Intrinsic motivation to learn is something that most parents and educators hope for in their children / students, because when a child truly enjoys learning, daily routines such as going to school, attending tuition, doing homework become such a breeze. Yet to be intrinsically motivated to learn can be pretty tricky - academic content that children are required to learn may not be interesting because of the level of difficulty. In addition, not knowing the relevance to learning certain Mathematics concepts can make learning extra un-motivating.
So how can we help our children be more interested in what they learn, or essentially, be intrinsically motivated to learn?
Tips To Consider
Helping children find relevance in what they learn by sharing why is it important to learn those content. This does not mean telling them to "learn your school work and score well in your exams so that you can be a manager in the future". Relevance means sharing how learning academic content can be useful in their daily lives.
For example, fractions can be a challenging topic for some children and thus, dreadful to learn. Relevance of it is learning how to divide a big piece of pizza evenly for everyone in the room - (almost) no child would want a smaller piece than their sibling! I was just teaching my Primary 4 students on directions - they just simply love this topic because they find it really applicable to their lives! It was truly a breeze teaching this.
And if you are one who loves fun, such topic can be converted into an action game! Like, go to the living room, put some tapes on the floor with objects to identify the directions, we can have a fun evening exploring directions and angles!
Relevance is why children are relatively more interested in Science than in Mathematics - they see life cycles in animals (tadpoles v frogs) happening in reality, flowers and fruits growing, observing the magic of magnetism. While on the other hand, Mathematics involve a lot of numbers and may be less "imaginable" for children.
With such support, they will truly be more interested to learn what they are learning!
To internalise the value of learning. Why do we learn? Help your child explore this topic during your daily conversations. It can start off on what they do/learn in school, what do they enjoy most when they are in school (usually recess or PAL time!!) and why, why do they not like certain subjects (is it boring or the teacher?). Then, slowly share with them your experience - but avoid overloading values on your child as this may make the conversation overwhelming. During this process, help them understand why we head to school to learn those challenging content, e.g. so that we can think more and grow our brains, so that we can learn how to talk to our friends better when we do group work. Finding value in learning is one good method to make learning more fun!
Providing choices. This is a tip that we have shared, and only because it is such a powerful and empowering one for children.
First, providing choices involves choices that would reach the objective (e.g. practising spelling before or after dinner, completing homework in the study room or the balcony).
Second, they need to stick. If children choose an option not within the options provided, it is important for us to keep to our words.
Rationalise with them why the objective has to be met. Rewards and punishments may be included, but do remember that eventually, rewards required become bigger and bigger overtime and so do punishments.