An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Teacher Expectations On Students' Achievement Motivation In L2 Learning

Achievement motivation is generally considered to be one of the primary causes of success and failure in second language learning. There have been numerous studies on this factor, which mainly concentrate on the description of its definitions and analyses of its theoretical bases. However, only a few empirical studies have been conducted on how to enhance students' achievement motivation in classroom settings, and the empirical studies done from the perspective of teacher expectation effects are even fewer owing to various reasons.Based on teacher expectation effects and achievement motivation theory, this study aims to examine the role of teacher expectations in affecting students' achievement motivation in L2 learning and explore how to enhance students' achievement motivation through the improvement of teachers' verbal and nonverbal behaviors. The study has been conducted mainly to address the following questions: 1. How teachers convey their expectations to students through verbal and nonverbal behaviors? 2. What is the relationship between teacher expectations and students' achievement motivation? 3. Whether the improvement of the teacher's verbal and nonverbal behaviors helps to enhance students' achievement motivation? This study has involved 104 second-year middle school students from two classes which were divided into two groups, with one class (53 students) as the experimental group, while the other (51 students) as the control group. The English teacher of the experimental group received teacher training based on TESA (Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement) training program. The study lasted three months with data collected regarding the students' perception of supporting behaviors from their homeroom English teacher and their achievement motivation on the subject of English by means of questionnaires and classroom observations. Both questionnaires were administered to the two groups before and after the teacher training.The results of the study reveal that the English teacher who received teacher training got a significant improvement on both verbal and nonverbal behaviors. Accordingly, the students in the experimental group received more supporting from their English teacher and has stronger achievement motivation than the control group did. Data analyses further suggest that there exists a significant correlation between teacher expectations and students' achievement motivation, i.e., the students who perceived more positive teacher expectations tend to have stronger achievement motivation, while those who perceived less positive or more negative teacher expectations tend to have weaker achievement motivation. The findings from the study indicate that teacher expectations offer an effective way for enhancing students' achievement motivation in L2 learning. Thus, they have wider implications for English teachers on how to make use of positive teacher expectations to enhance students' achievement motivation and facilitate students' learning.