Why Do We Teach Spanish? Enthusiasm in E/LE

Going back to my thoughts on my motivation for teaching, I have to say that enthusiasm drives me. I won't lie if I say that Spanish drives me and that there is a financial reason for it, but it is one thing to simply work and quite another to do it with a smile and the aim of improving and discovering. Motivation must be driven by passion, of course, and not by apathy to do something, so let's turn it into enthusiasm. For me, this feeling is the sum of motivation and passion, because it is true that I can do something that motivates me, for example to earn money, but I do it out of inertia and stop at my limits without wanting to go any further. On the other hand, I am more than fond of many things, but I don't always get around to doing them, perhaps because I consider that other activities require more attention than my passion. Enthusiasm, however, is something else; When we think about the first day of school, we all feel excitement about what is going to happen, we are eager to do it and without knowing why, we like it. The difficult thing is not to feel it, but to maintain it.

Just as activating a student's motivation should not only take place in class (Rebel-Runckel, 1974, p. 65), the same should apply to the teacher. Our work does not stay in the classroom, but goes beyond it; we must prepare courses, attend conferences or do some form of training. Of course, this is expected. However, when we cross the barrier of the school or educational institution, it is important to ask ourselves why we teach. Related to this is a list of feelings that I try, in all modesty, to summarize into two larger ones, namely motivation and passion, which together make up enthusiasm. When we talk about feelings such as motivation, we must keep in mind that they are a process and not a product (Eres Fernández & Vasques Callegari, 2020, p. 199). We cannot always want 100%, because we are human, and we must be aware that there are good and bad moments; sometimes some feelings carry more weight than others. I am writing this article shortly after watching the famous Pixar film Inside Out , in which emotions are personified. This can be an interesting point of view for analysis if we consider that in the work of the ELE teacher, emotions are not isolated but interact.

Motivation

If we look for articles on the importance of motivation in pedagogy in general, the search results will be immense. Here, out of respect for those who have already opened the field of this research, I want to give my opinion on the subject. We start from the etymology to make it clear that this word has to do with movement, but when something moves, it gets somewhere. As teachers, our job is to direct that movement (Rebel-Runckel, 1974, p. 63) and to align that goal with our program and the needs of the students. Of course, along the way there will be bumps, climbs and descents, and as Castro Viúdez says, we must pay attention to those easy and difficult moments (Castro Viúdez, 2015, p. 218). Here we can address the issue of demotivation, which for me is not the same as lack of motivation. The first is a point that is difficult to get out of when, after difficult situations and a lot of frustration, you have reached the point where you no longer want to go on. The car of motivation has stopped and doesn't seem to want to start again. On the other hand, lack of motivation corresponds to the moment when we drive the car on reserve, but we know that there is a gas station nearby where we can fill up.

Another, more extreme case is lack of motivation, when there is no motivation from the beginning and nothing moves.

Going back to the point of view of teachers, we assume that the motivation was there at the beginning. When we start teaching, we do it with an intention, something leads us to do it, be it economic reasons or passion. Some people start this adventure with the certainty of "I am a native speaker", others with the fear of "not being able to do it". In any case, we have that initial impulse; the question is how to maintain it. One thing about ELE that people outside our field may ignore is the need for creativity in Spanish classes. Just as students are motivated by the variety of exercises, we should also get that feeling. Sit down and listen to an audio or text and try to use it to see to what extent we can work on the language. Not only that, but also everyday situations that we can bring into the classroom to work on communication. Creativity is a talent, but it is something that can be worked on. The best thing about the creative process and something that motivates us to produce more is to obtain a product, in our case a classroom activity that works, develops and bears fruit. Success requires motivation. But just as in the mind of the girl in Inside Out, joy always wanted to prevail, which is impossible, so it is with success. One factor that motivates us when designing the activities is that we imagine the work with the class in our minds and picture the students carrying out all the steps we have designed with a smile on their faces. Still, failure is present. The possibility that something is clear to us and then turns out not to be so exists, but just like in the film, sadness is necessary and we must know how to deal with failure. As they say, you learn from your mistakes and the fact that you have taken the time to prepare something with love and motivation shows that it was not in vain.

The feeling of control also increases motivation (Castro Viúdez, 2015, p. 214). Here I return to the first contact mentioned above, where a native speaker is confident in his language skills. However, this is a trap. Control should not be confused with the belief in control. While it is true that there are activities that we have done a million times and know by heart, it never hurts to check our notes. Knowing that everything is where it should be is this control that motivates us, and in addition, we can always update the evolution or observe things that do not always work or cause problems. We re-enter the cycle of motivating creativity that moves us when we successfully carry out our plan. This leads to another feeling of curiosity: how can I improve this activity? When we repeat an activity after a year, neither the activity is the same nor are we the same. The topics change over time, some are outdated, others have changed. In the case of the teacher, time is experience and over time we have learned new things that we can apply. In today's world, it is inevitable to think about new technologies. The curiosity to discover them makes us realize that they are there to help us, not to do our work for us. We should rather say that they do not do our work for us, because they do a lot of annoying things for us. Nowadays it is no longer necessary to look for the perfect photo, you just have to know how to describe it well. In classic terms, we will also have acquired more theoretical knowledge, because you never stop learning. We can see language from a different perspective and discover things that we were not aware of before. The immensity of the linguistic phenomenon makes it difficult to know everything about language without first stopping and thinking. Being curious and acquiring new media and knowledge strengthens this feeling of control.

Sometimes there is also a feeling of frustration in the mind of an E/LE teacher. If we think back to the car we talked about, who has not experienced driving and all the traffic lights are red? The feeling that we will never get there, that every time we seem to be moving forward we stop again. In this situation it is not about taking a shortcut, because that does not always work, but a detour. This means that we will get to our destination, perhaps sooner or later, but by a different route that we know and that we know will take us to the right place.

If we apply this metaphor to the E/LE field, we see that there are many ways to teach the language, and I do not mean in any way to imply that someone is not capable of doing something, but on the contrary, that they can do it in their own way by being curious and looking for alternatives that allow us to achieve our goal. Therefore, curiosity to try new possibilities keeps motivation. For example, after taking some Spanish courses, I went into the content creation field and left the classroom for a while. Then when I came back, I realized that the two were mutually beneficial and I was no longer the same teacher as before. Castro Viúdez says that it is necessary to have a clear idea of ​​the self we want to be and to be aware of the difficulty of the task and the ups and downs in this process (Castro Viúdez, 2015, p. 218). Just as it is important to know why we learn, it is necessary to know why we teach. It is worth repeating the famous phrase that it is important to know what we teach in order to have control along the way.

Passion

As Jane Arnold Morgan says, emotions are not an extra component in the classroom that we can add or not (Arnold Morgan, 2024, p. 14); they must be present not only in students but also in teachers. The classroom is a safe place to express oneself without fear of judgement. We should not be afraid of criticism, we must see opportunities for improvement. The problem with emotions is that sometimes they can be misinterpreted, both by one side and the other. Students sense whether the teacher likes what he or she is doing and sometimes that feeling is contagious - in a good way. I asked us earlier why we teach Spanish and one of the first answers that comes to mind is "Because I enjoy it". This is something that needs to be analyzed in depth and we need to find out why we like it. In my case, I find language an interesting phenomenon, with all its constructive possibilities. I also like seeing how I can help people speak and communicate to discover the world from a different cultural perspective. In the same way, teaching ELE allows me to put technological resources into practice, an area in which I feel comfortable.

Once we have defined more precisely what "I like", we can talk about passion. In the dictionary of the Royal Academy we find definitions that are not very close to what I understand by passion . In my opinion, we can talk about this emotion if we know the reason for its existence beyond "I like/I don't like", since we know the essence of this taste. Fatiha Benlabbah notes that passion is communicative and without it routine sets in (Benlabbah, 2009, pp. 100-101). It is necessary to mention again that there are two sides that are not in opposition in this case, namely the teacher and the students, and that the latter notice whether this passion is present or not and that it comes to them in the form of a learning stimulus.

But not all passion is good, because there is a difference between passion and obsession. First, it is important that teachers know how to separate their professional and private lives, so that they do not talk about language all day long; this does not mean that there is no room for discussion on the subject. Second, passion is visible and contagious in the classroom, but it is not obvious. With this I want to repeat the phrase that many authors use to point out that teaching should be communicative and that we teach language and not something about language. We must be aware that our passion does not have to be shared and that tastes are infinite. To further deepen this idea, one can consider a relationship between the concepts "within people" and "between people" (Arnold Morgan, 2024, p. 14). The former means that we look inside ourselves and analyze our passion to know what we really like and to be aware of whether we are too obsessed with something. The second concept is more important in this context because it refers to the way we relate to each other and the impact our performance has on the class. To conclude this section on passion, I would like to point out that even if we really like something, we don't always find the time or the energy to do it. When Arnold talks about motivation, she defines it as "the desire to do something" (Arnold Morgan, 2024, p. 17). However, this is more in line with the spectrum of passion, because motivation is what gets us moving, not a longing for the future. For this reason, we sometimes come across activities that we are passionate about, but that are not so passionate that they move us to do them. An example from everyday life could be cooking. Although I am not a cook at all, I like cooking so much that I enjoy looking for recipes and seeing that everything turns out well. However, due to lack of time, I sometimes resort to ready-made meals. Taking a broader view, there are factors that prevent us from pursuing our passion, such as the frustration of not being able to do something we enjoy or the need to fulfill other obligations.

Enthusiasm

If we go back to the Royal Academy, in the definitions of enthusiasm we find words such as admire, move and captivate. When I think of this feeling, I see a link between motivation and passion, where they complement each other and create an ideal capacity to carry out an action. We started by talking about motivation as an incentive that triggers a movement but which, if not nourished or attended to, runs the risk of being difficult to maintain. Likewise, we can be motivated by something but that does not mean that we are attracted to it. An example that concerns us directly is learning foreign languages, since many learners do it as part of a compulsory educational program or to satisfy a communicative need when living in a foreign country. Here we are dealing with extrinsic and instrumental motivation, since it does not come from the individual himself, like intrinsic motivation. These conditions mean that the process is costly and even if we achieve the goal, it can mean a future of apathy towards the subject, which violates the principle of keeping motivation levels high, always taking into account the motivational ups and downs associated with that feeling.

Now let's turn to the teaching perspective in relation to what we have just discussed. It is difficult to keep motivation at the highest level, but if a teacher's motivation is purely instrumental or extrinsic, it will create a cycle in which interest in the subject becomes less and less. The teaching profession is, in most cases, a choice, although there are always cases in which it is a necessity. It is important not to lose sight of the conditions that led us to make that choice or to keep them in safe custody. That is why we must analyze that "I like it" that we talked about earlier and go deeper to find out what makes that feeling.

Following on from this, we now turn to the second component of enthusiasm, passion. By identifying in detail what excites us about teaching, we can weave the web of passion. With introspection, we are able to name the feelings we teach for, rather than remaining with a more superficial expression of attraction or repulsion. This is reinforced when we think about the idea that the teacher must be passionate about what he or she does in order for his or her students to be infected by it. This feeling cannot be blind, because then they do not see why the subject in question appeals to us. We must be able to disassemble the small pieces that make up this puzzle of attraction in order to make them understandable and communicable.

Once we understand these two components, we can talk about the sum they generate, enthusiasm, and that they complement each other. As we have mentioned several times, motivation has good and bad moments, and in the latter, passion must support this lack to remind us what started the engine in the first place. Likewise, we can support the feelings of success we have when we are at a peak to increase our passion and increase satisfaction.

If we understand enthusiasm as a combination of passion and motivation, we can try to filter out the negative feelings that can sometimes appear as the flip side of these components that make up the whole. If we look at the whole from a less mathematical perspective, we could think of motivation and passion as the first filters. When something makes us unmotivated or frustrated, we can try to examine this phenomenon in the field of motivation: what happened? What did it do to my motivation? How can I deal with it? What can I learn from it? After asking ourselves these questions, it is possible to maintain motivation or, better yet, work on it and develop it so that our enthusiasm is not compromised by negative feelings. Here too, it is necessary to talk about Inside out to remember that these emotions are not repressed, but absorbed to help us grow.

In the same way, passion can have this filtering function. The most important thing is that we insist on this analysis of what we like so as not to remain at a superficial level. When we understand in depth what constitutes our passion, we see clearly what does not belong to it. In this case, there are aspects that we do not like, but we must be aware that they are there for a reason and accept them. There are teachers who prefer to work on lexis rather than pronunciation, but we cannot leave any of them aside. The filter reinforces what we like and reminds us why we do what we do. We can say that the good outweighs the bad. In the same way, enthusiasm is reinforced by the weight of the elements that attract us in that area. When communicating passion, it is important that we do not express our dislike for certain aspects, but rather treat them neutrally, since they may well arouse passion in someone else. We should also not focus on what we are only passionate about, as that would lead us into the realm of obsession. As they say, there are different colors for different tastes.

In order to carry out the detailed analysis that I mentioned throughout the article, I have created the following drawing where each person can write down the feelings they associate with each component. It is important that both the good and bad emotions are written down so that filters can be put in place to learn and integrate negative emotions and filter out motivation and passion. By classifying them, we can understand where they come from. Any classification is valid.

Conclusions

We see that emotions should not be considered in isolation, but as something complementary; in fact, we can group them together. As we have seen, motivation is a very studied and fundamental topic in the classroom, both for teachers and students. It is the engine that drives us and it does not always work in the same way. That is why we must analyze the passion that a subject arouses in us and break that emotion down into small parts to which we give a name. These elements together can help us channel enthusiasm, as a filtered whole that improves teaching and learning by knowing how to convey our point of view through our actions. Breaking things down into smaller concepts allows us to see more closely where things come from and learn from the negative. We cannot suppress the bad because it will always be there, we must face it. Everything has an origin and if we look at it more closely we will know where it comes from and we can act on it. In this way, we manage to filter out the bad experiences and develop a purer enthusiasm, where mistakes are a strength and discoveries are an adventure. If we want this to be perceived by the students, we are the first to put it into practice and, for this, we must not lose sight of the answer we gave at the beginning, about the energy that moves us to teach Spanish, to name and search for names within ourselves and around us.

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