A Survey Study On Junior One High School Students’ Preference For English Teachers’ Motivational Strategies

Motivation is recognized as one of the most important psychological factors that affect second language learning.Since most foreign language learning takes place in classroom teaching,teachers play a vital role in motivating students.In recent years,there have been a lot of studies on motivational strategies suitable for different teacher groups,but there are few empirical studies on students’preference for English teachers’motivational strategies.In view of this,this paper investigates the general patterns of Junior One High School students’ preference for English teachers’ motivational strategies,compares the similarities and differences between high-achieved and low-achieved students’preference for English teachers’motivational strategies,and analyzes the relationship between students’ English learning achievement and their motivational strategy preference.The research questions are as follows:1)What are the general patterns of Junior One High School students’preference for English teachers’motivational strategies?2)Are there any differences in the preference for English teachers’motivational strategies between low achievers and high achievers?If yes,what are the differences?3)Is there any relationship between Junior One High School students’preference for English teachers’ motivational strategies and their English learning achievement?If yes,what are the differences?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in this study.The quantitative research includes a questionnaire,which is based on the questionnaires designed by Cheng and Dornyei(2007)and Cai(2011).The questionnaire is composed of 8 macro-motivation strategies,including 26 micro-motivation strategies.The subjects of the questionnaires are the Grade Seven students of Shuguang Bilingual Middle School in Huaian.A total of 112 questionnaires are collected in October 2018,of which 96 are valid.Then,the author uses the SPSS 1 8.0 to analyze the data of the questionnaires.The qualitative study adopts the form of a semi-structured interview.Six students are interviewed,all of whom participate in previous questionnaires survey.What’ more,the interviewees can express their ideas in Chinese.The interviews are tape-recorded and transcribed later.The transcriptions of the interviews are synthesized and categorizedThrough quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data,this study draws the following conclusions:First of all,descriptive analysis indicates that the students favor all the motivational strategies,for the mean values of the eight broad categories are all above 3.40.Besides,of the eight broad motivational strategies categories,Teacher behavior comes the first,followed by Effort,Climate,Self-confidence,Goal,Interest and Autonomy.Autonomy tends to be the least favored motivational strategy.In addition,within the Teacher behavior category,item(1)"My English teacher prepares lessons well" is perceived to be the most favored.In the category of Effort,item(24)"My English teacher always makes the grades reflect students’ hard work and diligence" is the most preferred motivational strategies by the students.Though the category Autonomy is the final motivational macrostrategy on the preference list,the students also favor item(15)"My English teacher encourages us to be adventurous and not afraid to make mistakes".Secondly,there do exist some differences between high achievers and low achievers in their preference for English teachers’ motivational strategies.Generally speaking,high achievers favor all the eight categories more than low achievers and the differences of preference for English teachers’motivational strategies between high achievers and low achievers in categories of Self-confidence,Autonomy and Culture are significant(P=.000).In addition,low-achievers are more eager to get attention,respect and help from their English teacher,and they value the relationship between teachers and students.High-achievers have high requirements on English teachers’ teaching ability.They also expect that they could have more English learning experiences and prefer to accomplishing challenging tasksThirdly,there exists a certain relationship between student’s preference for English teachers’motivational strategies and students’ English learning achievement.The statistics shows that Teacher behavior,Self-confidence,Effort,Autonomy and Goal are positively correlated with students’ English learning achievement at the.01 level.Interest and Climate are positively correlated with students’ English learning achievement at the.05 level,while there is no significant correlation between Culture and their English learning achievement.Besides,when it comes to each micro-strategy,item(16)"My English teacher encourages us to attribute our failure to lack of effort,not lack of competence" in the category of Effort are highly correlated with students’ learning achievement at the.01 level(r=.295**).The conclusions above suggest that English teachers should be aware of the potential effects of students’ preferred motivational strategies and try to use a variety of teaching strategies to stimulate students’ learning motivation.At the same time,English teachers should communicate more with students,understand students’ needs,preference,advantages and disadvantages.Therefore,English teachers can actively and effectively intervene in students’ foreign language learning process so as to promote the development of students.