Using Reward Cards to Motivate Students’ Learning in an ESL Form 2 Classroom
in Perak
Siti Nurafiqahbinti Abdullah1, Maria Shu Hong Bee Abdullah2*
1,2*Faculty of Languages and Communication, Sultan Idris Education University, Malaysia
Article History: Received: 10 November 2020; Revised: 12 January 2021; Accepted: 27 January 2021; Published online: 05 April 2021
Abstract: Thepurpose of this research wasto investigate the effectiveness of using reward card in ESL classroom to improve students’ motivation in learning. This action research was conducted on eighteen (18) Form Two students from a semi-urban school in Perak. The problem with these students was they lacked motivation in learning English language in the classroom. The researcher conducted an action research of five (5) weeks where researcher introduced a strategy of using reward card in the classroom. Data were collected using questionnaire, interview and reward card. Data were analysed by calculating the percentage of students’ rating on each item of the questionnaire and reward card. Data were also analysed from the audio recording from students’ interview. The research found that reward cards motivate students to participate in classroom and compete with their classmates in collecting the most stamps, as tokens. This research shows that reward cards motivate students in learning during the English language lesson.
Keywords: Reward Card, Reward System, Motivation, Positive Reinforcement, Achievement, Action Research
1. Introduction
Baranek (1996) pointed out that students’ lack of motivation causes poor achievement. Learning process occurs when students themselves want to learn from the teacher, in other words, when they are motivated (Ching, 2012). Students’ attendance and participation in class will mirror their motivation in learning (Baranek, 1996). Kelishadroky, Shamsi, Bagheri, Shahmirzayi&Mansorihasanabadi (2016) stated that rewards and punishments are two important techniques used by teacher to ensure learning. Finding the right tool is important for teachers to ensure learning process is effective. Kelly (2019) suggested that teacher can improve students’ motivation by using tools that the teacher finds suitable, but the teacher must follow the guideline of the tool that she has introduced to her students. Consistency and fairness will greatly assist the teacher to control the students’ attitude towards the tool used.
Based on the researcher’s observation in the class, it was found that students were lacking in term of motivation in learning English language. This action research was carried out to investigate on the use of reward card to motivate students to learn and to view the students’ perceptions on using the reward card in the ESL classroom.
2. ESL Classroom Behaviour
In the ESL classroom, behaviours can be defined as responses driven by stimulus. It can be regarded ashow students are behaving in the classroom in response to what is occurring or happening around them. There are two categories of behaviours in the classroom, positive behaviours and negative behaviours. Some examples of behaviour termed as positive are when the students follow direction, complete assignment and remain attentivetotheteacher. Examples of behaviour termed as negative include studentsreacting aggressively, playing pranks and talking to other students when the teacher is teaching. Usually student with poor classroom behaviour has poor academic achievement.Students’ negative behaviour in classroom will affect the teacher’s teaching and effect classroom control.
Classroom Management
Classroom management is defined by Great Schools Partnership (2014) when the teachers use a range of techniques or approaches to manage or maintain studentsin an orderly and organized manner. When the students stay on task and focus, they tend to be more productive in the classroom. Greenberg, Putnam and Walsh (2014) highlightedfive (5) classroom management strategies which are rules, routines, praise, misbehaviour and engagement. To help students distinguish expected behaviour from bad behaviour, teachers need to establish rules in classroom. Routines will help train students to behave accordingly throughout the lesson if teachers always revisit the same routine from the beginning of the year.
Praise acts as positive reinforcement to reward students for their good behaviour and habits. It is normal if students misbehave sometimes so teachers need to figure out how to appropriately deliver punishment or consequences to the misbehaving students so that they will know their misbehaviour would not be tolerated in class. If students are engaged in classroom activities, the probability of them acting out will be lowered. Teachers need to ensure all students are taking part in classroom activities by creating an interesting lesson that holds their attention.
Classroom Motivation
Juneja (2019) defined motivation as the needs, desires, wants or drives that exist within individuals. Motivating is the process of stimulating people to take action to accomplish their goals. In job context, people’s motivation can be stimulated by their needs for money, peer recognition or success. Management exists mainly to create willingness among the employees to perform their job using the best of their abilities (Junecha, 2019). A leader needs to ensure the employees are interested to improve their career performances. Similar in ESL classroom context, a language teacher needs to play the vital role in motivating students to learn English language. The teacher needs to know how to drive the students’ desires to learn English language.
Classroom Reinforcement
Operant conditioning is a learning method using rewards and punishments to control students’ behaviour. Students will make their own connection between their behaviour and the consequences that come after that (Staddon, J. and Cerutti, D., 2003). There are positive reinforcers and negative reinforcers and both reinforcers function to increase frequency of the behaviour (Cherry, K. 2019). Cherry (2019) has differentiated between positive and negative reinforcement. Both reinforcements involve in ‘giving’ to students. If a student score well in examination and the Cteacherrewards her with a pen; that is positive reinforcement. The probability that the student will study harder for the next examination will be increased. If a student is purposely acting out because he wanted to go the library during English lesson and the teacher gives in to the student’s acting out by bringing the whole class to the library; that is negative reinforcement. It is not good when the students misbehave and the teacher gives in to the student to solve the issue as this will give the image to the students that negative behaviour will be rewarded.
Classroom Reward
Reward generally means a thing given in recognition of service, effort or achievement. In the classroom context, a reward,according to Guendouze (2012)a present, a gift or an incentive by a teacher given to students when they have performed a task. This strategy of classroom reward increase students’ motivation in the learning process. The original idea is when a child did something good and received any kind of compensation. Andy Miller, Eamonn Ferguson & Rachel Simpson (1998) have suggested a few examples of reward for students. For example, teacher can praise students in front of other students or teacher can praise them with written comments on their work saying ‘good job’ or ‘keep up the good work’. Other examples of reward are to display the student’s work and inform the student’s parents about his good behaviour.
3. Research Method& Design
This study used qualitative research method completely in collecting and analyzing data. Qualitative research method was very appropriate for this study because the researcher wanted to know the effectiveness of reward card to motivate her students in ESL class. This study was an action research based and the researcher managed to complete one cycle of action research.
Setting & Particpants
The secondary school is situated in Perak, in a suburban area. The school is in a residential area so most of the students are neighbours and know each other from childhood. The participants of this study consisted of 18 students from 2 different races. There were 3 Indian students and 15 Malay students from a Form 2 class, aged between 14 to 15 years old and they were the challenging students, the last class. Being categorised as the last class meant that they are in the category of the lowest achievers in terms of the English proficiency level of their batch. Most of these students come from low socioeconomic background.
Instruments
This study employed the qualitative method in collecting and analysing data. The instruments that were used for data collection and data analysis in this study are reward card, questionnaire and interview. The reward card was given to the students to be attached to the front of their English language exercise book. The students were to present their reward cards at the end of every English lesson and the teacher rewarded the students with a token-a stamp when the students had shown progress by displaying good attitude or motivation while performing in the language class. The indication of a good motivation shown such as by volunteering to read the reading text or quick to perform tasks or ask and reply during discussion and completion of homework.
The questionnaire was adapted from a questionnaire to measure children’s motivation in reading which was published by National Reading Research Center. The 30 minutes questionnaire was distributed, collected and analysed qualitatively. The questionnaire enabled students to rate their opinions on the use of the reward card. There are four parts in this questionnaire. Part A is on demographic details whereby part B to give opinions and suggestion on the use of reward card. Part C and Part D consist of questions generally about their feelings, opinions and motivation on reward card.
Interview enabled the researcher to understand more clearly students’ feeling towards reward card. The prepared questions were verified by mentor teachers. The purpose of the study was explained to the participants. The interview was conducted after the fourth week of the implementation of the reward card. The researcher audio recorded the interview sessions, transcribed the interview transcripts and analysed the data using content analysis method.
4. Findings and Discussion
In Part B of the questionnaire as in Table 4.1below, the participants needed to rate the statements that mirrored their motivation when reward card was implemented in the classroom.
Table 1. Part B Questionnaire
Statements Strongly
Agree Agree Disagree
Strongly Disagree 1. I feel excited when I know there will be
reward if I behave well in class.
16 88.89% 1 5.56% 1 5.56% -
2. I listen to teacher’s instruction because I want to receive stamp at the end of the lesson. 13 72.22% 4 22.22% - 1 5.56%
3. I pay more attention to what the teacher is teaching when I know teacher will give me stamp at the end of the lesson.
1 5.56% 10 55.56% 7 38.89% -
4. I am not interested to join the activity if there is no reward involve.
3 16.67% 9 50.00% 6 33.33% -
5. I find the class boring without the reward card from the teacher.
6 33.33% 2 11.11% 2 11.11% 8 44.44%
6. My participation in classroom depends on the type of reward that I received.
1 5.56% 10 55.56% 3 16.67% 4 22.22%
7. I feel motivated to collect the stamp when I see my friends received their reward.
4 22.22% 11 61.11% 2 11.11% 1 5.56%
8. I feel the need to compete with my friends to get more stamp than them.
6 33.33% 6 33.33% 6 33.33% -
For Item 1, 88.89% (16 participants) strongly agreed that they were excited if they were rewarded for displaying good attitudes and motivation in class however only 5.56% (1 participant) disagree with the statement. This excitement was beneficial for teachers to arouse their interest in English lesson which meant they were more motivated to learn and participated in ESL classroom activities.Thirteen participantsstrongly agreed that they listened to teacher’s instruction because they wanted to receive reward stamps at the end of the lesson. This showed the connection between the reward system and the outcomes of students’ good learning behaviours or habits.
For Item 3, 55.56% (10 participants) agreed that they paid more attention to what the teacher was teaching when they knew the teacher would reward them with stamp for good learning behaviours. For Item 4, 50% (9 participants) agreed that they were not interested to join classroom activity if there was no reward involved. 33.33% (6 participants) disagreed and 16.67% (3 participants) showed strong agreement. Even though this showed students’ participation were mostly extrinsic, it was not necessarily a bad thing. Motivation, whether extrinsic or intrinsic will foster learning in classroom.
For Item 5, 44.44% (8 participants) strongly disagreed that the class was boring if there was no reward card. Meanwhile, 33.33% (6 participants) agreed strongly that the class was boring. These findings suggested that a lesson’s attractiveness (in students’ views) was not fully dependent on reward card or any reward system. Teacher is the best model to make lesson interesting even without using reward card.
For Item 7, 61.11% (11 participants) agreed that they felt motivated to collect the stamp when they observed their friends receiving the reward. 22.22% (4 participants) strongly too bring the total to 15 students who had great peer influence. This meant that there was a healthy competition between them to collect stamps and the students felt the need to compete with their friends to get more stamps than them.Similar to Item 7, this showed that reward card promoted healthy competition among the students and it was a way to motivate student to portray good learning behaviours in class and participated in classroom activities effectively.Almost half of the class were happy with the use of reward which was a very positive thing for this study.
From the audio recording, the transcribed interviews showed that all the students like the reward card in the class. This showed that generally students have good perceptions on the use of reward card to foster the learning. One of them wanted to collect as many stamps as possible to redeem some anticipated presents and the others liked the idea to compete among themselves. On the factor of continuing with the reward card, some students were emotionally attached to using reward card in class and some students were not attached to using the reward card. There was evidence that suggests that on one hand the external rewards produce results instantly in a short period of time. However, on the other hand,the long-term effect was negative because students only performed tasks when they were given rewards.
It is undeniable that classroom reward is an essential part ofclassroom management. Classroom reward can be considered as intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. For pedagogical implications, these suggestions can be considered for ESL classrooms, by encouraging student ownership of the reward system. Teachers are creative and they create opportunity for student ownership to develop their own ideal system of classroom reward. It will empower the learning process when students can develop their own classroom reward and to determine the behaviours to be rewarded in the classroom
5. Conclusion
Reflecting from this action research, it was indeed rewarding to observe the happy faces of these group of low achievers every time the teacher walked in the class for they actively module good learning behaviours to obtain a reward stamp to be pasted on the reward card. The reward card has moulded the students to start to really learn to love learning ESL. The students became more motivated and energetic to perform to receive their stamps daily. As teachers, we strive hard to build a class of creative, motivated and self-regulated students who can problem solve when faced with challenging situations. By facilitating rich and engaging learning experiences, the students will develop a sense of ownership of their learning as the students begin to start to have accountability and show responsibility for their own behaviour and work ethics.
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Appendix I: Reward Card in the Classroom Questionnaire Part B Please circle the option that is related to you.
1 (strongly agree), 2(Agree), 3 (Disagree), 4 (Strongly disagree).
Statement Strongly
Agree Agree Disagree
Strongly Disagree 1. I feel excited when I know there will be reward if I behave
well in class.
(Saya rasa
terujaapabilasayatahutentangganjaranjikasayaberkelakuanbaik di kelas.)
1 2 3 4
2. I listen to teacher’s instruction because I want to receive a stamp at the end of the lesson.
(Saya mendengar/mematuhiarahan guru kerana
sayamahumenerimasetem di akhirpelajaran.)
1 2 3 4
3. I pay more attention to what the teacher is teaching when I know teacher will give me a stamp at the end of the lesson. (Saya memberikantumpuan yang lebihkepadapengajaran guru apabilasayatahu guru akanmemberikansayasetem di akhirpelajaran.)
1 2 3 4
4. I am not interested to join the activity if there is no reward. (Saya
tidakberminatuntukmenyertaiaktivitisekiranyatidakadaganjaran.)
1 2 3 4
5. I find the class boring without the reward card from the teacher.
(Saya merasaikelasitubosantanpakadganjarandaripada guru.)
6. My participation in classroom depends on the type of reward that I receive.
(Penglibatansaya di bilikdarjahbergantungkepadsjenisganjaran yang sayaterima.)
1 2 3 4
7. I feel motivated to collect the stamp when I see my friends receive their reward.
(Saya rasa
bermotivasiuntukmengumpulsetemapabilasayamelihatganjaran yang diterima oleh rakan-rakansaya.)
1 2 3 4
8. I feel the need to compete with my friends to get more stamps than them.
(Saya rasa adakeperluanuntukbersaingdenganrakan-rakan demi pengumpulansetem yang lebihbanyak.)
1 2 3 4
Part C
Please (/) the option that is related to you.
1. Do you think the reward card in the classroom is effective?
(Pada pendapatanda, adakahsistemkadganjaran di bilikdarjahiniefektif?) Yes No
2. Write your suggestions for an ideal reward system to be implemented in classroom. (Tuliskancadanganandatentangganjaran yang ideal untukdilaksanakan di bilikdarjah.)
___________________________________________________________________
3. Do you have any suggestions to improve the use of reward card in this class? (Adakahandamempunyaicadanganuntukpenambahbaikankadganjaran di dalamkelasini?)
___________________________________________________________________ Part D
1. What do you feel when you receive the reward from the teacher? (Apakahperasaanandaapabilaandamenerimaganjarandaripada guru?) Happy Sad Disappointed Other:___________ 2. Do you think the reward is worth your effort?
(Adakahanda rasa ganjaranitusetimpaldenganusahaanda?) Yes No
3. Does the reward exceed your expectations? (Adakahganjaran yang diterima di luarjangkaananda?) Yes No
4. Do you feel more motivated to participate in the classroom activity after receiving the reward? (Adakanandalebihbermotivasiuntukmenyertaiaktiviti di dalamkelasselepasmenerimaganjaran?) Yes No
