The Teacher as a Motivational Factor in Enhancing Students’ Communicative Proficiency A Case Study of First-Year Students at Biskra University

Abstract

One of the major problems faced by the students of English is their lack of motivation to learn the language and their inability to communicate. The students have difficulties in holding a conversation appropriately with their teachers or their mates. To examine this problem, the present work establishes the role of the teacher as a motivational factor in enhancing students’ communicative proficiency. Along this study, we tried to prove the necessity of motivation for success. More importantly, we tended to cast light on the teacher as the main character in triggering learners’ motivation through the use of an array of strategies and techniques advanced in recent communicative approaches. This dissertation strives at pointing to the difficulties that first-year students encounter in terms of motivation and communication and at investigating the role of the teacher in motivating learners and enhancing their communicative abilities through the use of motivational and communicative strategies. In an attempt to investigate the data and suggest appropriate solutions to the learners’ problems, we relied on two tools of research: (a) learners’ questionnaire and (b) teachers’ questionnaire administered to the first-year students of the English Department, University of Biskra and to their teachers of oral and written expression. The data gathering tools revealed that students find difficulties in speaking English because they lack motivation and they are not trained according to recent research for developing communication. The results showed that applying some motivational techniques and strategies for developing communication, the teacher proved to be a key determinant to increase his students’ motivation, to develop their autonomy and to enhance their communicative proficiency. We expect this study to be beneficial for teachers in that it would help them exploit the communicative teaching strategies that motivate learners and to improve their speaking skill. Motivating students to achieve communicative proficiency may not be achieved without teachers’ awareness of the recent research in the Syllabus Design, Methodology, Didactics, Applied Linguistics and Psychology of Education.