Does Student Motivation Leads To Low Test Scores?

First you have to understand that there are different kinds of motivation they are called intrinsic and extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation is when an external incentive is given to the student to generate motivation and intrinsic motivation is when the student has a genuine interest in learning more about the topic.

Usually teachers measure the knowledge of the students by applying tests and giving a score depending on how well was the test answered. Most people think that test scores are a motivation for the student to learn more to achieve a better grade however that is not always the case.

Students that don't have real interest in the topic are just going to study enough to pass the test and they will be happy with that. The problem is that the student is just receiving incentive motivation and they will don't have a real interest in a deep understanding of the topic, so they are fine with low test scores, they just want to pass.

The only way to motivate the students to achieve higher test scores is with intrinsic motivation, they teacher needs to create a genuine interest in the subject, although this is not an easy task and many students will not be interested in the subject anyway.

The teacher needs to create interactive learning strategies and creative techniques to teach the students a topic in a way that they get interested and they want to participate.

There have been some studies that reveal that students are more motivated to learn more by applying tests than by doing homework. The reason of this, is because students know that they get punished with a low score if they don't study, on the other hand, when they do their homework, they don't pay too much attention or don't give a lot of weight to the work they have to do, they know that homeworks can be done easily just by looking at their notes without the need of a deep understanding of the subject.

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