Teachers’ Motivational Strategies In Efl Classroom: An Observational Study
Abstract
This research aims to investigate motivational strategies used by junior school English
Teachers in Yogyakarta. This is an observational study which is qualitative in nature. The primary
data were obtained from classroom observation. Two English teachers from different classrooms in
junior high schools participated in this study. They were recruited because they have taught the
English language. The result of this study shows that both Teacher 1 (T1) and Teacher 2 (T2) used
some motivational strategies such as: Attention ( e.g. Teacher used more friendly greetings with
friendly intonation, Teacher used ice breaking), Relevance ( e.g. Teacher gave students assignments
based on materials given, Teacher created a comfortable learning environment) Confidence ( e.g.
Teacher explained the learning expectation, Teacher challenged the students to do the task) and
Satisfaction (e.g. Teacher praised the students, for example: by saying good job). Furthermore, the
most frequently used strategies from Teacher 1 are motive matching where she often created a
comfortable learning environment for students while inquiry arousal becomes the most frequently
used strategy by T2. T2 always asks a lot of questions as open-ended questions to attract students
to focus and review the last meeting materials. The result of this study suggests further research to
conduct another type of qualitative studies involving interviews to get rich data and explore more
about the motivational strategies in English class.