An Investigation Of The Use Of Motivational Strategies Among English Teachers In Junior High Schools

Motivation as one of the key factors determines the students' achievement of English learning.In L2 learning,“demotivation” is a very common phenomenon,so motivational strategies to stimulate and maintain students' English learning motivation become a hot research topic in the field of foreign language teaching in recent years.This study aims to investigate junior high school English teachers' awareness and use of motivational strategies in classroom,and put forward the following three issues:(1)What is the present situation of junior high school English teachers' awareness of motivational strategies?(2)What are the features in junior high school English teacher's use of motivational strategies in teaching?(3)Are teachers teaching different grades showing difference in their motivational strategy awareness and use? I f any,what are the differences?Through investigating 60 junior middle school English teachers from 6 middle schools in Kunming city,via questionnaire and semi-structured interview,research data were collected and analyzed by SPSS11.5.The results showed that Junior high school English teachers have good awareness of motivational strategies,36 out of 40 motivation strategies were regarded important or very important which in the categories of having good teacher behavior,developing good teacher-student relation,promoting students' self-confidence,delivering well-designed task,emphasizing hard-work,encouraging learning autonomy.As for the use frequency of the strategies,32 out of 40 motivation strategies were often used by the teachers.Motivational strategies most frequently used by the teachers were in the categories of developing good teacher-student relation,having good teacher behavior,emphasizing hard-work;promoting students' self-confidence,delivering well-designed task as well as encouraging learning autonomy,and strategies in categories of helping students set goals,advocating group activities and assuring equality were least frequently used.There were some differences between the teachers' awareness of the strategies and the use of them;strategies that the teachers' regarded important were not exactly that ones they always used in classroom.In addition,for teachers in different grades,the differences between their awareness and use of motivational strategies were not obvious.Based on the research results above,some suggestions for the junior high school English teachers in the use of motivational strategies were put forward,hoping this study will have implications on teaching reform and teachers' development.