Little attention was given to explore and understand motivational strategies among English language (EL) teachers, particularly at higher education institutions (HEIs), despite the on-going interest on this matter. Identifying which strategies are adaptive and maladaptive could help them to promote student motivation in return. This study aims to identify the degree of importance and implementation of motivational strategies among EL teachers and explore to what extent they implement the strategies that they perceived as important. The online questionnaires were distributed to 49 teachers at 11 public universities in Malaysia, and ten of them were interviewed. The findings of this study suggested the implementation of motivational strategies heavily depended on teachers’ perceived motivation in teaching. The highest-rated strategy was Proper Teacher Behavior, and the least preferred was Promote Learner Autonomy, indicating that teacher behavior as an important element in ensuring effective language learning. Next, despite the findings that most students are not ready for learner autonomy, the teachers appeared to have a more positive outlook on the inclusion of learner autonomy, and this contradicts findings of previous studies in the Asian contexts. It also indicates that motivational strategies are neither cultural nor context-specific. However, some strategies are still regarded as very practical, while some are less practical in different learning situations. Future research may include private universities to contribute to the knowledge gap on the lack of information on this topic and eventually enable academics to engage in motivational strategies research across all HEIs in Malaysia.

Little attention was given to explore and understand motivational strategies among English language (EL) teachers, particularly at higher education institutions (HEIs), despite the ongoing interest on this matter. Identifying which strategies are adaptive and maladaptive could help them to promote student motivation in return. This study aims to identify the degree of importance and implementation of motivational strategies among EL teachers and explore to what extent they implement the strategies that they perceived as important. The online questionnaires were distributed to 49 teachers at 11 public universities in Malaysia, and ten of them were interviewed. The findings of this study suggested the implementation of motivational strategies heavily depended on teachers' perceived motivation in teaching. The highest-rated strategy was Proper Teacher Behavior, and the least preferred was Promote Learner Autonomy, indicating that teacher behavior as an important element in ensuring effective language learning. Next, despite the findings that most students are not ready for learner autonomy, the teachers appeared to have a more positive outlook on the inclusion of learner autonomy, and this contradicts findings of previous studies in the Asian contexts. It also indicates that motivational strategies are neither cultural nor context-specific. However, some strategies are still regarded as very practical, while some are less practical in different learning situations. Future research may include private universities to contribute to the knowledge gap on the lack of information on this topic and eventually enable academics to engage in motivational strategies research across all HEIs in Malaysia.

This study intended to fill the gap of undergraduates’ academic motivation in Malaysia and Indonesia where, to date, little study has been done. It investigated and compared undergraduates’ academic motivation levels in English online classes in two universities in both countries. Online questionnaires on students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) and self-efficacy towards online learning adapted from Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) were distributed to 206 undergraduates from University A in Malaysia and 174 undergraduates from University B in Indonesia. Switching from physical traditional to online classes is the new norm that could be challenging and demotivating, but the results showed that the students from both universities achieved mostly high mean scores of the SRL and self-efficacy items. This indicated that their academic motivation levels were high, they were in control over their learning process, and have positive perceptions towards online classes. This uniformity also implied that although English is a second language in Malaysia, and a foreign language in Indonesia, the undergraduates were not affected by their linguistics, and institutional contexts. This study has contributed towards the extension of the current knowledge involving undergraduates’ academic motivation towards learning English online and suggested that teachers could help to strategise students’ SRL and self-efficacy to increase their English language performances, particularly in the pandemic era. Further research could explore the effects of academic motivation on learning outcomes or language performance as this could assist teachers to improve learners’ English proficiency in online classes.

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