Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices of Motivational Strategies in EFL Classrooms and Learners’ Attitudes

Abstract

This study reports on EFL teachers' personal beliefs regarding motivational strategies, and details how teachers apply motivational strategies in the EFL Saudi classrooms. A discussion is included about the extent to which motivational strategies influence EFL learners' attitudes toward language learning, because of the need of using motivational strategies in EFL classrooms at Taif university, this research used a mixed approach research design, and accordingly, the researcher used one questionnaire that was adapted Dornyie & Cheng (2007) to ask about eighteen teachers' beliefs concerning motivational strategies and used a similar questionnaire with 150 first-year students to evaluate how their teachers apply the motivational strategies in the EFL classroom. Students' attitudes toward L2 learning were further measured by another adapted questionnaire of Eshghinejad (2016). Also, 10 students divided to high and low achievement were interviewed to provide in-depth investigation and to seek reliable results. The findings revealed that the EFL teachers believed in and used motivational strategies in their classrooms. In addition, there was a statistically significant correlation between what they believe and what they practice. From the data on learners' attitudes, results reflected that the students have positive attitudes toward language learning especially in the emotional aspects. The interviews revealed that high and low achieving students reported positive attitudes to the behavioral and cognitive aspects, while they showed little to the emotional aspects of language learning.