Can we, as teachers, motivate students?

According to our research, there are a lot of techniques that teachers can apply in order to motivate our students, if we think about this we can say that motivate someone is a very difficult tasks.
For example Dornyei (2001) identifies for aspects of motivational teaching practice:

The first one has to do with creating the basic motivational conditions. In order to create this we need to foster a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere in where the students can feel confortable and relaxed in order to low their anxiety. if this happens then they would fell more relaxed and confident in order to participate and not to feel ashamed or embarrased at the moment of producing sentences or utterances in English.
The second aspect is related to generating initial student motivation, this means increasing the learners' expectancy of success or making teaching materials relevant to learners, for example bringing texts that might be interesting for them, music, and of course technology as computers, etc.
A third phase is encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation, this means providing motivational feedback, letting them know their good aspects not only the bad ones, increasing learner satisfaction, offering rewards and grades in a motivating manner.




I also found some information By Barbara Gross Davis, University of California, Berkeley. From Tools for Teaching some strategies I found very interesting as well and that are related to the ones we so above:

Capitalize on students' existing needs. Students learn best when incentives for learning in a classroom satisfy their own motives for enrolling in the course. Some of the needs your students may bring to the classroom are the need to learn something in order to complete a particular task or activity, the need to seek new experiences, the need to perfect skills, the need to overcome challenges, the need to become competent, the need to succeed and do well, the need to feel involved and to interact with other people.

Make students active participants in learning. Students learn by doing, making, writing, designing, creating, solving. Passivity dampens students' motivation and curiosity. Pose questions. Don't tell students something when you can ask them. Encourage students to suggest approaches to a problem or to guess the results of an experiment. Use small group work.

Ask students to analyze what makes their classes more or less "motivating." Sass (1989) asks his classes to recall two recent class periods, one in which they were highly motivated and one in which their motivation was low. Each student makes a list of specific aspects of the two classes that influenced his or her level of motivation, and students then meet in small groups to reach consensus on characteristics that contribute to high and low motivation.

Another important issue mentioned here is Incorporating Instructional Behaviors That Motivate Students like:

Hold high but realistic expectations for your students

Help students set achievable goals for themselves

Tell students what they need to do to succeed in your course.

Strengthen students' self-motivation

Avoid creating intense competition among students

Be enthusiastic about your subject

For further information about this discussion please visit http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/motiv.htm