The Effects of Rewards and Punishments towards Students’ Motivation in Learning English

Teachers must use some strategies to encourage students actively involved and willingly participate in the teaching and learning process. One of the effective ways to increase students' motivation in the classroom is giving rewards and punishme nts. This study aims to find out the kinds of rewards and punishments used by the teacher to motivate students and describe the effectiveness of rewards and punishments towards students’ motivation to learn English at 11th-grade students of SMAN 1 Indrapuri. The participants of this research were three English teachers and 55 of 11th-grade students. This mixed-method involved semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. The interview result showed some rewards used by the teachers in the classroom; verbal rewards, symbolic rewards, token rewards, and tangible and activity rewards. And there were some punishments used by the teacher; words and sentences, and inconvenient punishments. Moreover, the result of the questionnaire showed that most of the students gave positive responses towards giving rewards and punishments by the teachers. In addition, most of the students also agreed that they became more active, more responsible, and also motivated them to learn English when the teachers used rewards and punishments strategies in the classroom.