Teacher Strategies to Enhance Motivation in the English Language Learners’ Behavior When Using Task Based Teaching

Abstract

Current research evidence suggests that the teacher’s use of motivational strategies in the EFL classroom has been a key factor in teaching foreign languages successfully. (Clement, Dornyei and Noels, 1994; Dornyei, 1998; Guilloteaux and Dornyei, 2008) This dynamic, experimental study investigated one professor’s action research into 6 Practical English classes comprised of 120 students at a foreign language university in Seoul, Korea. In particular, the pre-task or preactional phase in ‘choice motivation’ investigated the teacher’s motivational influences on the learners’ goal setting, intention formation and the initiation of intention enactment (Dornyei and Otto, 1998). With this process model of L2 motivation, a more complete understanding of learner motivation is now emerging that links a temporal dimension, or time frame, with an initiation and activation of schemata, scaffolding through modeling signposts and the building of the learners’ background knowledge. The results indicated that the foreign language teachers motivational practices in the initial stages of task-based learning, greatly increased the levels of learners motivated behavior throughout the rest of the task cycle and a subsequent increased probability of second language acquisition.