Lydia Agatha is a graduate from English Language Education Program (ELEP), Faculty of Language and Arts, UKSW, Indonesia. She entered the department in 2017, and just graduated in June 2021. Email: 112017090@student.uksw.edu

Listyani is a lecturer, researcher, and professor at the English Language Education Program (ELEP), Faculty of Language and Arts, UKSW, Indonesia. Email: listyani.listyani@uksw.edu

Joseph Ernest Mambu is a lecturer and researcher at the English Language Education Program (ELEP), Faculty of Language and Arts, UKSW, Indonesia. At present, he is also the Deputy Rector for Institutional Relations & Internationalization. Email: joseph.mambu@uksw.edu

 

Abstract

Teaching English is certainly not easy, particularly when it happens in environments where the students do not encounter English in their daily life. The students might have low motivation towards learning English. This case also happened in a public junior high school (JHS) in Salatiga, Central Java. The students get used to Javanese instead of English. Data were derived from the two English teachers from that school who were interviewed. The goal of this study was to find out the teachers’ strategies in promoting students’ motivation to learn English. Yet, this study also brought in the students’ opinions as support for the interview results as the main findings. However, to get a better understanding, this study presented the challenges that English teachers experienced first. This study found that the teachers are challenged by classroom management, online learning, material development, and students’ motivation and English proficiencies. Meanwhile, providing facilitation for online learning, simplifying the materials, using songs, using games, and motivating the students are the strategies used by the English teachers. Besides, using videos, assigning students to work in groups, and conducting classroom routines are the most favorite strategies used by the teachers since these are the most effective and successful ones.

 

Introduction

Motivation is the core of students’ second language acquisition (SLA). Therefore, “[w]ithout student[s’] motivation, there is no pulse; there is no life in the class” (Anjomshoa & Sadighi, 2015, p. 126). An enormous amount of motivation has to be owned by the students in order to acquire a language. Many experts have conducted research about motivation such as Entwistle (1991), Reece and Walker (1997 as cited in Anjomshoa & Sadighi, 2015), Anjomshoa & Sadighi (2015), Alizadeh (2016), and none of them deny the essential role that motivation plays. All of them believe that motivation is the key factor in learning a language, in this case, the language is English. Even a “student who is highly motivated can achieve greater success than the more intelligent student who is not well motivated” (Reece & Walker, 1997 as cited in Anjomshoa & Sadighi, 2015, p. 145). Thus, there is no doubt about the important relationship between motivation and someone’s fruitfulness in acquiring a language.

Motivation is an essential aspect of students' language learning also has been affected by several factors that are worthy to be understood. Those factors are teachers, parents, and environmental problems in terms of students’ attitudes in the classroom (Ekiz & Kulmetov, 2016; Rahman, Wahab, Rajab, Nor, Zakaria, & Badli, 2017). The cases that still quite often happen in Indonesia are ignorant teachers, parents who have a low understanding of the educational importance, and friends who mock others' mistakes, or mock others who try to speak in English. Moreover, many researchers such as Lamb 2004, 2007, 2013; Marcelino, 2008; Musthafa, 2010; Yulia, 2013 (as cited in Muslim et al, 2020, p. 493) prove that English language teaching in Indonesia still has problems and difficulties. That is the reason why the outcome of students’ proficiency is not copacetic enough. It is in line with Ekiz and Kulmetov (2016, p. 33) who believe that “problems lowered [students’] motivation and thus they could not understand the given instructions.”

Research by Rahman et al. (2017) also suggests that teachers should adopt various teaching methods and strategies to enhance students’ motivation in learning L2 since they “have the highest influence on a students’ motivation” (p. 546). They also have to pay attention to their teaching attitude because it indeed can demotivate students’ concentrations (Ekiz & Kulmetov., 2016, p.33). As teachers are the main character in affecting students’ English learning motivation, this study attempts to find out teachers’ strategies in motivating low-motivated students to learn English.

The findings of this study may hopefully be the answer for teachers who face difficulties in improving students’ motivation in terms of learning L2 (English), then finally will support students’ second language acquisition (SLA). The considerations that appeared in this study then dive into one question which is, “How do the English teachers promote students' motivation to learn English?”. 

 

Literature review

English Language Teaching (ELT) in Indonesia

As many people know, English has a role as a foreign language (EFL) in Indonesia. Fortunately, the importance of English has been noticed by the Indonesian government since its independence (Songbatumis, 2017). It makes almost all people in Indonesia aware and using English-most as their second language (L2). Nowadays, a lot of schools have taught English to their students even from kindergarten. Also, the schools that use immersion as the context of the schools have scattered at many islands in Indonesia. These are supported by the fact that Indonesia is still leading from other countries with 198 international schools in total. This fact is also followed by the increasing number of the students in those schools from 53,000 in 2013 becoming 61,000 in 2018 (Idle Speed Control (ISC) research, & Gulf Educational Supplies & Solutions (GESS), 2018 as cited in Nugraheni, 2018). Even so, the result is still not copacetic enough (Lie, 2007; Nurkamto, 2003 as cited in Songabtumis 2017).

One of the reasons is because of the rules that the government has set. Since there is a 2013 curriculum set by the government, English has been denied as a compulsory subject for elementary level. Maili (2018) says that the Minister of Education and Culture deletes the English subject for elementary schools. It is officially done since the academic year 2013/2014 and has been conducted gradually until the academic year 2016/2017. As a result, this decision indeed impacts the students’ English proficiency and their motivation in learning English. Furthermore, it becomes one of the hardest challenges experienced by English teachers especially for those who teach English in junior high school (JHS). This problem and the solution strategies to overcome this challenge are explained later.

 

The challenges of ELT in Indonesia

In class, teachers already have problems with classroom management. For example: controlling students’ discipline, maintaining students’ interests, conducting effective learning for all students, error correction, selecting and presenting classroom instructions (Syathroh et al., 2019, p. 72). Besides, most of them have big classes but with inadequate learning materials and insufficient knowledge of teachers, and limited time to learn or speak English in class (Yulia, 2013). Often, with that limited time, the class is not going well or not conducive enough. The students do not take the chance they have in class to speak English. Most of them have a lack of confidence to speak in English like “self-esteem, language anxiety and lack of opportunities'' (Yulia, 2013, p. 2).

 

Three keys of motivation factors

Many factors have taken a role in influencing students’ motivation. Ekiz et al. (2016) and Rahman et al. (2017) have divided them into 3 key factors: parent, students’ attitude itself, and the most important is the teachers. The first factor is the parents’ influences. Ekiz et al. (2016) found from their participants’ responses that motivation could be grown from their parents’ actions. When their parents’ support (both in moral and material), encourage and stress them to learn English and tell them its importance, for instance. Thus, parents have an important role. It is in line with Rahman et al. 's (2017) and Jeynes’ (as cited in Rahman et al., 2017) study who found that parents’ roles had a significant relationship with students’ acquisition since they were involved in students’ language learning.

The next factor is the students’ behavior. It can either courage or discourage their motivation in learning a language (Ekiz & Kulmetov, 2016). None of the students in the Ekiz’s and Kulmetov’s research disagreed that they were not disturbed by their friends. Most of them admitted that they were afraid of talking in front of people. It could be that they were afraid of the mock their friends would make towards their mistakes. However, friends also could be a good factor, if their friends could cooperate well, so they could ask their friends about something they did not understand yet. Perhaps it makes them more comfortable. According to Rahman et al. (2017), students with positive attitudes would have better motivation levels and be more successful compared to those with negative attitudes. Therefore, the attitude of the students also is one of the crucial factors affecting someone’s learning motivation.

Then, the last but the most important and crucial factor is the teachers. Ekiz and Kulmetov (2016) found that almost all (90% of the respondents) students acknowledged that they could get more excited if their teachers told them the realistic, exact, and clear purpose of their learning and the reasons why they learn that particular lesson. In addition, if that teacher is friendly during the lesson, it can be the best weapon to get their attention and motivation simultaneously. Rahman et al. (2017) also found in their study that the teachers could try an engaging learning activity such as using a dictionary and grammar games. However, they do not mention clearly what exactly or how exactly the activity is done.

 

Teachers’ strategies in enhancing students’ learning motivation

In this section, the researchers will discuss some strategies that teachers can do suggested by several experts. The first is coming from Achmad and Yusuf (2016) who suggest the teachers develop the materials relevantly to what students need and to the job they want to achieve. Ekiz and Kulmetov (2016) say that conducive learning activities and not too crowded class will help the students to keep their motivation up. Understanding and using various teaching methods and learning activities such as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Group Discussion (GD) also can be one of the solutions (Yulia, 2013). CLT and GD can lead the students to freely express their opinion since they will get motivated when they work with their friends (Ekiz & Kulmetov, 2016; Rahman et al., 2017).

Next, Entwistle (1991) suggests giving many questions to the students since it can assist the students to be more engaged in learning. The teachers can ask the students to play a role as the teacher. When they take that role, such as acting to ask questions, evaluate, and comment on the answers from their friends, they may understand the teacher’s position and put themselves on the teacher’s shoes. Then, the teachers may try giving chances to the students to talk with their friends as much as possible. Also, encouraging the students to think more positively about their capability and achievements also can be a simple way the teacher can do.

 

Previous studies on strategies to improve students’ learning motivation

Motivation is the key factor of the learners’ success in their study (Entwistle, 1991; Anjomshoa & Sadighi, 2015; Alizadeh, 2016) and the teachers are the most important factor in enhancing that key to the students (Ekiz & Kulmetov, 2016; Rahman et al., 2017). Therefore, many researchers have conducted research related to motivation and strategies. Adinuansah and Agustini (2018) conducted research at SMAN 8 Makassar, in the academic year 2015/2016. The participants were 30 students. This quantitative research used a questionnaire with cluster random sampling. In this study, the researchers showed that parental encouragement and group dynamics did not really affect the motivation of many students in SMAN 8 Makassar. Besides, the teachers themselves played the most important role in affecting students’ motivation.

Muslim et al. (2020) investigated 15 senior high schools (public and private or religion-based) in Bandung, Sukabumi, Kuningan, Subang, dan Garut (3 schools for each city; 2 SHS, and 1 vocational school or MA, Religion-affiliated high school). The respondents were 450 students; 30 students from each school (10 students for each grade). In addition, the study also had 15 teachers of the participating students as the respondents. To collect the data, the researchers used students’ questionnaires, teachers’ interviews, and documents of students’ marks. The findings showed that most of the teachers stated that their students had low motivation in learning English.

 

 

Methodology

Context of the study 

The research was conducted in a public school in Salatiga, Central Java. The school was located quite far from the city. It was held in September 2020 and January 2021.

 

Participants

The participants of this study were two English teachers who taught in a public school in Central Java, Indonesia. There were 749 students in that school (Ministry of Education and Culture, 2020). One of them was female and another was male. Both of them had taught for more than eight years and they graduated from English Language Education Program (ELEP).

 

Data collection method 

The researchers used only a semi-structured interview that was conducted with the two English teachers.

Research findings and discussion

 

The challenges that the English teachers experienced

Before the participants explained the strategies they used, they gave some pictures of the situation or challenges they had in the teaching field.

 

Classroom management

From Teacher A’s explanations, it was found that she indeed had problems with classroom management. The assumption that the classes were too crowded also had been acknowledged by Teacher A. In her opinion, the classes that she taught were too crowded with 30 to 32 students in each class. Thus, it could make the students less confident to speak English. This condition made the students potentially have “language anxiety and lack of opportunities [to practice]” (Yulia, 2013, p.2). Teacher A also stated that it would be more ideal if there were a maximum of 25 or 26 students in one class. This statement was in line with Ekiz and Kulmetov (2016) who agreed that not too crowded classes would help the students to keep their motivation up.

Other than that, the teacher mentioned that the students had different English levels. However, mostly the students were “medium to low motivated students” (Participant A, online interview section, 17th September 2020). From the beginning, the students always said that English was difficult, and they preferred to not give it a try. They showed their disinterest towards English not only when the class was conducted offline, but also when it was online like during this covid-19 situation. Those students still gave up and showed more minimum efforts to learn English. They joined the class late and even sometimes did not join at all. In fact, they had adequate cell phones and a good internet connection to join the class.

Furthermore, the size of the class which was not big enough also became Teacher A’s problem. It made her restricted to conduct any kind of fun learning activities especially the physical ones such as miming activities, touch the walls, and mingle activities. Miming activities required the students to deliver a message on the card given by the teacher. The rule was the students were not allowed to produce any sounds, only gestures or mimes were allowed. In touch the wall games, the teacher would mention a thing. It could be something in the class or a flashcard that was pasted on the wall. Then, the students had to touch it quickly. Next, when doing the mingle activities, the teacher gave tasks to the students (i.e., introducing yourself, listening to others, etc.). Here, the students had to walk around the class, find a partner, do the task, and change their partner. Basically, those kinds of activities needed more space to let the students move freely around the classroom. Therefore, it was difficult to conduct those games in the small class. Even so, the teacher was still trying to conduct some fun learning activities and to use some media like songs and videos which would be explained later.

 

Online learning

Conducting teaching activities online was not an easy thing to do. Teacher A also agreed with that statement and she found out that it became one of her problems nowadays. However, this case was different from the one that had been discussed before. Some of these students did not join the class was not because they were lazy or disinterested in English. It was the facility that they had in their home. Teacher A said that the reason was because of the financial matter. Many of her students were from low-income families. Mostly, they only had one smartphone or handphone in each family. Therefore, they needed to use the cell phone alternately with the other family members. However, if the students did have a smartphone to use, they still had another problem. Some of them lived far away from the city. Consequently, they did not have a good enough internet connection to join the class.

Sometimes, parents also could take a role in helping the teachers to conduct online teaching activities. For example, parents could ask their children to attend the class, give motivation to them, help them during the learning process, remind them about the class and the assignments. Unfortunately, Teacher A felt that the parents could not afford that. Since they had to work and do many things, they did not have time to help the teachers during online learning and teaching activities. As a result, there were a lot of students who did not join the class because they fell asleep or forgot that they had a class.

 

Materials development

Another challenge experienced by the participant, Teacher A, was about the gap between the teaching materials and the students’ English proficiency. It was because English was not a compulsory subject in Indonesian elementary schools. Teacher A also coincided with that statement. She said that many students had not got any English lessons in elementary school. Therefore, she tried to figure out how to fill the “gap” between the students’ knowledge and the materials she should deliver to them.

In order to make it clearer about the “gaps” mentioned before, Teacher A gave several examples about it. First, the material in their English package book for first-grade junior high school (JHS) students consisted of many dialogue texts. Those texts had a lot of expressions that the students had not learned before. Even almost all of the students had not learned English at all. English was like a new subject for them. Thus, Teacher A thought that the most suitable materials for them were introducing the English alphabet and vocabulary as much as possible. She also mentioned that delivering materials about the use of “to be” and “verbs” were very useful for the very beginner learners.

More examples were in their English book for the first grade of JHS, chapters 1 and 2 which focused on the greetings. In chapter 3, the students had to learn about telling times and telling their daily activities. Next, in chapter 4, the target was stating things, animals, and public places. This fourth chapter required the students to use present continuous. Also, when the students were stating things, they had to use “there are” and “there is”. Whereas all those materials like simple present tense, present continuous, the use of “there are” and “there is” were the materials that should be explained to the second-grade students.

For the next example, Teacher A talked again about Chapter 4. In that chapter, she thought it was supposed to be saying simple sentences such as “It is a stove” or “It is a sofa”. In fact, that chapter also demanded the students understand noun phrases (adjective + noun) which were the materials for the second-grade students. Last, the less stimulus such as pictures that were provided in the book did not help the students to understand the given text or the materials much better.

 

Students’ motivations and English proficiencies

Students’ motivations and English proficiencies were the most challenging problem the English teachers had experienced. Both of the participants, Teacher A and Teacher B, admitted that they were still trying to promote their students’ motivation. Teacher B said that there were a lot of students who did not get used to using English in their daily conversation. Even if they had learned English before in their elementary school, if they did not use it frequently, then they would lose their knowledge about it. They also would forget the vocabulary and it made Teacher B face difficulties because he had to teach them the very basics of English.

Still from Teacher B, he divided students’ motivation into three types. First was the high motivation. This type of motivation was the least motivation that students had. Those with this motivation usually showed their efforts in learning English. They wanted to learn, did not give up easily, and always tried to do all of the assignments given by the teachers. They also were very active in the class such as asking something that they did not understand yet or answering the teacher’s questions without being afraid of making mistakes. There were around three to five of these students in each class.

The second was moderate motivation. The students who had this type of motivation usually paid attention and listened to the teacher’s explanations. However, they were passive in class. They neither asked nor answered anything during the learning activities. Teacher B assumed this all happened because they were afraid of making mistakes. If they made a mistake, their friends would directly bully or mock them. Therefore, they thought it would be better to not give it a try rather than make mistakes and get bullied.

The third motivation was the low one. This type was the most motivation that the students had in each class. The students with low motivation usually did not want to learn English. They did not pay attention or listen to the teacher when she or he was delivering the materials. They also did the assignments carelessly. They always said that English was difficult and it was not important. They would learn English if it was a compulsory subject, if it was not, then they would never learn it.

Moreover, according to Teacher A, the students had various motivations in learning English. However, “it was only 10-15% students, [18 to 27 students], who had high motivation to learn English.” (Participant A, online interview section, 17th September 2020). The rest of them thought that English was a difficult subject and it was not used in their daily life. They also thought that English was not important because most of the time they speak Javanese Ngoko. It meant, they never encountered a real-life situation where they had to use English, so for them, English was unnecessary. Furthermore, the facilities from Google Translate that they could freely access made them feel it was enough. If they did not know the meaning or how to say something in English, they could just translate it using Google Translate.

Teacher A and Teacher B said that there was another thing that could affect students’ motivation. It was the parents of the students. “If every parent in their home always supported and motivated the students, they must have a higher motivation to learn.” (Participant B, online interview section, 30th January 2021). In fact, Teacher A said, most of the parents did not use English in their daily life and it indeed made the students feel unmotivated to learn English. Therefore, the only encounter between the students and English was in their school and this case impeded the teachers to teach English.

 

 

English teachers’ strategies to promote students’ motivation to learn English

“Problems [indeed] lowered [students’] motivation and thus could not understand the given instruction” (Ekiz & Kulmetov, 2016, p. 33). However, the two English teachers had found some strategies that helped them to overcome the challenges explained earlier. Those strategies were explained in this part.

 

Having classroom routines

Based on Teacher A’s explanation, having classroom routines was really helpful especially to overcome the classroom management problems. She usually started the classroom routines by praying together and she would not take part in this activity. She preferred to include the students more, so she asked one of the students to say an opening prayer. Then, she led the students to do an apperception by reviewing the previous materials they learned or she would simply give some hints about what they were going to learn on that day. She tried to use English during the lesson and gave more English exposure to them. Thus, they could get used to using English.

After that, the teacher would show a presentation using PowerPoint. It was started by introducing the new vocabulary. The way she introduced it was not telling the words, but she would give some pictures first. Then, the students were asked to pronounce what the picture was in English one by one. This activity also could be called as guessing pictures.

Furthermore, conducting these strategies could save Teacher A’s time. Since she could use anything in the classroom, so she only needed a few minutes to prepare the classroom routines activities. Also, when she came to the class, the students already knew what they should or had to do. Thus, having classroom routines eased Teacher A to get students’ attention from the very beginning of the lesson and to manage the crowded classes much better. As a result, the students could follow the instructions and the materials given by the teacher. “This [strategy] was great for building a good habit of the students.” (Participant A, online interview section, 29^th January 2021). The teachers might only need around 10 minutes for doing the classroom routines, but a quite felicitous improvement from the students could be surely seen.

 

Providing facilitation for online learning

Online learning for people that were far from the main city would be a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Two of the problems were the cell phones and the internet connection availability. Therefore, the teachers, Teacher A and Teacher B, attempted to help the students who were from low-income families and were far from the city. They allowed the students to come to school and they joined the online class from school. They could access the school’s computer lab and Wi-Fi. Around 120 computers had been provided to be used by the students alternately.

Furthermore, during the online learning, Teacher A and Teacher B used Microsoft Teams to do the teaching activities. They conducted a video conference in almost all of the meetings, gave maximal two assignments for each chapter of the materials, and had a Whatsapp group to talk about anything with their teacher related to the materials. They also used videos to motivate students and they had two ways in delivering the videos during this online learning. First, they would play the video at the beginning of the lesson and watched it together during the conference. Second, they would simply upload the video to the virtual class provided by Microsoft Teams. The students tended to be more excited and active when they had to watch a video. Teacher A claimed that was because the video had both visual and audio and thus stimulated students’ senses to be more active in acquiring information.

 

Simplifying the materials

Simplifying the materials for the students and relating the materials with their daily life or their future occupation were two of Teacher A’s strategies. As explained in the previous part about material development challenges that Teacher A had experienced, there were some gaps between the materials in their English textbook and the students’ knowledge about English. Therefore, Teacher A attempted to fill the gaps by doing these strategies and she tried to pay attention to students’ current proficiency levels.

The first step that Teacher A did was selecting the target language that students should achieve for the particular chapter. For example, for Chapter 4 about describing things, it was clear that students had to know the adjectives, possessive pronouns, and to be. Thus, Teacher A prepared those materials and taught them at the beginning of the chapter. Besides, she gave extra exercises that supported students’ understanding.

Another example, for the stating things material, instead of introducing the singular and plural nouns simultaneously, Teacher A preferred to introduce the plural noun along with the article a and an. In the next meeting, she tried to introduce the plural nouns and emphasized the suffix -es and -s. After the students were able to differentiate the plural/ singular nouns, and know how to use the article, she moved to the sentences. She asked the students to make some sentences in English. As a result, the students could follow the learning process well and understand much better.

Teacher A had been doing this strategy for years and yet it indeed worked well. Moreover, this strategy was actually in line with Achmad and Yusuf (2016) who suggested developing the materials relevantly to what students need and to the job they want to achieve.

The point of this strategy was to adjust the material according to the students’ proficiency level. If they were the beginner learners, like Teacher A’s students, then the English teachers needed to simplify the materials. However, if the students were intermediate or advanced learners, then maybe the English teachers had to improve the materials before teaching them to the students. Something worth to be noted was the materials should be slightly one level up from the students’ current proficiency level. This was in line with the Input Hypothesis from one of Krashen's (1982) theories. He said that the input the learners got should be slightly beyond their current knowledge or proficiency. It usually was written as “CI i+1” where CI meant Comprehensible Input, i meant learner’s current competence, and 1 meant slightly beyond the i. 

 

Using songs

This strategy was used by Teacher B.  He said using songs as the stimulus was a good idea for improving students’ listening skills. Usually, Teacher B played a song, the students listened to it several times, then he as the teacher asked the students to fill in the blank worksheet. “Using songs as tasks might be one way of helping transfer words from songs into use, and maximize the potential of songs as teaching and learning tools.” (Adnyani & Dewi, 2020, p.92).

Furthermore, Teacher B stated that listening to songs could be used as ice-breaking too to get the students’ attention back. Some examples of the songs that had been used by him were Hero - Mariah Carey, Perfect - Simple Plan, A Thousand Years - Christina Perri, etc. Usually, he would play the songs with a slow tempo. Sometimes, he used songs in the students’ listening tests. Thus, the students would do the listening exercises seriously since those exercises would help them in their listening test. Teacher B claimed that students’ listening skills were having an improvement since he used this strategy. “[Since using songs], students’ listening skills are having a quiet development.” (Participant B, direct interview section, 12th September 2020).

 

Using games

Games indeed made every student become more excited about doing something. Thus, in this case of promoting students’ motivation to learn English, Teacher A and Teacher B used games as one of their strategies. Both of them always started the class with ten minutes vocabulary game. First, they would mention a word in Indonesian or English. Then, the students needed to write the translation of the mentioned word. The vocabularies used in this game were the words that students had learned in the previous meetings. Therefore, this game could be like a review for them. Around 15.27% or 20 of 131 students also mentioned specifically that they got motivated in learning English if the teacher used some games such as 10 minutes vocabulary quiz, guessing pictures.

Before conducting games in a class, Teacher A made a learning contract with the students. There were some rules that should be agreed together between the teacher and the students. For example, listening to the teachers, following the games’ rules, using English to communicate, supporting each other, and not bullying friends, etc. This contract really helped in managing the class during the games and even the whole learning activities. With the crowded class and small classroom size, Teacher A still tried to use games by maximizing the available space. She made a board game where the students could interact with each other, play, and learn. The students could experience fun learning using English.

One of the examples of the board game was modified-snake and ladders about jobs and occupations. In this game, the students had to finish the tasks on their track quickly. There were four tasks in this game. First, asking the person’s occupation in the provided picture. Second, asking where that person worked. Third, asking the job description of that occupation. Fourth, spelling the name of the occupation. From task one to three, the students could use some sentences such as, “What does she/he do?”, “Where does she/he work?”, and “What does … (name of the occupation) do?”. Related to this board game, Teacher A explained that in the previous meetings, the students had learned the vocabulary and the examples of the dialogue that may appear in this game. “Hence, this board game was used as a practice and a review for the students.” (Participant A, online interview section, 29th January 2021).

Before playing this game, Teacher A would give the example of how to play this game and explain the rules simultaneously using PowerPoint. After that, she would review a little bit of the vocabulary such as the name of the occupation, the job description, and the place of that job. Then, the students were divided into several groups which consisted of 4 students. In each group, there was at least one student who had better English proficiency than the other students. By doing so, Teacher A hoped they could do peer-teaching and help each other in their groups. Under the teacher’s supervision, the students were given some chances to do the game. They also could ask the teacher if there was still something that they did not understand yet.

Next, there were two games used by both participants, Teacher A and Teacher B. First, it was guessing gestures or guessing words. Here, the teachers mentioned a word, it could be a noun or a verb to one of the students. That student’s job was to mime the word and the rest of the students had to guess the word. The second game was guessing animals or guessing pictures. Similar to the guessing gestures, in this game, the teachers gave a name of an animal or a picture of an animal to a student. That student had to mention some characteristics of the animal. Then, the rest of the students had to guess it.

Playing a game in the class indeed increased students’ excitement in learning English. It might give a pulse or a life in the classroom atmosphere. However, “Games would work well if the teachers can manage the class. Otherwise, the students became more enthusiastic about the games.” (Participant B, direct interview section, 12th September 2020). As a result, it would waste time for teaching the core lesson. Teacher B admitted that even though using games did promote students’ motivation, he did not use it frequently because managing the class during conducting a game was difficult for him.

 

Assigning students to work in groups

Group work was the strategy used by Teacher B. He explained that assigning students to work in groups could effectively develop students’ interest in learning English. Since the students would work with their friends and have a discussion together, it may help them to express their opinion freely (Ekiz & Kulmetov, 2016; Rahman et al., 2017). Moreover, Teacher B acknowledged that working in groups worked well for enhancing students’ participation in the class.

One example given by Teacher B was building a story. First, he would divide the students into groups. After that, he gave some pictures for each group. Each picture represented a part of a story. Therefore, every group should have a discussion to build the story based on those pictures. When doing this strategy, Teacher B recommended that the teacher should walk around the class and make a rule before the group work was started. The rule here meant that every group member should take part in this work. If there was someone who broke the rule, then that person should be the one who presented the result of their group work in front of the class. Last, the teacher also should observe the whole process of every group in the class to make sure that everybody took a part in the group work.

 

 

Using videos

Using videos was very helpful to teaching materials in English. Both Teacher A and Teacher B used videos as their strategy. Teacher A also still used videos to promote students’ motivation during her online teaching. Teacher B stated that the videos used were English videos with subtitles in Indonesian or English. Usually, after watching the video, the teacher and the students would discuss the explanation on the video together. “This strategy could promote students’ motivation very well, and the teacher could get students’ attention easier by using a video.” (Participant B, direct interview section, 12th September 2020). When Teacher B played a video in the class, he would ask the students to pay attention to the video’s explanation. Even if it was only a simple explanation, the students would pay more attention than if the teacher himself explained the materials. Using videos did work well for both Teacher A and Teacher B to enhance their students’ motivation. Also, the students themselves admitted that they liked learning using media such as pictures and videos. It helped them to understand better.

 

Motivating students through positive feedback

The motivation was the core of students’ learning fruitfulness. Both Teacher A and Teacher B admitted the importance of students’ motivation in learning English. According to Teacher B, motivation should be given to the students especially those who were afraid of making mistakes. Since some students would directly mock and bully their friends who made mistakes. Hence, every time Teacher B recognized there were those students who were afraid of making mistakes, he would spontaneously say, “It is okay. Just try to talk. Even if there is a mistake, it is totally okay. If you want to try using Indonesian first, it is also okay. It can be that they are not better than you who are brave enough to try.”.

Meanwhile, based on Teacher A’s opinion, motivation should be given to all of the students. Before starting the teaching activities, she always reminded the students that it was okay to make mistakes. She encouraged them to be courageous enough to try and not afraid of making incorrect sentences. She also told them that being confident was way better than giving a correct answer.

Moreover, giving appreciation was an important thing too as one of the ways to motivate the students. Teacher A always appreciated her students whenever they wanted to read a passage in English or answered her questions. She usually said “good job”, “nice”, and “thank you” to those students. Then, at the end of the lesson, Teacher A mentioned all of the students’ names who actively participated during that day's meeting. She also said “thank you” for their enthusiasm and hoped that there would be more students who wanted to actively participate in the next meeting. Another suggestion from Teacher A did not laugh or underestimate the students who made mistakes such as answering incorrectly or mispronounced some words. “Let the students try first, [then, give an] evaluation at the end of the lesson.” (Participant A, online interview section, 29th January 2021). As additional information, Teacher A and Teacher B also tried to build a fun and relaxed classroom atmosphere.

 

Conclusion

Some interview sessions had been conducted with two English teachers in a public junior high school in Salatiga, Central Java. From the interviews, the researchers found out that the teachers faced some challenges in teaching English in that school. They were classroom management, online learning, material development, and students’ motivation and English proficiencies. Fortunately, the teachers already found some strategies to overcome it. Other than that, they also had some strategies that worked effectively in promoting students’ motivation.

In brief, in the learning activities, Teacher A always tried to involve her students in almost all of the learning activities. She also connected the materials with students’ daily life. By doing so, the teacher hoped the students realized that English was everywhere and even around them. English was very important and they needed it. Teacher A also provided warm-up games to promote their interest in learning English and yet students might think that English was not as difficult and boring as they thought before. It was fun and enjoyable instead.

Other than that, Teacher A adjusted the board game, so the students could play while studying. At first, she would give any examples or demonstrate something. Then, the students were given a chance to lead the activity one by one. In addition, Teacher B said that he tried to use 30 to 40% English as the medium of interaction and gave many examples so the students could understand better.

This study had some limitations. First, the interview was conducted to two teachers only. As a result, the strategies could not be compared to other teachers in other schools. Second, the students were not interviewed, so the result could be presented from one point of view only, which was from the teachers.

Future researchers could conduct similar research in more than one school and interview more English teachers, so the results would be more creative and broader. Also, students could be interviewed too. Thus, the results could be derived more deeply from two points of view, not from the teachers only. Hopefully, the findings would be useful for English teachers especially those who had the same problem as Teacher A and Teacher B. If other English teachers had the same situation or challenges as explained in this study, then they can follow the strategies well. Yet, if the situations were different, then adjusting to the current circumstance or to what the students’ likes was highly recommended. Since even the strategies were the same, but the way conducting the strategies may be different. Therefore, it should be adapted to the current circumstances.

 

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