Motivational Strategies: Students and Teachers Perspectives. A thesis submitted. to Kent State University in partial

Transcription

1 Motivational Strategies: Students and Teachers Perspectives A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Ya-Nan He December, 2009

2 Thesis written by Ya-Nan He B.A., Christ s College, 2006 M.A., Kent State University, 2009 Approved by Kristen Precht, Advisor Ron Corthell, Chair, Department of English Timothy S. Moerland, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii

3 Table of Contents List of Tables. iv Acknowledgements...vi 1. Introduction Literature Review Motivation 2.2 Motivational strategy 3. Method Participants 3.2 Instruments 3.3 Procedure Data analysis 4. Results Students 4.2 Teachers 4.3 The comparisons of the motivational strategy ranking between students and teachers 5. Discussion Nationality difference students 5.2 The comparisons: students and teachers perspectives The importance The frequency 5.3 Sex difference students and teachers 6. Conclusion and Limitation Note References Appendices...71 iii

4 List of Tables Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4-1 First Language backgrounds..13 The level of learning language...13 The symbols for each category (macrostrategy)..15 The p-value and means of significant differences of the importance in sex and nationality dimensions...21 Table 4-2 The p-value and means of significant differences of the frequency in years of teaching and teaching experience dimensions.22 Table 5 The importance and the frequency of motivational categories by nationality as shown through means for significant differences..23 Table 6-1 The p-value and means of significant differences of the importance in sex, years of teaching and teaching experience dimensions..24 Table 6-2 The p-value and means of significant differences of the frequency in years of teaching and teaching experience dimensions. 25 Table 7 The means and z-scores (ranking) of each scale from students and teachers perspectives of the importance of the motivational strategies...26 Table 8 The means and z-scores (ranking) of each scale from students and teachers perspectives of the frequency of the motivational strategies...27 Table 9 The correlations between the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies for students and teachers...28 iv

5 Table 10 The comparison of the top five ranking of the importance of the categories between students and teachers 32 Table 11 The comparison of the top five ranking of the frequency of the categories between students and teachers...38 v

6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank first the staff, teachers and students in the ESL and the MCLS departments at Kent State University who took part in or assisted with the surveys. I would also like to thank my advisor, Dr. Kristen Precht, for her considerable contribution to this project. Especially, I want to thank Jason Csehi for his thoughtful insight and assistance with editing and revision, and Yung-Yi (Karen) Hung for her additional help with the statistics. Finally, I am very grateful to my lovely family and friends for their invaluable support and encouragement. vi

7 1. Introduction Motivation is demonstrated to be one of the main determinants of second language learning achievement in numerous studies (Crookes and Schmidt, 1991; Gardner & Smythe, 1975; Oxford & Shearin, 1994). Indeed, one of the most prominent researchers in the area of L2 acquisition, Robert Gardner (1985), recognized that motivation has a pervasive influence on learning a foreign language. Andrew D. Cohen and Zoltán Dörnyei (2002) contended: "Motivation is often seen as the key learner variable because without it, nothing much happens" (p. 172). In sum, learning usually does not take place without motivation. In line with this thought, strategies in motivating learners should be explored as one of the essential variables for triggering learners motivation. Evidence suggests that teaching strategy influences important deficits from which children with an extrinsic motivation toward schoolwork suffer (Boggiano & Katz, 1991); extrinsic motivation is performed to gain some extrinsic reward or rewards, such as getting a bonus or avoiding punishment. Poonam C. Dev (1997) reported that teachers should concentrate on strategies to substitute threatening or frightening situations and tasks. 1

8 2 These studies all point out motivational strategies that are substantial enough to be explored for increasing motivation for learning a foreign language. Therefore, several studies were conducted to investigate teachers beliefs and practices concerning which motivational strategies can be used in class. In 1998, Dörnyei and Kata Csizér conducted an empirical research of Hungarian teachers of English who were asked to evaluate a list of motivational strategies, indicating how importantly they considered the strategies to be and how frequently they implemented the strategies. After their study, Dörnyei (2001) carried out more than 100 motivational strategies that were presented in his text, Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom, to enable teachers to motivate learners. Soon, based on Dörnyei and Csizér s study and Dörnyei s book, Hsing-Fu Cheng and Dörnyei (2007) continued to explore the scope of motivational strategies. They examined how Taiwanese teachers of English can use certain strategies to motivate their learners. Further, they examined the differences between the beliefs and practices of Taiwanese and Hungarian teachers of English. These studies provide us with evidence of what motivational strategies teachers can use when motivating learners from the teachers point of view. However, if we desire to motivate learners more effectively, there is an area that should be explored, which is to know learners sentiment toward motivational strategies used by teachers in class. As has been noted, several studies suggested that students personal orientations and beliefs influence their motivation and performance (e.g., Elliot, 1999; Tobias, 1994; Reeve & Jang, 2006). This present study is relevant due to a lack of information regarding motivational strategies from the learners perspective, and it will aim at filling in this gap

9 3 in order to enable teachers to obtain a better comprehension of which motivational strategies are more effective from the learners perspective.

10 2. Literature review The literature review will explore the background of motivation and motivational strategy in two subsections that follow. Both subsections discuss numerous studies and also detail each study concerning motivation and motivational strategy. The literature review will further elaborate on where the current literature is lacking and will be investigated and filled by this study. 2.1 Motivation Motivation is one of the most important factors for learning a foreign/second language (L2). In order to describe L2 learning motivation, two Canadian scholars, Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert (1959, 1972), are often mentioned. Their overwhelming dichotomy from the social psychological point of view is most often cited: instrumental and integrative motivation. Instrumental motivation focuses on pragmatic gains, that is, potential utilitarian gains of L2 proficiency, such as achieving the requirements for school or university graduation, and reaching a higher social status or getting a better job (Dörnyei, 1994a; Norris, 2001). Integrative motivation is associated with a positive attitude and feeling toward a L2 group, such as admiring the culture and desiring to interact with the people who speak the target language (Dörnyei, 1994a; Norris, 2001). This dichotomy still influenced most L2 motivation studies before the 1990s, although it was criticized as an oversimplification (Dörnyei, 1994a; Gardner & 4

11 5 MacIntyre, 1993). The other of most well-known concepts that distinguish L2 motivation are intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The former suggests that rewards associated with intrinsically motivated behaviors are internal, such as obtaining valued accomplishments, satisfying one s curiosity or gaining the pleasure of doing a specific activity (Bateman & Crant, n.d.; Dörnyei, 1994a), which refers to motivation [to] engage in an activity for its own sake (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002, p. 245). The latter was put forth to gain some extrinsic rewards, such as getting a bonus or avoiding punishment (Bateman & Crant, n.d.; Dörnyei, 1994a), which refers to motivation [to] engage in an activity as a means to an end (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002, p.245). In 1994, Dörnyei created a construct for his study, which consisted of three general levels: Language Level, Learner Level and Learning Situation Level. These levels coincided with three basic elements of the second language learning process: second language, second language learner and second language learning environment. These levels brought out three different views of language: the social dimension, the personal dimension and the educational subject matter dimension. Based on this construct, learning situation level can be divided into course-specific motivational components, teacher-specific motivational components and group-specific motivational components. Course-specific motivational components consisted of four categories, interest, relevance, expectancy and satisfaction, which were postulated by Crookes and Schmidt (1991). Group-specific motivational components contained four aspects of group dynamics: goal-orientedness, norm and reward system, group cohesion and classroom goal

12 6 structures. For teacher-specific motivational components, there were three general groups: affiliative drive, teacher s authority and socialization. Affiliative drive suggests that students need to perform well academically to please teachers of whom they think highly. A teacher s authority type is dependent on whether the teacher supports autonomy or whether the teacher controls the class. Socialization of student motivation includ three main aspects: modeling, task presentation and feedback (Brophy & Neelam, 1986). After this construct was produced, Gardner and Tremblay (1994) stated that we also advocate the exploration of other motivational theories as a way of expanding the motivation construct but recognize that such [an] endeavour is of no value in the absence of pertinent empirical research (p. 366). In response to this, Dörnyei (1994b) noted, Empirical research using extended research paradigms would also help integrate old and new variables (p. 521). Therefore, many research studies examine adding several new components to the test of stimulating L2 learners motivation. As previously mentioned, starting in the 1990s, there were numerous studies undertaken that attempted to redefine L2 motivation. Based on the theories listed below, the studies of the 1990s reached a consensus with more pragmatic and educational approaches (e.g., Crookes & Schmidt, 1991; Dörnyei 1994a, 1990; Oxford & Shearin, 1994; Tremblay & Gardner, 1995; Williams & Burden, 1997). Several new approaches successfully expanded the L2 motivation paradigm: (1) attribution theory and goal theory, which are relevant to how the causes attributed to previous underachievements and accomplishments influence forthcoming goal expectations; (2) cognitive theories of motivation, which is a function of a person s thoughts, especially those related to the

13 7 learner s self, such as self-efficacy, self-confidence and the need for achievement; and (3) learning situation, consisting of the factors connected to classroom application, such as features of both the language course and the language teacher. 2.2 Motivational Strategy Learner s motivation is one of the key factors that determine success in learning a foreign language. Motivation researchers found that motivational strategies that teachers use can effectively influence learners motivation toward learning a foreign language (e.g., Banya & Cheng, 1997; Dörnyei, 1994a; Fives & Manning, 2005; Stipek, 1996). In 2001, Dörnyei presented more than 100 motivational strategies in his text, Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom. These motivational strategies could be categorized into four groups: creating the basic motivational conditions, generating initial motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation and rounding off the learning experience (encouraging positive self-evaluation). The concept of all these strategies is based on the idea that teacher behavior and beliefs significantly affect students motivation for learning a foreign language. For this reason, strategies in motivating language learners should be seen as an important aspect of motivation toward learning a foreign language. Therefore, several research studies constructed and summarized motivational techniques for teachers in classroom application (e.g., Alison & Halliwell, 2002; Brown, 2001; Chambers, 1999; Williams & Burden, 1997). Moreover, Dörnyei (1994a) integrated several relevant motivational components into a multilevel, second-language motivational construct in order to understand second

14 8 language motivation from an educational perspective. Based on these components, he made a practical motivational strategy list that was comprised of thirty strategies for helping language teachers better understand what motivates their students in the second language classroom. The result points out that not only learners motivation can be influenced by motivational strategies, but also that teachers play significant roles to help learners establish self-confidence and achieve successes that can crucially influence motivation (Fives & Manning, 2005; Gardner, Masgoret, Tennant & Mihic, 2004). In Huang s study (2006), he interviewed three senior business major students to talk about their EAP (English for academic purpose) reading experience. Based on these interviews, he created a questionnaire that included 18 statements to describe situations where learners could be more motivated to read for EAP. Two hundred and twelve students from five classes in a university of science and technology in Taiwan were selected randomly to be investigated. The findings show that teachers modeling and feedback are significant factors for motivating students to read. This result corresponds to Cheng and Dörnyei s study (2007), which indicates that showing teachers enthusiasm through their behavior is one of the most important and frequently-used motivational strategies. There is obvious evidence indicating that teachers motivational strategies critically manipulate the development of L2 learning motivation. Dörnyei and Csizér (1998) conducted empirical research of Hungarian teachers of English who were asked to evaluate a list of motivational strategies, indicating how important they considered the strategies to be and how frequently they implemented the strategies. According to their findings, the researchers formulated ten motivational

15 9 macrostrategies and concluded, We cannot say with certainty that the Ten Commandments are valid in every cultural, ethnolinguistic and institutional setting. There is clearly much room for further research in this respect (Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998, p. 224). Based on this research, Cheng and Dörnyei (2007) explored the scope of motivational strategies that Taiwanese teachers of English can use to motivate their learners and the differences between Taiwanese and Hungarian teachers beliefs and practices. Ten motivational macrostrategies, including 48 motivational strategies, emerged from the Hungarian study conducted by Dörnyei and Csizér (1998). Based on the Hungarian study, 387 teachers of English in Taiwan evaluated a list of motivational strategies, indicating how important they considered the strategies to be and how frequently they implemented the strategies. The result emphatically proves that some of motivational strategies are culture-specific. However, both research studies failed to mention any feedback from the learners point of view concerning motivational strategies. Even though the strategies have been recommended meaningfully, there is an indication that there may be disagreement between teachers and students about the value of some motivational strategies. In Raviv, Raviv and Reisel s study (1990), teachers and students were asked to respond to the Class Environment Scale (Moos & Trickett, 1974), which contains nine dimensions. Half of the teachers and students evaluated the ideal classroom, and the others evaluated the real classroom. The results indicated that the perception between teachers and students concerning the dimensions are significantly different. Another study by Banya and Cheng (1997) investigated the beliefs of teachers and students on foreign language learning. The subjects were 23 teachers of English and

16 college students in southern Taiwan who were studying English. A path analysis showed that students may have misconceptions with teachers beliefs and the principles of classroom instruction. In 2008, Bernaus and Gardner examined whether teachers and students perceive the use of the same strategies differently and the effects of these strategies on students motivation and English-language achievement. Thirty-one teachers of English as a foreign language and 694 students in Spain were asked to evaluate the frequency of use of 26 strategies in their classes. The result showed that teachers and students had agreements on the frequency of some strategies, but not on other strategies. As such, it can be seen that the evidence suggests that teachers and students perspectives are crucially different. There is much research from the teacher s perspective on motivational strategies, but there is a noticeable lack of scholarship concerning the student s perspective. In order to help learners develop their motivation toward learning a foreign language, we should gain a better understanding of the learner s perspective because students belief about foreign language learning is found to play an important role in influencing their motivation, attitude, motivational intensity, strategy use, anxiety and language achievement (Banya & Cheng, 1997, p. 26). Therefore, learners feedback should be investigated, as should the comparison between teachers and learners. We can make motivational strategies more effective if we investigate the learners perspective and the comparison between teachers and students. The following questions guide the investigation of this current study: (1) What does learners feedback have to say about their perceptions of how

17 11 important the motivational strategies are, and how often should teachers use these strategies? (2) Do students and teachers perceive the importance and the use of these motivational strategies similarly or differently? (3) Do variables such as sex or culture come into play in social, personal and situational motivation, or in motivational strategies? We can get a better understanding of the effectiveness of motivational strategies once these questions have been asked and analyzed thoroughly.

18 3. Method The main goal of this study is to investigate two aspects of the comparisons between students and teachers perspectives toward motivational strategies. One aspect considers how important motivational strategies are for developing students motivation. The other aspect concerns how frequently teachers use motivational strategies in class. As mentioned in the literature review, this type of study is rarely researched. Also, students motivations toward learning a foreign language would be influenced by their personal beliefs. Therefore, there is a pertinent reason for examining the comparison between students and teachers perspectives on the motivational strategies Participants The participants for this investigation consisted of 11 teachers and 40 students from Kent State University. All forty students were learning English in the English as a Second Language Center (ESL) at Kent State University. The students age range was from 17 to 45 years old. The average was 22.8 years old (N=39 with one student not providing an age). There were 18 female and 22 male students. They came from several different countries, but their first language backgrounds can be distributed into six categories: Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish. Table 1 shows the number of students in each language and the percentages of each language that were used in this study. As can been seen in Table 1, almost half of the students first language 12

19 13 background was Chinese (42.5%), while Arabic (25%), Japanese (15%), Korean (12.5%), French and Turkish (2.5% each) made up the difference. Six first-language backgrounds were investigated. Two of the six nationalities however, also first-language backgrounds, were not examined because of the insufficient number of participating students who came from Africa (who spoke French) and Turkey (who spoke Turkish). Table 2 presents the language level of students in the ESL Center at Kent State University. Of the students in this study, 72.5% came from the Advanced level, 17.5% came from the Intermediate level, and 10% came from the Elementary level. Table 1 First Language backgrounds First Languages N Percent Arabic % Chinese % French 1 2.5% Japanese % Korean % Turkish 1 2.5% Total % Table 2 The level of learning language The levels N Percent Elementary % Intermediate % Advanced % Total %

20 14 Most teachers were teaching English in the ESL Center at Kent State University. Only one was a teacher from Department of Modern and Classic Language Studies (MCLS) at Kent State University, but he/she did not offer information as to which language he/she teaches. The teachers age range was from 27 to 61 years old. The average was years old (N=8). There were 8 female and 2 male teachers, and one who did not provide gender data. As teaching experience, almost 70% of the teachers had experience teaching at the elementary and advanced levels, and nearly 30% of the teachers had experience teaching at the intermediate level. Concerning years of teaching experience, the participant with the least experience had taught for two years, while three participants had been teaching for at least 15 years (N=10, one with missing information concerning teaching data) Instruments Two questionnaires (see Appendix 1 and 2) were developed containing the same set of motivational strategies for both students and teachers. This was done in order to compare teachers and students perspectives on motivational strategies. The selection of these motivational strategies to be included in the questionnaires was based on the systematic overview of motivational techniques devised by Dörnyei (2001), which considered research that Dörnyei had conducted three years prior with Csizér (1998). A variant questionnaire was later used by Cheng and Dörnyei (2007); this served as the source from which the questionnaires used in this current study were drawn. Motivational strategies were divided into the ten most important motivational macrostrategies (shown

21 15 as categories in this study) in Dörnyei and Csizér s Hungarian study (1998): proper teacher behavior, recognizing students efforts, promoting learners self-confidence, creating a pleasant classroom climate, presenting tasks properly, increasing learners goal-orientedness, making the learning tasks stimulating, familiarizing learners with L2-related values, promoting group cohesiveness and group norms, and promoting learner autonomy. The symbols for each category are presented in Table 3. Each category had two to four motivational strategy items represented in both of the questionnaires, which were presented in English. The items were not identified as such, but they were presented in random order on the questionnaires. However, wording was adapted to suit the English level of the participants and some items were deleted to suit the ESL and the MCLS context. Table 3 The symbols for each category (macrostrategy) Symbols Categories (macrostrategies) C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 Category 1 Proper teacher behavior Category 2 Recognize students efforts Category 3 Promote learners self-confidence Category 4 Create a pleasant classroom Category 5 Present tasks properly Category 6 Increase learners goal-orientedness Category 7 Make the learning tasks stimulating Category 8 Familiarize learners with L2-related values

22 16 C9 C10 Category 9 Promote group cohesiveness and group norms Category 10 Promote learner autonomy The final version of the students questionnaire had two parts that were made up from the same set of 28 motivational strategies, which means that 56 motivational strategies would be rated. See Appendix 1 for details of students questionnaire. The questionnaire covered two aspects of this study. One part focused on asking students to rate the 28 motivational strategies by using a 5-point scale, which ranged from 1 (not important) to 5 (very important). This was done in order to show students perspectives of how important the motivational strategies are. In the other part, students were asked to rate the same 28 motivational strategies by using a 5-point scale, again ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often) with the purpose of rating how often students experience each motivational strategy that is used by teachers in class. There were also two parts that were made up from the same set of the 28 motivational strategies on the final version of the teachers questionnaire. A total of 56 motivational strategies were evaluated on the teachers questionnaire. See Appendix 2 for details of the teachers questionnaire. In the first part, teachers were asked to rate the 28 motivational strategies by using a 5-point scale, which ranged from 1 (not important) to 5 (very important) with the intention of recounting teachers perceptions of how important the motivational strategies are. In the second part, teachers were asked to rate the frequency of the same motivational strategies on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often), in order to show the rate of how often they used these motivational strategies in

23 17 class Procedure s were sent to teachers in the ESL and MCLS Departments requesting their participation, but some teachers opted not to take part in the study. They were then asked to complete the surveys themselves and permission was sought to visit their classes to conduct student surveys. Some of the instructors surveys were administered by , and some of them filled out hard copies. However, each of the student surveys was administered in person Data analysis This study was analyzed in two manners: (a) a quantitative analysis of students responses and the comparison between students and teachers responses of the motivational strategy items, which addressed research questions one and two; and (b) a qualitative analysis of what role variables effectively play in learning motivation, which addressed research question three. There were two parts of the quantitative analysis in this study. The first part of this study was to find out students responses of how important the motivational strategy items are, and how often teachers should use these strategy items. In the second part of this study, the comparisons between students and teachers were analyzed to see whether students and teachers perceive the importance and the use of these motivational strategy items similarly or differently.

24 18 The questionnaire data were processed using SPSS. For the initial (quantitative) analysis, the means of the 56 motivational strategy items in the students questionnaire were calculated. In order to effectively analyze the results, all the items were classified into the ten categories (macrostrategies) listed above and the means of each category were computed. The data of the teacher surveys were computed in the following analysis and several comparisons were made. The same procedure was followed to classify and calculate the 56 items and ten categories contained in the teachers questionnaire. Of the ten categories, the top five rankings for both the students and teachers were compared in the second part. The findings were based on two aspects: the importance and the frequency. In order to obtain the ranking of each category from both questionnaires, a z-score test was used to calculate a standard score for each category regard to the importance and the frequency. According to the z-scores of each category, the ranking orders of ten categories from both students and teachers perspectives were obtained. The comparisons of the relationships, which were among the importance and the frequency from the students perspectives, the importance and the frequency from the teachers perspectives, the importance of students and teachers perspectives, and the frequency of students and teachers perspectives, were also calculated. These results were tallied and compared using a correlation test as well. For the qualitative analysis, after the means of the 56 motivational strategy items in the students questionnaire were calculated, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied to these values to investigate significant differences in regard to several dimensions: sex, status of students academic level (i.e., undergraduate or graduate student), the level of

25 19 learning language and nationality. The same procedure followed to investigate the dimensions of the teachers questionnaire included sex, years of teaching and levels of teaching. ANOVA was applied to this set of data as well as to the teachers questionnaire.

26 4. Results The findings are divided into three subsections: students; teachers; and the comparisons between students and teachers. Results of students feedback concerning their perspectives on how important the motivational strategies are and how often the students experience the motivational strategies used by teachers in class were examined the differences of their sex, students academic level (i.e., undergraduate or graduate student), the level of learning language (i.e., elementary or intermediate or advanced level) and nationality. Next, the results of teachers perspectives were presented by the differences of their sex, years of teaching and levels of teaching. The last subsection is the comparisons between the students and teachers perspectives in regard to the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies. In order to compare the perspectives of students and teachers, the same 28 strategy items found in the two sections on both the student and teacher surveys were grouped into ten categories (or macrostrategies) as mentioned in the instrument subsection Students This section of the study focused on two aspects, the importance and the frequency, of the students responses and the teachers strategies used to motivate students. There were ten categories for these strategies, listed in Table 3. Each of these categories was studied to determine whether there were significant differences in sex, status of students 20

27 21 academic level, the level of learning language and nationality dimensions. The important aspect is shown in Table 4-1. There were three significant results for sex dimension: 1) C1, Proper teacher behavior, 2) C8, Familiarized learners with L2-related values and 3) C10, Promote learner autonomy. These data show that males and females have different needs or preferences, which will be discussed more in the discussion and conclusion section. For nationality dimension, there are significant differences in six of the ten categories: 1) C2, Recognize students efforts, 2) C4, Create a pleasant classroom, 3) C5, Present tasks properly, 4) C6, Increase learners goal-orientedness, 5) C7, Make the learning tasks stimulating and 6) C10, Promote learner autonomy. Interestingly, status of students academic level and the level of learning language dimensions had no significant results. Table 4-1 The p-value and means of significant differences of the importance in sex and nationality dimensions Dimension Category P-value Means Sex C1 Proper teacher behavior C8 Familiarize learners with L2-related values C10 Promote learner autonomy.008**.014*.044* 4.52 > 4.10 (M >F) 4.37 > 4.04 (M >F) 4.19 < 3.70 (M >F) Nationality C2 Recognize students efforts.008** See Table 5 for C4 Create a pleasant classroom C5 Present tasks properly C6 Increase learners goal-orientedness C7 Make the learning tasks.0007**.017*.008**.001** the means

28 22 stimulating C10 Promote learner autonomy.0001** * p is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). ** p is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). M (male) > F (female) means that the means obtained from males are higher than females. For the frequency aspect is shown in Table 4-2, there were three significant results. The status dimension, C4, Create a pleasant classroom and C5, Present tas ks properly had significant differences. For nationality dimension, only C2 was statistically different. Nevertheless, Sex and the level of learning language dimensions had no significant results. Table 4-2 The p-value and means of significant differences of the frequency in years of teaching and teaching experience dimensions Dimension Category P-value Means Status C4 Create a pleasant classroom.040* 4.43 > 4 > 3.74 C5 Present tasks properly.028* (G>O>UG) 4.5 > 3.91 > 3.88 (G>O>UG) Nationality C2 Recognize students efforts.020* See Table 5 for the means * p is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). UG (undergraduate student), G (graduate student), O (others) The nationality dimension for both the importance and the frequency is an important variable in students perspectives. Therefore, we separately represent the mean

29 23 differences of both the importance and the frequency in Table 5. Table 5 The importance and the frequency of motivational categories by nationality as shown through means for significant differences The importance The frequency Chinese Japanese Korean Saudi Chinese Japanese Korean Saudi Arabian Arabian C C C C C C Bold numbers are the highest one in each category. Underlined numbers are the lowest one in each category Teachers The same procedure was used to investigate the dimensions of the teachers responses including sex, years of teaching and levels of teaching. For important aspect, each dimension had one significant result. As can been seen in Table 6-1, for the sex dimension, C6 was significantly different. For the years of teaching dimension, C2, had significant result. The teaching experience at the advanced dimension, C2, showed a

30 24 significant difference. Table 6-1 The p-value and means of significant differences of the importance in sex, years of teaching and teaching experience dimensions Dimension Category P-value Means Sex C6 Increase learners goal-orientedness.018* 3.33 < 4.41 d Years of teaching C2 Recognize students efforts.008** 4.83 >4.12 >4 >3 (YT1>YT4>YT3>YT2) Teaching experience at the advanced level C2 Recognize students efforts.022* 4.83 > 3.91 (NET>ET) * p is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). ** p is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). M (male) < F (female) means that the means obtained from males are lower than females. YT1 (0-5 years of teaching), YT2 (6-10 years of teaching) YT3 (11-15 years of teaching), YT4 (16 or more years of teaching) NET (teachers have no teaching experience), ET (teachers have teaching experience) There were only two significant results from teachers perspectives within the frequency aspect. As displayed in Table 6-2, the years of teaching dimension, C7, was significantly different. For the teaching experience at the intermediate level dimension, C7, exhibited a significant difference. However, the sex dimension had no significant result.

31 25 Table 6-2 The p-value and means of significant differences of the frequency in years of teaching and teaching experience dimensions Dimension Category P-value Means Years of teaching C7 Make the learning tasks stimulating.020* 4.41=4.41>3.66> 3.33 (YT1=YT4>YT3>YT2) Teaching experience at the intermediate level C7 Make the learning tasks stimulating.022* 4.42 > 3.77 (ET>NET) * p is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). YT1 (0-5 years of teaching), YT2 (6-10 years of teaching) YT3 (11-15 years of teaching), YT4 (16 or more years of teaching) NET (teachers have no teaching experience), ET (teachers have teaching experience) 4. 3 The comparisons of the motivational strategy ranking between students and teachers Table 7 shows the means of responses obtained from the students and teachers questionnaires by categories according to the importance aspect. More than half of the means from students responses were higher than the mean (4.18) of all the strategies. Only C2 (4.13), C9 (3.82) and C10 (3.98) were lower than the overall mean in students responses. Then, for teachers responses, most of the means were higher than the mean (4.24) of all the strategies, except C9 (3.61) and C10 (3.76), which were lower than the teachers overall mean. In order to obtain the ranking of each category from both students and teachers, the numbers of constituent items for each category should be standardized using a z-score test to calculate a standard score. According to the z-scores of each category, the ranking orders of the ten categories from both students and teachers

32 26 perspectives are displayed in Table 7. Table 7 The means and z-scores (ranking) of each scale from students and teachers perspectives of the importance of the motivational strategies Categories Students Teachers (Macrostrategies) Mean Z-score (rank order) Mean Z-score (rank order) All the strategies C1. Proper teacher behavior (3) (1) C2. Recognize students effort (8) (7) C3. Promote learners self-confidence (6) (6) C4. Creating a pleasant classroom climate (5) (3) C5. Present tasks properly (2) (2) C6. Increase learners goal-orientedness (1) (8) C7. Make the learning tasks stimulating (6) (5) C8. Familiarize learners with L2-related values C9. Promote group cohesiveness and group norms (4) (4) (10) (10) C10. Promote learner autonomy (9) (9) Table 8 revealed the means of the frequency by each category from students and teachers perspectives. In the students responses, half of the means were higher than the students overall mean (3.88). However, for the teachers responses, more than half of the means were higher than the teachers overall mean (4.21). Again, a z-score test was run

33 27 on standard scores in order to gain the ranking orders of the ten categories from both students and teachers perspectives, which are presented in Table 8. Table 8 The means and z-scores (ranking) of each scale from students and teachers perspectives of the frequency of the motivational strategies Categories Students Teachers (Macrostrategies) Mean Z-score (rank order) Mean Z-score (rank order) All the strategies C1. Proper teacher behavior (1) (1) C2. Recognize students effort (7) (5) C3. Promote learners self-confidence (4) (6) C4. Creating a pleasant classroom climate (3) (2) C5. Present tasks properly (2) (3) C6. Increase learners goal-orientedness (9) (8) C7. Make the learning tasks stimulating (6) (4) C8. Familiarize learners with L2-related values (8) (7) C9. Promote group cohesiveness and group norms (10) (9) C10. Promote learner autonomy (5) (10) As displayed in Table 9, the correlation between students perspectives of the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies (SI versus SF) was significant at r =.46 (two tailed) and p <.01. There were significant correlations between teachers perspectives of the importance and the frequency (TI versus TF) at r

34 28 =.796 (two tailed) and p <.01. The correlation between students and teachers perspectives of importance (SI versus TI) was significant at r =.695 (two tailed) and p <.05. However, there was no significant correlation between students and teachers perspectives of frequency (SF versus TF). Table 9 The correlations between the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies for students and teachers SI TI TF SF.460 ** TF ** -- TI.695 * * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). SI The importance for students TI The importance for teachers SF The frequency for students TF The frequency for teachers For the entire results section, some profound results can be gathered from the data. For students, there are prominent differences in both the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies depending on the sex, status, and nationality of the learner. Similarly, for teachers, there are also relevant differences in both the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies, based on the individual s sex, years of teaching experience, and levels of teaching. The following section will discuss the comparisons

35 between students and teachers as well as other interesting findings in greater detail. 29

36 5. Discussion There are three interesting findings that will be discussed in the subsections. They are pertinent to a better understanding of why students and teachers have differences when ranking the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies. They are: Nationality difference students; The comparisons: Students and teachers perspectives; and Sex difference students and teachers Nationality difference students Nationality difference had a profound influence in the outcomes of the students surveys, especially reflecting on the responses obtained from Saudi Arabian and Japanese students. There were prominent differences in the six categories of the important aspects of nationality. They were C2, Recognize students efforts, C4, Create a pleasant classroom, C5, Present tasks properly, C6, Increase learners goal-orientedness, C7, Make the learning tasks stimulating and C10, Promote learner autonomy. Then, C2 was significant for the frequency aspect of nationality. As presented in Table 5, Saudi Arabian students gave the highest scores in C4, C5, C7, and C10 and also in C2 for the frequency aspect. C2, for the importance aspect, was given the highest score by Korean students, while C6, at the important aspect, was regarded highest by Chinese students. Conversely, Japanese students always had the lowest scores in each category shown in Table 5 except C10 for the importance aspect, in which case Korean students had the 30

37 31 lowest score. The results indicated that Saudi Arabian students might be the easiest group to be motivated in comparison to the students of other nationalities, especially by using these strategies: C4, C5, C7, and C10. Also, these strategies in C2 could be an effective way to motivate Korean students. Chinese students had more goal-oriented motivations than other students who have different language backgrounds. In contrast, Japanese students were probably the hardest group to motivate to learn a foreign language, a finding which was endorsed by the outcome in Fotos and Jungheim s study (2001). Interestingly, the findings of this study corresponded with the results Reid (1987) suggested, that is, Arabic, Chinese, and Korean students appear to have multiple major learning style preferences (p. 98). Furthermore, Reid (1987) stated that Japanese speakers did not, as a group, identify a single major learning style (p. 98). Another reason for why Saudi Arabian, Chinese and Korean students gave higher scores to some categories is that they may be predisposed toward giving positive responses on questionnaires, while Japanese students contributed by responding negatively; it could appear that Japanese students might be more critical than students of other nationalities. If so, that is why they differed significantly in so many of the statistical analyses. Obviously, culture may certainly play a role for increasing learners motivations The comparisons: Students and teachers perspectives This subsection will answer the second research question of this study: Do students and teachers perceive the importance and the use of these motivational strategies

38 32 similarly or differently? The question was addressed by the top five categories obtained from ranking the importance and the frequency of the motivational strategies from students and teachers perspectives The importance As can be seen in Table 10, the top five categories ranked in order of importance as perceived by students were C6, Increase learners goal-orientedness, C5, Present tasks properly, C1, Proper teacher behavior, C8, Familiarize learners with L2-related values and C4, Creating a pleasant classroom climate. However, from the teachers viewpoint, the top five categories were C1, Proper teacher behavior, C5, Present tasks properly, C4, Creating a pleasant classroom climate, C8, Familiarize learners with L2-related values and C7, Make the learning tasks stimulating. The following section will focus on the discussion of these top five categories as ranked by students and teachers. Table 10 The comparison of the top five ranking of the importance of the categories between students and teachers Categories Students Teachers C6. Increase learners goal-orientedness 1 -- C5. Present tasks properly 2 2 C1. Proper teacher behavior 3 1 C8. Familiarize learners with L2-related values 4 4 C4. Creating a pleasant classroom climate 5 3 C7. Make the learning tasks stimulating -- 5

39 33 From the students perspective, C6, Increase learners goal-orientedness, was ranked first, but it was not in the top five of the teachers ranking; instead, it was ranked eighth. Obviously, students and teachers perceived this category differently. This result probably reflected two points that should be regarded further. One point was that the students might be mostly motivated by goal-oriented motivational strategies. In the 1990s, goal-oriented motivation was grouped into two types: instrumental and integrative orientations (Gardner, 1985); these orientations powerfully affect students motivation (e.g., Dörnyei 1994a; Oxford & Shearin, 1994; Tremblay & Gardner, 1995). Hence, the motivational strategies of C6 should be considered more important and thus more frequently used in class. The other point was that the perceived purpose that students have for learning another language should be considered when teachers make their curricula. Surprisingly, many of the participating students from collectivist societies might perceive Promote group cohesiveness and group norms to be more important than Increase learners goal-orientedness, which is as an individualistic goal, but the result is wholly displayed in an opposite manner. The possible explanation for this might be that one of the main goals for most of the participating students who studied at the advanced level was to attain better TOEFL scores in order to enter their desired degree programs, which belongs to an individual (personal) goal not related to groups. However, the main goal for teachers in ESL programs was to improve students English abilities and to provide as many opportunities as possible for students to use English. As such, the different goals for the two groups caused the significant difference between how students

40 34 and teachers perceived this category. To be aware of what students needs and learning goals are provides a better understanding for teachers and is one of the more effective ways to motivate students who learn a foreign language. C5, Present tasks properly, was ranked second by both students and teachers, which means that students and teachers had similar perceptions of this point. The finding was highlighted in the Hungarian teacher survey (Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998) and the Taiwanese teacher survey (Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007). This is especially true for Cheng and Dörnyei (2007), who stated that Communicating an appropriate rationale and strategic advice concerning how to approach a particular activity is endorsed by Taiwanese English teachers as an essential ingredient of a motivating teaching practice (p. 162). Particularly important was that the result of this study confirmed this point again, which means that presenting tasks properly was not only relevant from the teachers perspective but also the students perspective. In addition, this result reflected that teacher modeling and presenting the meaning or purpose of a specific task would more effectively increase student motivation. Students would then be willing to complete a task with clear instruction and a meaningful purpose. The third ranking of the importance from the students perspective was C1, Proper teacher behavior. However, it was placed in the number one position in the teachers top five rankings. Especially interesting was that this outcome corresponded to the results found in both the Hungarian study (Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998) and the Taiwanese study (Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007), indicating that no matter the culture, teachers consider appropriate behavior on their part to be a crucial factor when motivating students.

41 35 However, this is not so for students. Also, from the teachers point of view, teachers showing their enthusiasm could influence students motivation because Kunter (2008) suggested that Teachers who were more enthusiastic about teaching showed higher quality instructional behavior: both self-reported and student-rated (p. 468). Interestingly, from the other way to see this outcome, a point deserving of mention was that maintaining the positive image of the teacher would be quite important for teachers. This means that teachers would like to keep their positive image with students and this might be one of the ways to establish positive relationships with students, which is the most important strategy as rated by students (see Appendix 3). Also, this strategy is the second most important strategy in the teachers rankings, which means teachers and students perceive this strategy similarly as being effective for increasing learners motivation. As can be discerned, teachers are on the right track to motivate learners in this study. Students and teachers perceived the importance of C8, Familiarize learners with L2-related values, similarly, which was ranked fourth in both surveys. From the teachers position, there were two points that needed to be discussed. One point was that one of four items in C8 corresponded with one of the main goals about teaching language, which was encouraging students to use the target language as often as possible. Assuredly, getting more chances to use the target language could increase their language abilities. The other point was that teachers in the ESL program definitely face cross-cultural problems or different cultural values, so helping students familiarize L2-related values is an essential way to help students learn English. Further, this point coincided with the students perspective, and this result might be