Exploring and fostering students' motivation in the EFL classroom

Abstract

The present paper aims to discover the role of motivation in EFL teaching and learning, specifically, in the Spanish context. The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) Analyse students’ motivation in the EFL classroom comparing learners’ attitudes in two different groups, humanities second year bachillerato and artistic second year bachillerato; 2) propose several activities which will motivate students in the classroom. Therefore, we will see a more appealing and innovative teaching unit which fosters learners’ motivation and participation in the EFL classroom. Taking into account teachers’ complaints in secondary schools, the English language has suffered several changes in methodology. According to them, students had a passive role in class due to traditional methodologies but nowadays students are more active and collaborative with the arrival of communicative approaches. Nevertheless and despite these changes in methodology, oral skills remain poorly treated in class and students feel demotivated because they do not have too many opportunities to practise the language with real life situations. On the contrary, teachers have been providing students with lots of grammar units decontextualised and teaching the four skills through non authentic materials and outdated resources. The problem that most of secondary teachers face is the lack of enthusiasm students present when they learn a foreign language, more specifically, English. Taking advantage of the educational improvements that have appeared in the English field these days, teachers should be able to choose the best resources and methodologies in order to foster students’ motivation. All these statements will be proved throughout this study by theoretical research, attractive proposals and authentic data taken from a real secondary school.