Introduction

In the writing classroom, motivational teaching strategies, described as those instructional interventions that teachers use to stimulate and maintain student motivation, might be helpful in alleviating the difficulties experienced by EFL learners. Composing in a foreign language is, indeed, a daunting task for most students. Much effort and time is required from them to take control over the writing process. The use of motivational strategies would assist students by creating learning experiences that promote their enthusiastic engagement in the learning-to-write process. It would also help them survive the challenges associated with writing in a foreign language.

In teacher training contexts, more particularly, creating a classroom environment that is conducive to learning is an instructional requisite, as teacher-trainees are not only expected to acquire appropriate writing skills, but also to teach these skills to generations of pupils. In the Algerian context, however, many teacher-trainees do not achieve an adequate level of academic writing competence, despite three consecutive years of EFL writing instruction as part of the teacher training curriculum. Students’ grade records, consulted with the permission of the head of the department of English show, for example, that 43.67% of second-year students (academic year 2015-2016) and 33.55% of third-year students enrolled at the teacher training college of Bouzaréah (academic year 2016-2017) obtained below-average scores on the writing examination. Given that language learning is a multi-faceted process, the reason why students fail to develop effective writing skills cannot be attributed to a single factor. Part of the answer may lie in their lack of motivation to write academic texts in the English language. Research has clearly demonstrated a strong association between motivation and L2 performance and achievement (e.g., Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993; Gardner et al., 1997). Because the role of the language teacher is seen as crucial in promoting student motivation and creating optimal learning environments, teacher-trainees’ lack of motivation may be related to their teachers’ motivational teaching practices. Some EFL writing teachers may not use L2 motivational strategies or, presumably, may not implement them in consonance with the importance attached to them by their teacher-trainees.

The present study is of significance because it adds to our knowledge of EFL teachers’ motivational practices and the areas of mismatch between their practices and their students’ perceptions. To our knowledge, no study has yet investigated the match/mismatch between students’ perceptions of motivational strategies and their teachers’ practices. The results obtained would provide a plausible explanation for students’ insufficient levels of writing motivation and achievement in the Algerian context of teacher education.

In fact, research carried out in the field of ESL/EFL motivational strategies, which has mainly been devoted to investigating their usefulness, provides clear evidence that motivational strategies do enhance EFL learners’ motivation. For example, a large-scale study involving 27 EFL teachers and over 1,300 EFL students in South Korea, led by Guilloteaux and Dörnyei (2008), showed a strong positive correlation between teachers’ motivational practices and students’ motivation. The other empirical studies that have tested the effectiveness of motivational strategies are those conducted by Alrabai (2014) and Moscovskyet al. (2013) in Saudi Arabia, Papi and Abdollahzadeh (2011) in Iran, Sugita and Takeushi (2010) in Japan, and Bernaus and Gardner (2008) in Spain.

   This research also attempts to gain further insights into teacher-trainees’ perceptions of the motivational strategies that are found to be largely underused relative to the importance attached to them. More importantly, it contributes to our understanding of the factors that shape Algerian teacher-trainees’ perceptions of motivational strategies. Furthermore, the current study has implications for EFL writing instruction in the Algerian teacher education context.

1.               Research Questions

     This two-phase (i.e., quantitative and qualitative) design study addresses the following research questions:

Quantitative research question (Phase I):

What motivational strategies are largely underused relative to the importance attached to them by EFL teacher-trainees?

The quantitative results obtained in phase I of the study are used to investigate the qualitative research question:

    Qualitative research question (phase II):

What additional information does the follow-up interview provide about students’ perceptions of the mismatching strategies?

1.               Methodology

a.                 Participants

     The sample of students consists of first- and second-year students enrolled as middle and secondary school teacher-trainees at the teacher training college of Bouzaréah (academic year 2015-2016). During the initial quantitative phase, teacher-trainees (18 males and 102 females) are selected using stratified random sampling technique from a population of 530 students. The qualitative phase involves a subset of 26 self-selected teacher-trainees (3 males s and 23 females).

b.                 Instruments

Analysis of the results is based on data collected during two different phases. The first phase involves the use of a structured questionnaire. The aim is to obtain data on how important EFL teacher-trainees perceive motivational teaching strategies and how frequently writing teachers use the same set of strategies. A five-point scale is used to measure the perceived importance and frequency of use of each strategy (e.g., not important at all =1/very important =5, Never =1/very frequently = 5). The 39 motivational strategies (cf. Appendix) included in the questionnaire are largely based on Dörnyei’s (2001) motivational teaching framework for ESL/EFL classrooms. A number of motivational strategies are adapted to fit the situated context of the EFL writing classroom. More specifically, these strategies are redefined with reference to the EFL writing skill. The questionnaire is assessed for internal consistency and pre-tested to check for potentially unclear wording.

     To gain more insights into teacher-trainees’ perceptions of the mismatching strategies, 26 students take part in a focus group interview. During the interview, the informants are asked whether they view these strategies as motivationally significant or not. They are also asked to justify their answers.

c.Procedure

The questionnaire is handed to 20 teacher-trainees in each group (6 groups). It was administered during April 2016. For results analysis, descriptive statistics and calculations are performed. In line with Cheng and Dornyei’s (2007) recommendations, the level of match between motivational strategy use and perceptions is measured by calculating the difference of the importance z-score and the frequency z-score of each strategy and microstrategy. The z-score represents the number of standard deviations a data point is from the mean and can be calculated using the formula z = (X - μ) / σ, where X stands for the value of the element, μ for the population mean, and σ for the standard deviation. The focus group interview is conducted with two groups of 6 students each, and two groups of 7 students each, during May 2016. Analysis of the interview responses consists of 1) transcribing the answers in a word processor, 2) conducting a pre-coding of the transcripts, 3) coding the content into descriptive categories and sub-categories, and 4) combining categories into themes and sub-themes.

2.               Analysis and Interpretation of the Findings

a.                 Largely Underused Strategies Relative to Their Perceived Importance

     Analysis of the results (cf. appendix) obtained from the questionnaire indicates that the lowest z-score values are obtained by the motivational strategies: ‘task-related interest’ (-2.6), ‘autonomy’ (-2.12), ‘L2-related values’ (-1.6), and ‘evaluation’ (-1.18). The z-scores (cf. appendix A) associated with these strategies, below the -0.5 threshold, suggest that they are largely underused relative to the importance attached to them by the respondents. Analysis at the microstrategy level reveals that the strategies subsumed under these scales obtain a negative z-score which ranges from -0.02 (check students’ understanding of previously covered material through questioning, assigning homework, etc.) to -1.95 (provide students with feedback about their progress).

b.                 Shedding Further Light on Teacher-trainees’ Perceptions of the Mismatching Strategies

     The participants provide unequivocally affirmative answers with respect to the importance they attach to ‘autonomy’, ‘task-related interest’, ‘L2-related values’, and ‘evaluation’ strategies. This is concordant with the high means obtained by these strategies as indicated by the statistical results associated with the importance questionnaire. Responses to the follow-up question are thematically grouped into categories related to why students perceive ‘autonomy’, ‘task-related interest’, ‘L2-related values’, and ‘evaluation’ as motivationally significant strategies.

     Elias et al. (1997) define social and emotional learning as the process through which we learn to recognize, manage, and convey our emotions in a manner that facilitates social relationships, learning, and problem solving. They identify four major components of emotional and social learning: self-awareness, control of impulsivity, working in cooperation, and caring about oneself and others. In the current context of study, the motivational value of some strategies arises from their potential to promote socially and emotionally engaging learning. In other words, these strategies would offer students the opportunity to relate emotionally and socially to their classmates and teachers, promote individual and social accountability, and build a trustful teacher-student relationship. As one of the respondents interestingly describes:

Creative tasks like poems are a means for me to dig out my emotions. It is the best way for me to learn who I am and to make other discover the person that I am. I can also learn about how other people feel. It creates a bond between me and my classmates.

Another informant explains:

Designing and running a course will make me more responsible. For example, when I present a lesson, I will make sure that my classmates are provided with the right information. It also makes me feel that I am an adult and that my teacher trusts me.

   A meta-analysis conducted by Durlak et al. (2011), involving kindergarten through high school students, reported that social-emotional programms in educational contexts exerted positive effects in terms of attitudes about self, others, and school; they also improved students’ academic performance on achievement tests and grades. Zins et al. (2004) assert that social-emotional learning is a critical ingredient of learning. They add that it helps students explore the social and emotional dimensions of their classroom effectively and creates positive classroom environments wherein students can actively engage in learning. Elias et al (1997) recommend that teachers integrate the social and emotional needs of students with academics, thereby providing the ‘missing piece’ to their learning.

    Teacher-trainees’ responses remind us of the inherently social nature of education, and, therefore, the necessity of incorporating the emotional and social aspects of learning in teaching. Besides, the importance of emotional and social learning has been documented both in relation to academic and non-academic outcomes.

     Satisfaction is associated with the outcome of an activity that can be derived from extrinsic rewards, such as praise or a good grade, or intrinsic rewards, such as enjoyment or pride (Root, 2009). For many informants, the importance of performing some activities successfully, i.e., coping with challenging tasks and planning and presenting the course, is directly linked to experiences of increased personal satisfaction. This point is reflected in the following response:

Challenging tasks are very motivating. They will allow us to show ourselves that we have real capacities. When you do a challenging task you feel you are defying yourself. So, if you are able to think or to reason in a good way to do the challenging task, it is rewarding. You feel very good about yourself.

     Our findings join those obtained by Miller and Meece (1999), who relate American students’ preference for high-challenge tasks with positive emotions such as feelings of creativity and satisfaction. In fact, satisfaction over successful achievement is a type of intrinsic motivation referred to by Vallerand (1997) as IM-accomplishment (Intrinsic Motivation-accomplishment). IM-accomplishment is a sensation resulting from an attempt to master a task or achieve a challenging activity.

   It is worth mentioning, nonethess that the motivational value of the aforementioned strategies is tied up to the teacher-trainees’ anticipated success in accomplishing the corresponding activities. It is, therefore, important to plan activities that involve reasonable objectives and create opportunities for student success. This is even more important in view of the evidence supporting the positive effects of learner satisfaction on various learning and motivational processes. This includes increased self-efficacy, higher perceived task value, motivation to continue effort to learn, and improved strategic planning (Zimmerman & Clearly, 2009). Adding to this, adaptive emotions help students create a mental representation of their goals and challenges and improve their disposition toward creative problem-solving (Pekrun, 2009). From a biological viewpoint, positive emotions derived from engaging in challenging tasks are associated with dopamine release. This neurotransmitter is believed to improve memory by facilitating the encoding and the retrieval of information (Wlodkowski, 2008).

Providing Relevance by Relating the Lesson/Material to Students’ Interests and Future Teaching Career

     Keller (1983, cited in Crookes & Schmidt, 1991) defines relevance as the extent to which the course content or instruction meet students’ personal goals, interests, and career goals. In the current context, relevance, as embodied in certain types of tasks or activities, seems to play a crucial role in determining the perceived importance of some motivational strategies. The strategies in question are those intended to accommodate students' personal interests and feelings, create situations that help students identify with their future roles as EFL teachers, and highlight the practical relevance of successful EFL writing. In commenting about these strategies, one teacher-trainee says:

I don’t get inspired from describing a refrigerator. I mean there’s nothing exciting about it. I like my teacher, but I hate these kinds of topics. Many things are inspiring, but not a refrigerator. I like to describe things that really interest me, such as a place that I visited or something like that.

Another informant explains:

When you present a lesson, you will learn how to interact with the others and build self-confidence when you are exposed to others. You will also learn how to prepare and present a lesson. It is very important because we are going to be teachers. After five years of study, you will be ready for teaching. You won’t be afraid.

   With reference to adult education, Wlodkowski (2008) asserts that newly acquired knowledge takes on a more concrete dimension when students are offered the opportunity to apply it in situations involving people, perspectives, and reactions approximating authentic instances. From a research-based perspective, evidence from interest research, intrinsic motivation, and goal theory indicates that teaching practices aimed at fostering meaning and personal relevance generate greater engagement and motivation (Urdan & Turner, 2005).        

   Relevance is intuitively appealing to most us. We, human beings, construe and determine the quality of our experiences in terms of how well they reflect our interests and aspirations. In educational contexts, fostering relevance is of utmost importance. This is because many students fail to perceive the connection between their interests and goals and the outside world.  For Chambers (1999, p.37), “if the teacher is to motivate pupils to learn, then relevance has to be the red thread permeating activities”.         

     Some comments made by the teacher-trainees suggest that some strategies are deemed important because they are perceived as direct expression of teacher care. Four strategies are identified: ‘check students’ understanding of previously covered material through questioning, assigning homework, etc.’, ‘provide students with feedback about their progress’, ‘include tasks that allow students to express their opinions/feelings/experiences’, and ‘raise students’ awareness of the strategies they can use to motivate themselves’. This view is exemplified in the following statement:

It is very important for the students to know their level, and especially the points where they need to improve themselves. It makes you feel that the teacher is having a real interest in his students.

Another informant responds:

Raise students’ awareness of the strategies that will help them to motivate themselves is important, in my point of view. I think it means that the teacher cares about us and that she understands that we may sometimes feel like discouraged or fed up with studies.

     It seems that some behavioural patterns are universally regarded as characterizing caring teachers. In fact, research on the topic identified behaviours such as demonstrating concern in students’ interests and providing students’ with constructive feedback as instances of pedagogical caring (e.g., Bulach et al., 1996; Wentzel, 1997). The importance of communicating to students that we, teachers, care about them has been emphasized by many educationalists. For Teven and McCroskey (1997, p.1), “the more that students perceive their teacher cares about them, the more the students will care about and appreciate the class and the instructor”. It should be noted, however, that the idea of pedagogical caring is hardly applicable in large classes. This issue is raised by McCroskey (1992, cited in Teven & McCroskey, 1997), who recommends that teachers develop communication skills that foster students’ perception of care.

   In the present context of research, the question that arises is how to ensure that every student is provided with feedback about his/her progress and that every student has understood the material presented. One option is to tackle the root cause of the problem by reducing the number of students per class. This measure would facilitate the task of the teachers and create opportunities for their students to experience the effects related to perceived teacher care. In this regard, a consistent body of research has documented the benefits of perceived care. For example, Wentzel (1997) found a significant association between perceived caring and middle school students’ effort to achieve academic and social responsibility goals. An experimental study led by Teven (2007) explored the effects of teacher caring behaviours and misbehaviours independently. The results indicated that university teachers displaying caring behaviours were more likely to be perceived by their undergraduate students as competent and trustworthy compared to non-caring teachers. Also, the students tended to evaluate the course content and the instructor more positively.

The most recurrent theme in relation to the microstrategies ‘use authentic texts’ and ‘encourage students to explore the British/American culture’ is the notion of cultural awareness. Many respondents report valuing these strategies because they would afford them the opportunity to know about the cultural specificities of the English-speaking communities , as opposed to their own culture, and translated in the way they tackle and write about the topic. The responses provided by two informants illustrate the point made above:

-        It allows me to see how English native people write and think about a given topic.  When we write, you know it’s an Algerian who is writing because we think in Algerian Arabic. We should know the difference between the two in order to write good English.

-            We are English language learners. I think teachers should use authentic text frequently. It is a way to discover cultures through the writing of native speakers, and know about the differences that exist between their culture and ours.

     Many specialists assert that effective language learning cannot go without students’ awareness of the cultural codes of the target community. For example, Sun (2007) maintains that communicative competence in the target language cannot be achieved if the different views of people in different cultures are not taken into consideration. He goes on arguing that learning English as an entity devoid of culture would amount to learning meaningless symbols or symbols that are associated with the wrong meanings. In a similar vein, Kitao (1991) explains that many linguistic features express notions that are culturally-bound and thus require language students to hold a different worldview if they are to perceive semantic subtleties. Tavares and Cavalcanti (1996) take a broader perspective on the issue of cultural awareness when they state that “the development of people's cultural awareness leads us to more critical thinking as citizens with political and social understanding of our own and other communities” (p.1).

   Sun’s (2007) and Kitao’s (1991) comments, in particular, are relevant to the context of EFL writing. In fact, many students tend to encode meanings using their mother tongue, rather than the target language, as a base of reference, which may sometimes result in awkward sentences. Exposing students to cultural products, such as authentic texts, would help them perceive and gradually internalize the different ways in which the target language expresses various meanings.

Many strategies are viewed as a means of circumventing classroom boredom and breaking up routine. This is a recurrent theme identified throughout the four focus discussions since it emerges in relation to various strategies, including ‘use authentic texts’, ‘include tasks that incorporate creative elements’, ‘include challenging tasks’, ‘vary the learning tasks’, ‘involve the students in preparing and presenting the course’, and ‘have students correct their own written production’. The teacher-trainees’ view is exemplified in the following quote:

We should be given the choice of the topic, so that we don’t get bored. Our teacher always gives us the same topic to write about. If it’s not technology, it’s computers. If it’s not computers, it’s the internet.

Another teacher-trainee puts:

To vary the learning tasks is important because doing the same thing is boring. The most annoying thing in our class is to repeat the same introductory paragraph for several weeks.

     The routinized and impliedly boring nature of learning is naturally not specific to the current learning environment. Schunk et al. (2014) take stock of the current situation in school contexts, pointing out that subjects and courses do not generate positive emotions but are instead a source of boredom and anxiety among students. Boredom can be detrimental to learning since it most often results in detachment from the learning content. For Pekrun (2009), negative emotions such as boredom have a pernicious effect on motivation, as opposed to positive emotions such as enjoyment of learning. It is also argued that debilitating emotions hinder academic achievement, lead to school dropouts, and affect students’ psychological and physical health (Zeidner, 1998, cited in Pekrun, 2009). Moreover, Wlodkowski (2008) associates the long-term effect of boredom with a decrease in dendritic growth, suggesting that lack of stimulation hampers the growth of complex neural pathways. Finally, empirical research investigating the role of emotions in classroom contexts revealed a negative correlation between boredom and measures of motivation, study behaviour, achievement, and self-regulated learning. Conversely, a positive correlation was found between boredom and irrelevant thinking and external regulation (Pekrun, 2009).

    It is, therefore, teachers’ responsibility to bring together all the conditions required to break up classroom monotony and cancel out the negative consequences associated with classroom boredom.

     Many students report ascribing particular importance to the strategies that would help them improve their writing skills. For example, ‘evaluation’ strategies (i.e., ‘provide students with feedback about their progress’, ‘check students’ understanding of previously covered material through questioning, assigning homework, etc.’, and ‘have students correct their own written production’) are believed to provide a source of information that would help students gauge their performance and redirect their effort in an attempt to remedy potential areas of deficiency. A couple of other ‘task-related interest’ strategies (i.e., ‘include challenging tasks and ‘include tasks that incorporate creative elements’) are believed to prompt greater effort and desire to do better than usual. According to a majority of the students, this would ultimately help them refine their writing skills. The responses of two teacher-trainees are illustrative:

-        She should give us homework, projects, simple things like this and check our work later on. It will be effective. This will oblige students to search and work in the home and improve their skills.

-        When we correct our own mistakes, we won’t commit them in the future. We will avoid them next time and write better essays.

   The participants consider ‘evaluation’ and ‘task-related interest’ strategies to be closely related to their learning. Empirical research done in relation to these strategies tends to prove students right. For instance, the positive impact of self-assessment on EFL learners’ writing skills has been substantiated by a number of experimental studies (e.g., Bing, 2016; Fahimi & Rahimi, 2014; Javaherbakhsh, 2010). It is suggested that students’ heightened consciousness of their errors and greater involvement during the self-assessment activity are factors that lead to greater improvement. Similarly, the use of creative tasks, at both university and school levels, was found to foster students’ writing abilities (e.g., Tütüniş & Küçükali, 2014; Khoii & Amin, 2016). Tin (2013) explains that creative tasks improve language learning by prompting students to extend their vocabulary and grammar in an attempt to construct new meanings. Moreover, cognitively demanding tasks were found to generate greater accuracy, through directing students’ attention on control of lexical structures (Kuiken & Vedder, 2007; Kuiken & Vedder, 2008).

        Because ‘evaluation’ and ‘task-related interest’ strategies are seen by the teacher-trainees as bearing direct relevance to their learning, top priority should be given to planning and implementing them.

Conclusion

     The present study investigated Algerian EFL teacher-trainee’s perceptions of motivational teaching strategies in the writing classroom. More particularly, it aimed to cast further light on the motivational strategies that were found to be seriously underutilized (by EFL teachers) relative to the importance ascribed to them (by their teacher-trainees). The results obtained from the first phase of the current study revealed that a number of motivational strategies, including ‘task-related interest’, ‘autonomy’, ‘L2-related values’, and ‘evaluation’ were substantially underused compared to their perceived importance. Analysis of the focus group interviews conducted with the teacher-trainees during the second phase of the study indicated that the mismatching strategies were viewed as motivationally significant because of their potential to: 1) promote socially and emotionally engaging learning, 2) raise students’ cultural awareness, 3) circumvent classroom boredom , 4) increase students’ sense of satisfaction with their abilities 5) provide relevance by relating lessons/materials to students’ interests and future teaching career, 6) foster perceived teacher caring, and 7) enhance students’ writing skills. These findings suggest that promoting EFL teacher-trainees’ writing motivation would entail, in the current teaching context, adjusting the use of the above mentioned strategies in line with the teacher-trainees’ perceptions, i.e., implementing these strategies on a more regular basis. Also, understanding of the factors that affect teacher-trainees’ perception of motivational teaching strategies would help EFL writing teachers develop motivationally relevant practices. However, an important preliminary step in this direction requires that teachers develop a vision of motivational teaching that includes ways of promoting students’ personal experiences and interests