Pixel International Conferences

One of the most worrying effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the amount of challenges and uncertainties that have marked the lives of adolescents.  These include, amongst others, disruptions to social connections, health concerns (both mental and physical), socio-economic worries, qualms about catching COVID-19 or with infringing restrictions, uncertainties about the future, and motivation challenges. To further compound matters, during the 2 years of the pandemic, when all teaching and learning was transferred online, students were deprived of personal interaction with teachers and peers, considered as one of the most fundamental aspects in language learning, with the result that they became far less likely to be motivated to learn. In fact, languages are considered, by many students, as not being practical in nature and relevant to their lives. Students are often reluctant to study languages as they do not find them appealing to their interests, they do not consider them as being relevant to their future careers, and they often find it difficult to transfer the language skills they have acquired from the classroom to their everyday life. Indeed, one of the greatest challenges faced by language teachers is finding ways to motivate their students to complete language courses. Very often the root of the problem is that the existing language courses offered in schools focus too narrowly on the most urgent need of meeting language requirements and give little importance, if any, to the students’ needs. Today, more than ever before, to make language learning effective in this post-pandemic era is for teachers to focus on 3 key aspects of motivation, namely autonomy, competence and social relatedness.