Defining Moment: Teaching Vocabulary to Unmotivated Students

Is a first year teacher in a junior English class, I found early in the year that vocabulary instruction was going to be a challenge. My department chair had given me a set of workbooks, so I figured that was the best place to start. But I quickly found problems. The exercises proved too difficult for many of my students, and I didn’t want their grades to be negatively affected by practicing vocabulary. I tried the honor system: “If you will just work on it in the time I give you, I won’t grade it. We’ll just take this time to work on improving our vocabulary.” Yeah, right. Intrinsic motivation is not something these kids have.

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