THE EXPLOITATION OF MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES IN TEACHING SPEAKING BY FOURTH-YEAR STUDENTS IN THEIR TEACHING PRACTICUM AT ENGLISH DIVISION I : A MULTI-CASE STUDY AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION, ULIS-VNUH

Abstract

The role of motivation in language learning and of applying motivational strategies in language teaching as well as the fact that it is difficult for young teachers, especially student-teachers to successfully employ those motivational strategies in their classes have become a great incentive for the researcher to conduct this research paper. The researcher aims at firstly, figuring out how many motivational strategies the student-teachers know in teaching speaking; then secondly, the study is conducted to examining what motivational strategies are considered effective in stimulating first-year students’ attention and participation as perceived by both the student-teachers and the first-year students. With a view to gathering the desired for the research questions, 3 student teachers and 22 first-year students were involved in completing the questionnaires. To enhance the quality of information collected from the questionnaire, classroom observation and interview were also employed to help researchers examine and provide more details to the findings. Based on the data collected, the results show that all the student teachers fully understand and apply a variety of motivational strategies, among which there are 11 most frequently used strategies (i.e. promoting instrumental values, team competition, individual competition, promoting cooperation, neutral feedback, signposting 1, arousing curiosity or attention, class applause, fixed group/pair, scaffolding and social chat). On one hand, three of those most commonly applied strategies receive all positive feedback while on the other hand, the rest receive opposite opinions from the students. Details about how the student teachers apply and perceive about the motivational strategies as well as how the students react to those frequently used strategies with their rationale will be revealed in chapter 4.