A Study Of College English Teachers’ Perception And Application Of Motivational Strategies In Spoken English Class

Motivation is generally acknowledged as one of the most important psychological factors that affect second or foreign language learning achievements. As language learning, especially foreign language learning, is mostly conducted in classroom settings, the role that teachers play in students’motivated learning behavior deserves great attention. Recent years have witnessed much research on motivational strategies that are applicable to different groups of teachers. However, few empirical studies have been undertaken to look into the college spoken English class in Chinese EFL settings. To fill up this gap, this study investigates Chinese College English teachers’perception and application of motivational strategies in oral English class, explores the relationship between teachers’perception and application and analyses the underlying factors influencing their perception and strategy use. The research questions to be addressed in the thesis are:1) How do Chinese College English teachers perceive the use of motivational strategies in oral English classrooms? What strategies are regarded as the most important to energizing the student’s motivation for classroom oral interaction? What are the least important ones?2) How often do Chinese College English teachers actually employ motivational strategies in their spoken English class? What strategies are the most frequently used and what are the least frequently used in their daily teaching?3) What’s the relationship between the teacher’s perception and actual use of motivational strategies?The theoretical framework of this study is mainly based on the most influential theories on learning motivation and motivational strategies in the fields of psychology and SLA, among which are the behavioral views of motivation, the cognitive views of motivation, the humanistic views of motivation, Gardner’s social-educational model of L2motivation, Dornyei’s tripartite motivational system as well as Dornyei&Otto’s process-oriented model of L2motivation.In this study, both quantitative and qualitative research methods are adopted. The quantitative research includes a questionnaire. The questionnaire survey is an updated and expanded version of the questionnaires developed and adopted by Dornyei&Csizer (1998) and Cheng&Dornyei (2007) to rate the importance and frequency of different motivational strategies teachers use in English classrooms in spite of different cultural settings. It is made up of fifty-six motivational microstrategy items which are classified into ten motivational macrostrategies. The questionnaire survey was administered on September,15,2010to College English teachers in Yangzhou University and finally63questionnaires were collected with59found valid. The data was analyzed with SPSS16.0.The qualitative research is a semi-structured interview with five teachers teaching College English on different campuses of Yangzhou University to students pursuing different specialties. They all participated in the previous questionnaire survey. The interview was done individually in the form of free discussion and questions ready to be discussed were listed on a sheet of paper. The interviewees could use either Chinese or English to express their ideas. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed later. The transcriptions of the interviews were synthesized and categorized.Detailed analysis of quantitative and qualitative research yields the final findings as follows:Firstly, teachers generally perceive most of the motivational strategies as important to arousing students’motivation for oral class interaction. Some of the macrostrategies are regarded as the most important ones, which include "setting a good example with proper teacher behavior","increasing the learners’linguistic self-confidence","creating a pleasant and supportive atmosphere in the classroom","making language learning stimulating and enjoyable by increasing the attractiveness of the tasks","promoting effort attributions in students". By contrast, some of the macrostrategies, for example,"increasing the learners’goal-orientedness","personalizing the learning process", and "promoting group cohesiveness and setting group norms", are perceived by the subjects as the least important strategies for stimulating students’motivation in learning oral English.Secondly, in terms of the application of motivational strategies, most of them are frequently used by College English teachers in oral English class. The motivational strategies used at the highest levels of frequency include "setting a good example with proper teacher behavior","promoting effort attributions in students","increasing the learners’linguistic self-confidence","making language learning stimulating and enjoyable by increasing the attractiveness of the tasks", and "promoting learner autonomy". Meanwhile, those used at the lowest levels of frequency in oral English class are "increasing the learners’ goal-orientedness", and "personalizing the learning process".Thirdly, some discrepancy has been found between teachers’perception and their actual use of motivational strategies. Major difference exists in such macrostrategies as "increasing the learners’linguistic self-confidence","creating a pleasant and supportive atmosphere in the classroom","familiarizing the learners with the target language culture","increasing the learners’goal-orientedness","personalizing the learning process" and "promoting group cohesiveness and set group norms", which are all used at a significantly low frequency in their actual classroom teaching compared with the level of importance teachers attach to them.Based on the discussion of the above results and findings, some tentative suggestions are proposed for both teachers and school administrators:First, it would be advisable for teachers to pay adequate attention to the potential motivating effects of some teaching strategies and strive to apply a variety of motivational strategies in their classroom teaching practice.Second, teachers should strengthen communication with students to learn about their needs and goals, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, thus pinpointing some specific motivational strategies to exert effective intervention on students’L2learning process.Third, school authorities are recommended to give full play to teachers’teaching motivation and potentiality by granting them more autonomy and providing them more training and guidance on how to teach in a motivating way so as to further develop students’oral English proficiency.It should be pointed out finally that although the author tries to control variables and ensure a high validity of this study, due to both subjective and objective constraints, there exist in the study some undeniable limitations, such as a small sample size and inadequate data collection and analysis, which the thesis writer hopes to overcome in her future studies.