Playing The Teachers' Role As Mediators In Initiating And Sustaining The Learners' Motivation

With the introduction of the New English Curriculum Criteria, it is unanimously accepted that the teaching's aim is not merely transmitting knowledge to learners, but to teach learners how to learn. If asked to identify the most powerful influences on learning, motivation would probably be high on lists. Just as a force moves an object, motivation moves a person. If we don't understand motivation deeply, we can't understand learning fully, much less to teach learners how to learn. Teacher has been considered as controller, organizer, assessor, resource etc. in the past years. Such teaching philosophy hindered the whole development of learner's motivation to some extent. How to initiate and sustain learner's motivation? What's role teacher should play in this process? The social constructivists, Vygotsky and Feuerstein in particular, raised the idea of mediation. They claimed the secret of effective learning lies in the nature of the social interaction between two or more people with different levels of skills and knowledge. The role of the one with most knowledge is to find ways to helping the other to learn. The important person with more knowledge , usually a parent or teacher, is known as mediator. The theory of mediation maintains that the teacher ,as mediator, can play an important part in promoting effective learning in significant ways. Rather than being peripheral, the teacher is vital in fostering the right climate for learning to take place, for confidence to develop, fro people's individuality to be respected, for a sense of belonging to be nurtured, for developing appropriate learning strategies, and for moving towards learner autonomy. That is, mediator can initiate and sustain the learner's motivation best and fulfill the aim of education. This thesis concludes six parts. The first part introduces the significance of studying motivation and teacher's role and presented the research questions of this thesis. The second and the third part discuss the theory of motivation and mediation respectively and raised the idea of "playing the teachers'role as mediator in initiating and sustaining the learners'motivation". The fifth part discusses the implications of the idea for language teaching. The sixth part is the conclusion. I hope this thesis can contribute a little to effective and efficient learning and to the research of teaching learners how to learn.