Teaching English Effectively: with Special Focus on Learners' Interests

There are several ways of enhancing students' motivation in the EFL classroom but an important one is to create the lesson on the basis of the learners' interests. Everyone who looks back on former school days, might remember that learning was more enjoyable when the topics were interesting and furthermore, when they were handled in an exiting way. The intention of this study is to present several ideas of improving the general motivation in the classroom. In addition to that, the current interests of students from German secondary schools and the consideration of the interests in the common English classroom will be presented with the help of a questionnaire. Part one gives an overview of the terms interest and motivation in its psychological context and in relation to their meaning in the English classroom. The second part mentions the importance of incorporating students' interest in the learning classroom. Further, the third part deals with several possibilities of creating motivational conditions in the L2 classroom. Part four presents the results and the evaluation of a research which was conducted on the basis of the theoretical aspects. Part five deals with the content of the Lower Saxony Core Curriculum and the way it considers the students' interests. Finally, the author sums up the results of the research and draws a conclusion.