Mario: But do they tell you that they don’t like the activities or do you just feel it? Isabel: Well, they don’t seem very interested – but they haven’t actually told me that. And if they are bored, I guess it could be for another reason, so maybe I should find a way to find out! Another thing, though, is it takes me a long time to get through activities because I spend such a long time trying to get the students to do them in the first place. Mario: The same thing happens to me but I’ve noticed that it always happens with the same group of students. Isabel: I get the feeling that, in my case, they’re all unhappy or bored, or uninterested. They just don’t seem to want to participate in anything I plan. In this dialogue, you can see how Isabel manages to go
deeper into the idea that her students lack motivation.
She discovers that their apparent lack of participation
is upsetting her mainly because:
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her students don’t participate in the activities she
prepares;
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they look bored and unhappy;
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her activities take longer than expected because she
spends time trying to get students on task.
She also realises that she might need to consult the
students to find out what they actually think.
Notes on a conversation like this would be useful to Isabel
because they enable her to uncover her own perceptions.
By then moving on to collect information about her
students’ perceptions and also their behaviour, she will be
able to confirm whether her concerns are valid and, later,
how she can address the situation.
