractive classroom at the beginning of a
course, it may help to get their motivation for the process going. When they come to an
unattractive place motivation may not be initiated in this way. The teacher can decorate even the
most unattractive classrooms with all kinds of visual materials, or change the atmosphere trough
music. All of this is important that teacher is able to sustain.
Interesting classes: if students are to continue to be intrinsically motivated they clearly need to be
interested both in the subject they are studying and in the activities they are presented with.
Teachers need to provide them with a variety of subjects and exercises to keep them engaged. The
choice of material to take into class will be as important as its use in the lesson.