A Study Of The Effects Of High School English Teachers On Students' Learning Motivation

Motivation plays a more and more vital role in classroom teaching as foreign language education develops. But, there are still some students who do not have motivation and are not that interested in learning during English classroom teaching. Therefore, the success of English teaching rests with whether the teacher can stimulate or arouse students'motivation.To start with, this paper reviews the existing literature of motivation theories in general and motivation models in language teaching. Literature review provides theoretical framework to explore the potential influence of teachers on students'motivation to learn. It also reveals the knowledge gaps within the existing research. By analyzing relevant motivation theories, this paper stresses the effects of teacher's role and behaviors in classroom teaching. Particularly, it focuses on teacher's personal factors such as expertise, teaching attitude, enthusiasm and teaching skills like class management. In addition, various motivation strategies are derived from the theoretical examinations of teachers'role in motivating students. However, it is not this paper's aim to prove that teacher-related factors and teachers'use of motivations strategies correlates strongly with students'motivation. Instead, it assumes this correlation exists and focuses on how use of motivation strategies mediates the relationship between teacher-related factors and students'motivation. A survey is thus conducted to explore the relationship of teachers'factors and their use of motivation strategies. The result shows a positive correlation between the two as well as a low frequency of using motivation strategies. To summarize, this paper proposes some strategies of motivating students, and form some tentative suggestions aiming at an effective teaching and learning.