A STUDY ON TEACHERS' EFFORTS IN MOTIVATING STUDENTS TO LEARN ENGLISH AT GRADE VIII OF SMPN 1 TEMBILAHAN HULU

The problem of this research was that students' motivation in learning English is good, so it is needed to know what teacher's effort in motivating them. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to know what teachers’ efforts in motivating students to learn English at grade VIII of SMPN 1 Tembilahan Hulu are. Therefore, this research was descriptive quantitative research. The researcher distributed the questionnaire to twenty students of the eighth grade of excellent class and interviewed the English teacher as a sample to know what teachers' efforts in motivating Students to learn English. The sample was taken using total sampling because there are only twenty students and one teacher for an excellent class. After collecting the data, the researcher found that teacher has reasonable effort in motivating students to learn English. The efforts are teacher uses various activities in teaching, prepares some engaging media, gives students assignment based on what they have learned, relates topics in teaching to students' daily activities, asks the students to think about their experience, gives reword to students, says positive words, gives students a chance to present their course work , and gives memorable score when students finish group work soon. Therefore, students can be motivated to learn when their teacher keeps supporting them by making some efforts in teaching.


INTRODUCTION
Teachers play an essential role in the teaching and learning process. They can guide students to be good learners when they choose appropriate strategies in teaching, exciting media, and variant examples in explaining materials and so forth. Moreover, what teachers do in the classroom will affect students' motivation. Some researchers also claim that some classroom activities in classroom can influence students' motivation in learning. As one example, Wahyudi (2017) found that students' motivation was having significantly improved when the teacher used various strategies in teaching. Therefore, the effort of teachers in the making their teaching enjoyable influences students' mood in learning. In other words, it will also influence students' motivation to learn English.
As explained by Palmer in Williams and Williams (2007: 2), students' motivation is a crucial element that influences educational quality. Motivated students are paying attention to the lesson, they begin working on tasks immediately, they ask questions and volunteer answers, and they appear to be happy and eager.
Seeing the fact in the field, at SMPN 1 Tembilahan Hulu, mainly grade VIII at A-class, most of their students are enthusiastic about learning English; they are not afraid to speak even some their English is still at beginner level. They also seem happy in English class. This condition makes the researcher interested in knowing the teacher's effort to motivate them to learn English. Does she use some activates explained in this research or some other theories? Therefore, the researchers had researched using this title: A study on Teacher's Effort in motivating Students to learn English at grade VIII of SMPN 1 Tembilahan Hulu."

The Nature of Teacher's Effort in motivating Students to learn
In some theories, they indicate the importance of teachers as one of the crucial figures that can motivate students in learning. Teachers hold the key to leading their students, make them good students or not, or motivated students. Hornstra et al. (2012: 363) supported that "teachers are key factors who shape the learning environment and whose main tasks include motivating students to learn." It is in line with what Hidayati (2016: 20) says that the teacher is a significant factor in the continuance of student's motivation.
Therefore, teachers might have some exciting ways to motivate students to learn. In other words, teachers need hard effort to motivate their students in learning because Wehmeier (2000: 423) states that effort is "an attempt to do something especially when it is difficult to do." Because of that, everything that teachers make as their effort influence students' motivation. Vibulphol (2016: 65) says that teachers' behaviors and instructional practices play an essential role in enhancing learners' motivation. Mart (2011: 2) also believes that teachers should judge their success by the success of their students and that the purpose for teachers was to serve students. It means that when teachers cannot motivate students to learn and they are not successful in learning, it can be said that teachers are also not successful in teaching.
It is not doubted that motivating students is one of the challenging jobs of teachers because it is vital to create students' interest and motivation that are essential to the effectiveness of learning English (Fadhlillah, 2013: 2). As also supported by Long et al. (2013: 237), they say, motivation is indeed such a fundamental factor in language learning that no teacher could avoid being concerned with students' motivation.
Therefore, teachers and students also pay more attention to motivation, driving students to learn English actively. Thus motivation is an adjustment of individuals' attitudes to be more advantageous. If one desires to be motivated, then he/she must be active to enroll. Learning is demanding to create development. Therefore, it is an adjustment process in an activity that will be done (Nurina, S., Amri, S., & Ardian, E., 2020:132).
In addition, Sukmadinata (2003) as quoted by Amri, S., & Syafrizal. (2021:2) adds that internal and external situations influence motivation. The internal factor is described as the project enthusiasm that an individual gains from all motivating and exciting with enthusiasm and eagerness. It involves character, enthusiasm, and ability.
Then, the external factor comprises things outside the learner, such as surrounding, clan, school, social, and others. It concerns external advantages or rewards.
Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that teachers' effort in facilitating students to be motivated in learning is fundamental. Therefore, being a teacher teaches and delivers some materials; every meeting depends on the syllabus but thinking and preparing how to make students motivated in learning are needed.

Some suggestions that teachers can do to motivate students in the classroom
Some theories relate to teachers' activities to motivate students in the teaching and learning process. First is taken from Jeremy Harmer in Mart (2011: 5) that there are some thoughts on sustaining motivation in the classroom. According to him, it is a mixture of 5 A's: 1. Activity -Students need to have many activities. Moving around, role-plays, handson experiences.
2. Agency -Students are more motivated when they are the doers when they are agents, giving them some power to decide things when you can.
3. Affect -How they feel. They need to know you care about them, you need to know their names. 4. Adaptation -Teachers' ability to respond to the unexpected. You have to be flexible when things break down.
5. Attitude -The teacher's attitude. What are you like when you come into the classroom? It can't be you; it has to be the professional teacher in you.
Secondly, Mart (2011: 2-3) suggests that teachers consider planning the course and creating lessons that are important in student motivation. 3. Give students options in the classroom. Empower students by giving them a sense of autonomy and helping them develop skills for self-directed learning 4. Create assignments that are appropriately challenging. It is important to consider your students interests, background knowledge, and abilities when designing coursework.

Make your lessons relevant.
Research suggests that students display tremendous enthusiasm and interest for a course to relate the content and course activities to their daily lives. Relate learning goals to the student's experience. Saefurrohman (2004:24-25) concludes from some theories the ways to motivate students in learning, they are: 1. They are giving a score. It, in this case, is a symbol of the value of learning activities. Many students study hard to get a good score. A good score for students is a strong motivation.
2. Competition. Competition can be used as an instrument to motivate the students are studying hard. Competition both of individual or group can increase students' achievement in learning English.
3. They are giving a test. Students will study hard; if they know, tomorrow there will be a test. So giving a test includes good motivation. Nevertheless, the teacher must remember not to give a test (every day) often because they will be bored. In this case, the teacher must be opened. If a teacher wants to give a test, they should give a piece of information to the students first. 4. Reward. It can be divided into two; those are a. Giving praise. When a student succeeds and finishes his/her work nicely, it is necessary to praise. Giving praise is a form of positive reword. 5. Punishment. Punishment is a negative reinforcement; it can be an instrument to motivate the students if the teacher gives it in a good situation.

RESEARCH METHOD
Descriptive quantitative research is used as the design of this research. The samples of the study were 20 students and one teacher in the eighth grade of excellent class. In collecting data, the researcher used a questionnaire distributed to the students and an interview that was addressed to the teacher. The questionnaire was using a Likert scale, and the interview was using open-ended questions. The data were analyzed by using quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques.

Finding
From the result of the questionnaire and interview, it was found that teachers had many efforts to motivate students in learning English. From 12 statements in the questionnaire there were 8 statements that can prove the teacher had much effort, they are using various activities in teaching, preparing some interesting media, giving, eight statements can help what they have learned, relate in efforts in teaching to students' daily activities, asking the student engaging about their experience, giving reword to students, saying positive words, giving students chance to present their course work, giving remarkable score when students finish group work soon.
The interview result also supports the result above; it is found that teachers agree that she had many efforts to make students want to learn English. She used many activities in teaching such as discussion, watching movies, telling stories and so on.
Nevertheless, she also never forgot to reward students when her students are doing good assignments such as giving books, pens, candies, and snacks. Besides, in this pandemic era, she had applied zoom to ease students in learning English at home.
Further, from six indicators (various activities, agency, challenging assignment, relevant lesson, giving reward and competition), only one indicator that the teacher as the activity does not do to motivate the students in learning English, that is an agency where the teacher did not give a chance to students to choose their ways to learn. However, this result is different from what teachers explain. She said that she gave a chance to students to choose how to learn by asking them to choose what method they like. In contrast, students indicated that they disagree that they were given a chance for that. So, the researcher assumes that students and teachers had misunderstood the statement to have a different idea from each other.
Other than that, seeing the finding of this research, it can be explained that the students at grade VIII. A (Excellent class) of SMPN 1 Tembilahan has good motivation to learn English because their teacher has a good effort to motivate them.

Discussion
Based on the finding above, it can be explained that students' motivation has relation to teachers' effort in teaching them in the classroom. In other words, the teacher needs to prepare some exciting activities, good material, challenging assignments, and rewards in the classroom to make students pay attention to the material and be motivated in learning. This research finding is also in line with the previous researches from Tampubolon (2018) and Fadhlillah (2013) that students had good motivation when they were taught by using exciting techniques. Besides, research from Wahyudi (2017) also found that many students have a good response for the English teacher because she teaches using many strategies such as giving praise, subtle ridicule, giving suggestion, playing motivation videos and idol story are extrinsic motivation (based on the source of motivation) and instrumental motivation (based on the purpose). It means, what teachers do in the classroom will affect their students' motivation. So, a teacher needs many efforts in teaching English to students in the classroom.

This research aims to investigate teachers' effort in motivating Students to learn
English at grade VIII of SMPN 1 Tembilahan Hulu. Based on the researcher's preliminary research, it was seen that students' motivation in learning English was good; therefore, she wanted to investigate what the teacher's effort is in motivating them. So that, to achieve this goal, the researcher used questionnaires and interviews as research instruments. As a result, both instruments were answered by students and English teachers in this school, mainly grade VIII. A class(excellent class).
After conducting research and getting the data about it, the researcher concludes that teacher has reasonable effort to motivate students in learning English.
Both the teacher and students confirmed that the teacher cares about students while teaching and learning process. It can be proven that the teacher uses various activities in teaching, prepares some engaging media, gives students assignment based on what they have learned, relates topics in teaching to students' daily activities, asks the students to think about their experience, gives reword to students, says positive words, gives students chance to present their course work, and gives memorable score when students finish group work soon. Those results above are the effort of the teacher to make the students be motivated in learning English.