Motivational strategies of novice and experienced EFL teachers

The thesis focuses on a study whose aim was to look at differences and similarities between a novice and an experienced EFL teacher’s beliefs about the importance of motivational strategies and their use of these strategies in class. In such regard, the thesis consists of the theoretical part, which analyses the basic theoretical concepts (novice and experienced teachers, motivational strategies), and the research part organized into sections focusing on aims, sample, instruments and procedures and results and discussion of the study. The study was conducted on two EFL teachers (one novice and one experienced teacher) and 63 learners of English. In order to obtain the necessary data, both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. The results showed that the novice teacher used all four types of motivational strategies (creating the basic motivational conditions, generating initial motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation and encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation) with a higher frequency than the experienced teacher. In addition to this, the novice teacher was found to use more frequently the strategies of promoting learners’ autonomy and the strategies of encouraging learners to work in groups toward the same goal. On the other hand, the experienced teacher was found to use more frequently the strategies of creating anxiety-free conditions and was as well found to notice more frequently learners’ progress and to provide them with positive feedback. Although the results of this study can serve as hypotheses for quantitative research on a larger teacher sample, they should not be taken for granted since the use of motivational strategies can be influenced by teachers’ personality, teaching style, but also by some exterior factors, such as the type of learners, the type of school, cultural context etc