Durval Pecanha
Professor Leon Lanzbom
English 115 - 69
20 May 2010
Research Project Essay: Motivation for Kids with Learning Disability – Theory and Application’s Notes
Everybody needs motivation to reach their goals, especially kids with learning disability. So, how people can be encouraged to like learning? First of all, the first step is reading. Reading is a tool for education. This is a necessary tool for people’s self development, including learning disability people. People have to be introduced to reading in a positive environment in order to like books from the beginning. Further, they could use books as friends. In the short story “Strange Tools” Rodriguez explains his first feelings with books, when her mother introduced them to him. Also, the short stories “Mother Tongue”, from Amy Tan; “Once More to the Lake”, from Ellwyn Brooks White; and “What I Learned (and Didn’t Learn) in College”, from Josie Martinez, assert that some kind of motivation is necessary to reach our goals. Each essay exemplifies types of education. So, according to people who follow Behaviorism (Socrates and Pavlov), people must be stimulated in order to pursue their goals, especially kids who deserve concentrated attention.
Behaviorism supports the idea of motivation by showing examples of how negative and positive attitudes make a big difference in the quality of learning. Concluding, they say that the transformation of the predisposition toward self development made by the “conditioned behavior” can make people more tranquil and adapted into life. Behaviorists’ purpose is to show their pupils a manner of how to drive people in new situations that people usually have in order to make them enjoy with new introductions during the life. They establish a casual relationship with the audience who are interested in learning because they use common language in their books. Also, everybody has some kind of new situation in relationship with the everyday life.
An amazing motivation is to play. The reason is to learn our limitations with that. Our first word is related to playing. Also the first crawling or step is playful. Our mothers teach us to play when taking care of us like animals do. Thus, Ivan Pavlov discovered in 1904 that when he called a dog to give food several times with a bell, after some time, the dog salivated only for hearing the bell (Fredholm, 2001). The dog obeyed a command to receive food. Integrating that experiment with people, a favorable situation for learning is a playful environment. Playing shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. Doing a clinical research with 6000 people, the Physician Psychologist Stuart Brown (2009) proves that playing is the most advanced process for promoting brain development and social integration:
Whether it’s through physical activity, social interaction, competition, adventure … our need to play is hardwired into our brains. What enables us to innovate, problem-solve, and be happy, smart, resilient human beings? It’s our ability to play. Apparently purposeless, because done for its own sake, play has property of being voluntary, thus stimulating inherent attraction, freedom from time, diminished consciousness of self improvisational potential and continuation desire. Involves anticipation, surprise, pleasure, understanding strengthen. [The playing] result in … grace, contentment, composure, and a sense of balance in life (17).
That has a “survive value” (30). That means that the playing “interaction allows a penalty-free rehearsal of the normal give-and-take necessary in social groups” (19). That means to play is like a social guideline about how to get along with others, or how to seem to. Thus, Dr. Brown’s research has a connection with my experience motivating people. So his study supports my point.
Rodriguez essay’s “Strange Tools” corroborates behaviorism when he talks about books for kids. His motivation for reading books changed when his school introduced him to the books in a playful environment. Those books “strange tools” would become friends, no more strangers, which would guide him to his education. So, he would get self independence to study. He was already self motivated by being an extraordinary reader. His transformation happened when his nun teacher gave him joy through reading. She told him that kind of pleasure would give him the tools for his self development. When he got this point he became a strong reader forever. Thus, he averted the first negative attitude about books from his mother, taking the positive from his nun teacher.
Therefore, kids can be conditioned to enjoy self development. To make children like books, the best attitude from parents, or teachers, is to introduce books in an environment as pleasurable as possible. Thus, the children become attracted to the books. When attracted to them, kids will enjoy understanding about what the books say. This behavior can be generalized for every kind of a necessary skill such as writing etc… Some fun associated with that necessary skill turns that skill as fun as the common fun. For example, after that is done just reading a book is fun enough to continue reading for pleasure. So, a celebration or introductory play before a reading would be no more necessary, even though desirable. That is called “conditioned behavior”, or even driven study. That was what hapenned with Rodriguez when he was a kid. When introduced to the books with a fun chemistry he became a friend of the books. So, each reading book done becomes a victory, a kind of celebration to him. So, happiness in learning is a useful tool that applies for everything.
The most motivating anecdote in the Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” essay is when she talks about her friendly heritage. In that manner, Tan's plot talks about her mother’s influence on her language education. She asserts that the language from her mother influenced her more positively than negatively, because that communication becomes an inspiration for writing about her mother. She supports her assertion by showing examples of how her mother talked and how she overcomes her bad grades in English to become a writer. Concluding, she says that the “broken English” from her mother somehow was so intimate and sometimes playful that it was able to harmonize her thinking (487). Her purpose is to make her readers know that friendly relationship with parents can help children overcome everything in life like her.
The motivations encountered in the “Once More to the Lake” essay, from Ellwyn Brooks White are of several types, including playfulness. White talks about his responsibility on father’s education that has changeable and similar things. He had to control his own nature giving education to his son. He finds peace perceiving his mortality being a better mankind knowing that he had prompted to be dead by God, when he “felt the chill of death" (191). He has to control his nature and his son. He establishes a casual relationship with his audience of environment’s admirer and human being getting old, who is interested at least in learning about connections between humanity and the nature. He persuades the reader that teaching has to be done with enjoyment by appealing to the emotion of his audience by staying in a common ground. So, his readers find mutual interests. Thus, his strategies and argument bind together with the behaviorists who look for a positive environment in the learning place and people.
The motivation found in the essay from Josie Martinez, “What I Learned (and Didn’t Learn) in College” (458), is necessity and survival. She asserts that she had different kinds of learning at College that she didn’t expect. Being a Catholic, she learned with “religion’s history” more than in all her life long. In another side, her classes of astrology were boring without practice that she had never thought that could be. In short, she notices classes' categories between "enjoyable", with "ideal learning environment", "shared in enthusiasm", and "worthless" "difficult and boring" (460). Her categories teaches students that if one course is a disappointment, another would be satisfying. If they become discouraged, they would miss the best classes that do the difference to their future. The conjunct was valuable to her. So, her purpose is to convince the reader that some relaxing is the best education's part. Students have to take advantage in learning what they like in order to focus on their future. Her strategies were sharing emotional experiences with the college audience that could be everybody that study for a career and living. Her argument is convincing because her reasons proved knowledge about what she says. Her motivation was her enjoyment in progressing development. Also, the motivation found in the essay from Raymond Carver, “Cathedral” (304???), is necessity and survival. He asserts that a blind man can teach everybody how they learn. Thus, people can learn to be better human beings with them. He learned a lot with one blind, so everybody can have the same understanding of life. Concluding he realized that “every time is time for learning something” such the blind man told him (310???). His purpose is to show the reader that everybody has something to share with another people as human being. Nobody is superior to anybody. So, being tolerance with different people can improve a universal life interchanging each other being. Also, learning each other is enjoyable. His strategies of getting emotion from his audience of people interested in people make his argument convincing. He changed his situation from challenging to fascinating. Probably, this is what the behaviorism would say about a social adaptation to the knowledge.
As a personal experience of motivation to a self development reminds me my first tutoring home schooling. When I was nineteen, a neighbor mother asked me to be a tutor for her learning disable son. He had repeated several times his first and second grades. He was about twelve in the third grade. He had a lag in his education. So, I was challenged in getting results to my tutee’s grades. His mother, sister and aunt who was a teacher had already attempted teaching him without success. They overprotected or castigated him. He avoided books and notebooks. I knew that he almost never copied his classes and homework. I started from the basics in reading, writing and sum. I started talking about what he liked. He responded asking why he was at school. Also, he told me that he would like to be a warrior like his father, who had died. School was too boring to him. However, I told that if he would study he could make money becoming a professional. Also, I was taking his information about what he liked in order to stimulate his attention to study. I saw that he was no good about every schooling task and social activity with his peers. He did everything worse than others in the same age. He liked cards and memory play. Before classes I had to do some play for his concentration. I said that if he didn’t bring his homework his mother would cut my classes. Soon, he started to arrive with his homework. Surprisingly, he started to change his behavior. His lack of attention in everything started to change. Also, he brought several questions everyday. He asked me if I had read every book in my home when he started to follow me to watch the news on television. His family never saw that. That was on soap opera time. He started to read the newspaper and to see movies. He was curious about how I could understand the news and sometimes predict what was going to happen like election, war, inflation, religion and movies. I said that I had personal opinions that sometimes happened. Soon, he becomes more talkative getting confidence.
Also, he started to ask for the school’s books to his family. After some while, he started to attempt doing every home work which he could to pay attention to me like I gave to him. My patience becomes pleasure in teaching him. In the beginning some words that I said he didn’t understand as a foreigner in the Mother Tongue’s essay with her friends. But he asked me. So, I introduced him to the dictionary. Some times he had head ache studying. So, I asked his mother to improve his food. Our classes were extended. From challenging, they become pleasuring. Like White in his essay with his son, I had an amazing experience teaching him.
Soon, the classes’ results improved also in his grades. After on year long, he had improved in every classes and grades. Beyond that, he had socialized with more peers from his age. In the next year I had to go to the College. Years later, his family told me that nobody else was calling him as “retarded” boy. He becomes stimulated with everything. Inclusive become more close friend to his family. After high school, he became more successful than most of his peers in his neighborhood. He received more money than me as a pharmaceutical broker. Therefore, I can say that without sophisticated skills I had changed his behavior with books. His reading, writing, communication and socializing had improved forever. Such as Rodriguez at school, at home as Amy Tan, or sometimes playing cards or sport, as White out side, the enjoyment with studies was a key for our successful activities.
Finally, the works Reading Rhetorically from John Bean (2007), Patterns for College Writing from Kiszner (2007), College Writing Skills with Readings from Langan (2008), and Diana Hacker (2008) showed key writing concepts. For example, my argument became clarified with the “rhetorical précis”. Also, the authors Fredholm (2010) and MacDonald (2010) from my tutoring classes helped me to organize my ideas about teaching people with learning disability or not. Now the point is proved. In fact, a positive environment of attraction to the books can change negative behavior connecting kids to the books. Then, my results make sense. Now it is a project for possible research to further developments.
In conclusion, I consider that some types of motivation emphasized my application when teaching. Generalizing, doing that, I discovered that some play is a nice introduction to the books. I stimulated my tutee with learning disability successfully. Also, the reasons from the short stories combined with my point of learning. Similarly to Rodriguez, my pupil changed his behavior. Firstly, he didn’t like to read. With my classes he realized that with reading and studying he could make his profession. Also, he socialized. He knew what to talk about. Such as Rodriguez, Tan, White and Martinez did, I used negative attitudes looking for the positive one. Even though I was teaching my tutee I learned a lot with him.
Works Cited
Bean, C. John, Virginia A. Chappell, and Alice M. Gilliam. Reading Rhetorically. 2nd Ed.
New York: Pearson, 2007.
Born Daniel, McCue, Judith and Whitfield H., Donald (Selection/Edition). The Great Books Foundation
Short Story Omnibus. 1th. Ed. Chicago: The Great Books Foundation, 2009.
Brown, Stuart and Vaughan, Christopher. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2009.
Fredholm, Lotta. “Pavlov’s Dog: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936)”. (05.15.01). 03.19.10
http://nobleprize.org /educational_ games /medicine/pavlov/readmore.html>
Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. Boston/New York: Bedford/San Martin, 2008.
Kirszner, Laurie G. and Stephen R. Mandell. Patterns for College Writing. A Rhetorical Reader
and Guide. 10th Ed. Boston/New York: Bedford, 2007.
Langan, John. College Writing Skills with Readings. 7th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Martinez, Josie. “What I Learned (and Didn’t Learn) in College.” Laurie G. Kirszner and
Stephen R. Mandell. Patterns for College Writing. 10th Ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007. 458.
MLA Format Guidelines. San Diego: Southwestern Writing Center (Hand Out), 2010.
Rodriguez, Richard. “Strange Tools.” Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Patterns for
College Writing. 10th Ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007. 743.
Ross B., MacDonald. The Master Tutor: A Guide Book for More Effective Tutoring, 1st. Ed.
Williamsville, N Y: The Cambridge Stratford Study Skills Institute, 1994.
Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Patterns for
College Writing. 10th Ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007. 487.
White, Elwyn Brooks. “Once More to the Lake.” Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell.
Patterns for College Writing. 10th Ed. Boston: Bedford, 2007. 186.
WWW.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c08_52.html. 03.19.2010.
*?Olaf, Michael. Child of the World Michael Olaf’s Essential Montessori for Ages 3-12. Arcata:
Company 65 Ericson Cout, 2010. (Mistake???)
(*detail citation?) Speidel J., Barbara, Kozel, Elizabeth, Tutor Manual. First Edition.
Southwestern College Academic Success Center, Chula Vista, California, 2009.
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