Abstract:

The paper is dealing with inspiring life-long learning students to study a foreign language, which is a key for more skills, knowledge and competences and helps to encourage connecting their experiences with current activities. A teacher needs to know how to relate the sum of formerly gained knowledge and skills to the ongoing process. In addition, students need to be given the freedom to take responsibility for their choice when they are proactive and prefer contributing to the educational process themselves. The paper offers how to increase the motivation of adult learners through applying their real-life situations: having them specified it is the first step to goal oriented and intended teaching/learning outcomes. Once the learning objectives have been identified, it is now a great moment to relate the assigned tasks to learners´ own goals. However, it must be clear that the activities they are engaged into can contribute directly to their personal learning objectives; if so, they are inspired and highly motivated. In addition, they must always feel collaborative relationships with their teachers/instructors and considered them as colleagues. Adult learners like exploration and prefer taking the opportunity to construct knowledge in a way that is meaningful to them. Thought-provoking questions and problems with more right answers are a desirable challenge and adult learners always appreciate respecting their intelligence. However, at the same time, we should keep in mind sayings that practice makes perfect and we will become clever through our mistakes.

Keywords:

Life-long learners, motivation, proactive approach, collaborative realtionship.