Teachers’ reinforcement: Building students’ motivation to learn English

This paper aimed at investigating teachers’ efforts in building EFL students’ motivation in learning English at one of the junior high schools in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. This study employed descriptive qualitative research, where data were collected from two English teachers by conducting a semi-structured detailed interview, and from 10 students who excel in English through open-ended questionnaires. The second language teaching practice motivational framework proposed by Dörnyei (2001) was used in analyzing the data. These strategies include creating the basic motivational conditions, generating initial motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation, and encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation. The results indicated that teachers were among the sources of the students’ motivation for learning English. As a facilitator in teaching, the teacher’s efforts had opened the students’ mindset about the importance of English for their studies and future. The teachers’ efforts in motivating the students were related to the construct of encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation. Among the motivation strategies which attracted the students most was when senior students who succeeded in English were invited to class to encourage and learn with them. Based on the students’ responses, this further boosted their efforts to learn in class so that they, too, could become successful.