It is common for students to feel unmotivated, at least some of the time. There may be all sorts of factors contributing to this: the weather; the time of day; whether or not they've just eaten; what they've been doing before they came to your class; how good or bad they feel about themselves - lots of things which are nothing to do with you, or their English lessons!

But although it is sometimes reassuring to remind ourselves that there is a wider perspective, that we are not solely responsible for our students' liveliness, good humour, intelligence etc., it is still extremely demoralising to have students who just sit in class, not doing or contributing anything.

One way of trying to combat this is to try and find out what does interest them.

Even if you resort to using their mother tongue to find out, it will be worth it, Find out what they read, what kind of films they go to, where they like to shop, if they like to shop, if they have any interesting or unusual hobbies etc. It is rare for people, even students (!) to be unmotivated by everything!

Once you have found a few key interest areas, see if you can adapt some activities, texts or lessons to include or refer to these areas. Perhaps ask the students themselves to bring in items of interest, e.g. the lyrics to a favourite song for you to work out.

Young adolescents are more susceptible to pressure from their peers than to any other pressure. It is very important for them to belong to their group. Because of this peer pressure many teenagers, particularly boys, will feel unable to show interest in any form of classwork. To do so would be definitely 'uncool'. It is part of their image to look bored! But this doesn't mean that they necessarily are.

If you can find time to arrange individual interviews with your students, preferably on a regular basis, you can find out a lot more about their real interests and real ability. You can also use these interviews to agree with the students' target areas of improvement in their work, which you then review at the next meeting.

Even if you only use the interviews for a 'chat', the students generally appreciate having some individual attention from their teacher.

You can use games, activities and competitions to motivate students too. A lot of activities can quite easily be turned into a game or a competition and this simple twist is enough to spur on many classes. Awarding points, stars, prizes for individual or group work can also help some students.

Changing the activities often
and varying the 'pace' of the lesson also helps to maintain motivation.

Some students have a very short attention span and are unable to concentrate on anything for very long. There is not much point in fighting this, better to change activity - keep to the same task if you like, so that a reasonable amount of work is achieved, but instead of doing, for example, ten general comprehension questions, set three, then change groups and set a further five true/false questions, then move back to a whole group and together correct three sentences written up on the board. The text will have been covered, but the students will have had variety.