Teaching Methods and Strategies on Learners’ Motivation in English Language Lectures in Higher Education in Kenya

Abstract

Purpose: This paper sought to determine the teaching methods and strategies increasing learners’ motivation in English language lectures at the university level. The study was based on social cultural theory of learning.
 Methodology: The study adopted quantitative design, descriptive statistics method to understand the problem at hand. The target population consisted of 375 Bachelor of Education Arts students. Simple random sampling was used to sample 100 third year Bachelor of Education (Arts) students in a public university. Questionnaires and document analysis of research articles were used to collect raw data from 100 students. The data was analyzed using SPSS computer package.
 Findings: The teaching methods that highly motivated students were explanation, discussion, interactive lectures and demonstration, teaching methods that moderately motivated learners were task-based method, case study and communicative language teaching and least motivating was audio lingual method. Highly motivating teaching strategies were group discussion and presentation, CATs and drama and moderately motivating teaching strategies were class assignments, debate, term paper assignments, pair work and dialogues.
 Recommendation: Based on the study findings the study recommends that lecturers to strive to determine their learner’s needs and specific learning styles in order to adopt the correct teaching methods and strategies that motivate them to learn English language.