3. The Anticipation of Reward Human beings are universally driven to act, or "behave," by the anticipation of some sort of reward—tangible or intangible, short term or long term—that will ensue as a result of the behavior. Considering all sides of the reward principle, the following constructive classroom implications may be drawn:
(1) Provide an optimal degree of immediate verbal praise and encouragement to students as a form of short-term reward (just enough to keep students confident in their ability but not so much that your praise simply becomes so much verbal gush).
(2) Encourage students to reward each other with compliments and supportive action.
(3) In classes with very low motivation, short-term reminders of progress may help students to perceive their development. Gold stars and stickers (especially for young learners), issuing certain "privileges" for good work, and progress charts and graphs may spark some interest.
(4) Display enthusiasm and excitement yourself in the classroom. If you are dull, lifeless, bored, and have low energy, you can be almost sure that it will be contagious.
(5) Try to get learners to see the long-term rewards in learning English by pointing out such things as what they can do with English where they live and around the world, the prestige in being able to use English, the academic benefits of knowing English, jobs that require English, etc.
4. The Intrinsic Motivation Principle Simply stated, the intrinsic motivation principle is:
The most powerful rewards are those that are intrinsically motivated within the learner. Because the behavior stems from needs, wants, or desires within oneself, the behavior itself is self-rewarding; therefore, no externally administered reward is necessary at all. If all learners were intrinsically motivated to perform all classroom tasks, we might not even need teachers! But you can perform a great service to learners and to the overall learning process by first considering carefully what the intrinsic motives of your students are and then by designing classroom tasks that feed into those intrinsic drives. Classroom techniques have a much greater chance for success if they are self-rewarding in the perception of the learner: The learners perform the task because it is fun, interesting, useful, or challenging, and not because they anticipate some cognitive or affective rewards from the teacher.