MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY THE PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS AND THEIR YOUNG LEARNERS ON MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH CLASSROOMS: A CASE STUDY AT CHU VAN AN PRIMARY SCHOOL A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL Submitted by: DINH THI CAM LOAN Supervisor: Dr. LE HOANG DUNG HO CHI MINH City, October 2017 Tai Lieu Chat Luong MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY Đinh Thị Cẩm Loan THE PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS AND THEIR YOUNG LEARNERS ON MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH CLASSROOMS: A CASE STUDY AT CHU VAN AN PRIMARY SCHOOL Major: TESOL Code: 60140111 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL) Supervised by LE HOANG DUNG, PHD Ho Chi Minh City, 2017 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I declare this thesis entitled “THE PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHERS AND THEIR YOUNG LEARNERS ON MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES IN ENGLISH CLASSROOMS: A CASE STUDY AT CHU VAN AN PRIMARY SCHOOL” is the result of my own work except as cited in the reference. The thesis has not been accepted for any degree and it is not currently submitted in candidature of any other degree. Ho Chi Minh City, 2017 Dinh Thi Cam Loan ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr.
Le Hoang Dung. I am very grateful for his help, suggestions and advise on various drafts of this thesis. Without his patience and valuable help, I would not have finished this thesis on schedule. I would like to express my thanks to the principal, all teachers and learners at Chu Van An primary school who participated in my study.
They facilitated my data collection, so I could successfully collect the data. I would also like to express my thanks to my husband for his great support and help. Without his encouragement and love, I could not have been able to finish this thesis. iii ABSTRACT The vital role of motivation in teaching and learning English is emphasized and has been the subject of many studies for years.
Several studies have been conducted to find out the most effective motivational strategies in different contexts from primary schools to universities in many countries. However, in Vietnam, the studies on students’ motivation and teachers’ motivational strategies mainly focus on the students in high schools or universities, which lacks the concentration on young learners, who are from seven to twelve years old, at primary schools. Case study is used to explore both teachers’ perceptions and their young learners’ perceptions on motivational strategies in English classrooms at Chu Van An primary school. 212 young learners and their two teachers of English participated in the questionnaires to learners and interview to teachers.
The study found that the young learners were extrinsically motivated by praise, rewards, grades and celebration of their success and accomplishment. While difficult tasks were considered to be obstacles to learners, the learners did not think that. For teacher behaviors towards learners, teacher care was the most favorite thing to learners while comparison between learners and their classmates and being put in the spotlight unexpectedly were two unfavorable practices from learners’ perceptions. Additionally, the teachers employed a variety of strategies relating to learners’ active participation, attention and self-confidence as well as interaction in learning, pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere and teacher behaviors in order to motivate their young learners.
However, moving when doing tasks, visual aids, practice of English in real life situations, encouragement to the learners to take risks and be not afraid of making mistakes did not get much attention of the teachers. Some suggestions which were based on the findings of this study were made for the teachers to motivate their learners better. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iii LIST OF TABLES. vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.1 Background of the study .2 The context of the study.3 The aims of the study .4 Significance of the study .5 The outline of the thesis .1 Definitions of terms .1 Definition of motivation .2 Definition of motivational strategies.2 Motivation in language learning.3 Sources of motivation of young language learners at primary schools.4 Motivational strategies in teaching English to young learners at primary schools .1 Stimulating young learners’ active participation .2 Maintaining young learners’ attention .3 Building learners’ self-confidence.4 Integrating interaction into teaching young learners .5 Creating pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere .6 Displaying appropriate teacher behaviors .1 Setting of the study .1 Young learner respondents.1 Questionnaire to learners .2 Interview to teachers .4 Data collection procedure .1 Procedure for collecting questionnaires to learner respondents .2 Procedure for interviewing teacher respondents. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .1 Results of questionnaire to learners .1 Learners’ perceptions on strategies to stimulate their active participation.2 Learners’ perceptions on teachers’ practices to maintain learners’ attention .3 Learners’ perceptions on their teachers’ strategies to build learners’ self-confidence .4 Learners’ perceptions on their teachers’ strategies to integrate interaction into learning English .5 Learners’ perceptions on their teachers’ strategies to create pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere .6 Learners’ perceptions on their teachers’ behaviors .2 Results of interviews to teachers .1 Young learners’ motivation at Chu Van An primary school from their teachers’ perceptions .2 Teachers’ strategies to stimulate their learners’ active participation in classroom .3 Teachers’ strategies to maintain their learners’ attention .4 Teachers’ strategies to build their learners’ self-confidence.5 Teachers’ strategies to integrate interaction into their teaching .6 Teachers’ strategies to create pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere .7 Teachers’ strategies to show their appropriate behaviors towards their learners .8 Other teachers’ suggested strategies .9 Summary of results of interview for teacher respondents .2 Discussion of results.3 Summary of major findings. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS .3 Limitation and recommendations.
85 vii LIST OF TABLES Pages Table 2.1 The conceptual framework of this study .1 Distribution of learner respondents by gender and class .1 Strategies to stimulate learners’ activeness .2 Strategies to maintain learners’ attention .3 Strategies to build learners’ self-confidence .4 Strategies to integrate interaction into teaching .5 Strategies to create pleasant and supportive classroom atmosphere .6 Strategies to display appropriate teacher behaviors .7 Summary of learners’ perceptions on their teachers’ motivational strategies .8 Results of interview for teacher respondents. 56 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the background of the study so that the research gap and the need of the study are drawn out. Following that is the aims of the research, the research questions, and the significance of the study.1 Background of the study Motivation, which is defined as the motives to initiate the learning process and then becomes a sustaining force to maintain learning to get the target, is one of the most crucial factors to the success of L2 learning (Astuti, 2013). The role of motivation has been the subject of research for years.
It is stated that motivation does have effects on students’ achievement and proficiency when learning a language (Orío, 2013). A study conducted by Bernard in 2010 to explore the relationship between motivation, classroom activities and student outcomes from elementary to intermediate level at Carnegie Mellon University found that motivation had positive effects on students’ learning outcome. Other research also emphasized the importance of motivation on students’ achievement, so it is suggested that teachers need to apply strategies to enhance students’ motivation. How to motivate students in the language classroom is “the most pressing question related to motivation” (Dornyei, 2001s, p.
Several studies have been carried out in different contexts to find out strategies which teachers can employ to increase student motivation (Ozturk and Ok, 2014; Ruesch, 2009, Alshehri 2013, Wong 2014, Ruesch et. However, almost all of them used the questionnaires to examine the perspectives and compare between students’ and teachers’ perspectives to make a conclusion of the effectiveness of motivational strategies, which is assumed to lack empirical evidence. In short, the importance of motivation in learning a language is recognized but it is a shortage when studies of this subject just base on the perceptions of students and teachers to withdraw the conclusion of positive impacts of motivational strategies. It needs to an empirical 2 research to convincingly conclude the positive effects of teachers’ motivational strategies on student motivation.
Students in different age groups have different perceptions on motivational strategies. Astuti did a study in 2013 and found out two groups of motivational strategies which were preferred by high school students. Teacher rapport with students, which includes encouragement for students, building of trust and respect with students, is the first practice to motivate students to learn. The second one is teachers’ planning decision, which consists of the kinds of classroom activities, the way of giving feedback, the management of the classroom and the choice of learning resources.
According to high school students in Astuti’s (2013) study, they are motivated when having rapport with their teachers as well as the way their teachers make plans for the lessons and classroom activities. On the other hand, another study in secondary school context reveals different perceptions of students on their teachers’ motivational strategies. Grade nine students in Cho and Teo’s (2013) study like innovative strategies, in which the pleasant and relaxed atmosphere in class is the very first preferred strategy. Using dictionary, speaking students’ mother tongue, teachers’ recognition of students’ efforts and compliments of students’ success, playing games, using other kinds of resources and other materials are the favorable strategies for ninth grade students.
The study of Juriševič and Pižorn in 2013 carried out at a primary school showed a number of differences in the perceptions of young language learners on their teachers’ motivational strategies. For young learners at the primary school, the most motivating thing to do in their language class is doing activities involving playing while they dislike reading or writing most. It can be concluded that students who are in different age group have different preference for strategies which can motivate them to learn. Particularly, young language learners, who are from seven to eleven years old, have more special characteristics than the older, such as they are more curious, more active in speaking the target language even though they do not understand thorough the meanings or they are really disciplined and obedient, 3 etc.
These features of young learners are interesting to study the factors that can motivate them. Additionally, it is suggested that further research should investigate the preference of motivational strategies of young students to see the differences from other studies (Cho and Teo, 2013). It is necessary to conduct studies on perceptions of young language learners on their teachers’ motivational strategies. In the context of Vietnam, several studies on students’ motivation and strategies to motivate students to learn English have been conducted (Tran, 2007; Doan, 2011; Phan, 2010; Luu, 2011; Nguyen, 2015).
However, those studies mainly focus on the participants at the context of universities, who are mature enough to consider the importance of English in their learning process and their future. Nguyen (2015) concludes that university students are mainly extrinsically motivated because they study English for the purposes of future career and international communication. Young learners at primary school who are at the beginning stage of learning English do not have the purposes of future career or international communication as their motivation to learn English. Moreover, the ways young learners learn are different from older ones because of their characteristics (Harmer, 2007).
A study to examine the perceptions of young learners at primary schools in the context of Vietnam is a need. In general, the importance of motivation in language teaching and learning English is emphasized. Young language learners have characteristics which differ from older students, so the young ones have different perceptions on strategies which can motivate them to learn English. In the context of Vietnam, the studies focusing on the participants of young learners are not as many as ones on older students.