Motivational strategies in EFL classrooms: how do teachers impact students' motivation?

Abstract

The objective is to examine the changes in the effectiveness of motivational strategy use by teachers during one semester in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms. More specifically, we investigate differences in effectiveness changes for each motivational strategy used according to students' English proficiency levels and their original motivational intensity levels in order to understand the process by which instructors influence students' motivation. The participants were an instructor and 222 university students. Two distinct clusters were found within the student sample based on cluster analysis: Cluster A) students with higher English proficiency and higher motivational intensity; and Cluster B) students with lower English proficiency and lower motivational intensity. The results showed that (a) the two clusters did not exhibit a similar trend in terms of the relationship between frequency of motivational strategy use by teachers and students' motivation except with respect to two motivational strategies; (b) seven strategies showed positive correlations at least once in the semester in either Cluster A or Cluster B; (c) five strategies showed no significant correlations throughout the semester; and (d) there were three strategies that did not show a positive correlation; however, these strategies were associated with a negative correlation throughout the semester in either Cluster A or Cluster B.

Keywords:

• motivational strategies
• proficiency
• motivational intensity
• classroom research

Notes on contributors

Maya Sugita PhD is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology, University of Alberta. Her research interests go to motivation in second and foreign language learning and L2 motivational instruction.

Osamu Takeuchi PhD is a professor at the Graduate School of Foreign Language Education and Research and the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan. His present research interests are language learning strategies, L2 motivation, and testing and materials development.

Notes

1. The underlying assumptions for t-tests (e.g. data normality, even distribution and equality of variances) were confirmed before running the analysis. See Hatch and Lazaraton (1991) for the assumptions.

2. In L2 motivation studies, the usual strength of the meaningful relationships detected is between 0.30 and 0.50 (Dörnyei 2001b, 224). Concerning the strength of correlations, see also Dörnyei (2007) for more information.

3. In the recent L2 motivation research, ‘self’ is described as ‘ideal self’ or ‘ought self’ (Csizér and Dörnyei 2005). The former represents all the attributes that a person would like to possess and the latter represents the attributes that one believes one ought to possess. A shift in focus from an external reference group to the internal domain of self represents a significant development in current L2 motivation theory (e.g. Dörnyei and Csizér 2002; Ushioda and Dörnyei 2012).