Motivating english foreign language students to speak in English classrooms

This study aims chiefly at identifying the factors that demotivate EFL students from speaking English in the English classrooms, and as part of solution; it aims at indentifying the motivational factors and strategies that can contribute in motivating EFL students to speak actively in the English classrooms. Thus, the study is of both quantitative and qualitative nature as it discusses the frequency and kinds of the factors that motivate and/or demotivate EFL students from speaking English in the classrooms. To investigate the aim of the study, the questionnaire and interviews were administered to the participants. The questionnaire was administered to 109 3rd year EFL students who were randomly selected from College of Education, Salahaddin University for the academic year of 2014-2015. However, in order to obtain rich and more reliable data, ten EFL students and ten teachers were also interviewed at the above- mentioned university. The researcher has come up with a number of findings including the following most highlighted ones: Despite the students' positive attitudes towards speaking English, the majority of EFL students are not competent for speaking English. However, both quantitative and qualitative results revealed that the linguistic factors like mispronunciation, lack of grammatical patterns, lack of vocabulary, lack of knowledge and fear of making linguistic mistakes; the psychological factors such as fear of making mistakes, fear of being lounged at by classmates, shyness, less confidence and anxiety, and the classroom environmental factors like unfriendly classroom, lack of enough time, large number of students and the infrequent use of technological utilities and motivational strategies like role-play and presentation are main factors that demotivate students from speaking English actively in the classes. The shortcomings in the curriculum, cultural variations and students being inaccurate and influent are also found as micro factors that impeded students from speaking English. The findings also indicated that teachers' use of words of applauses, allocating more time, providing friendly classroom atmosphere and allowing students to choose topics of discussion are among the most prominent factors that contribute in motivating EFL students to speak in the classrooms. Moreover, using technological utilities, inviting native speakers and the use of CLT (Community Language Teaching) are also found as motivating factors to encourage students to participate in speaking activities in the classrooms. Furthermore, as part of solution, the findings indicated that the strategies such as applying role-play, debate and problem-solving, employing group/pair work discussion, providing friendly learning environment and raising students' confidence are very important to engage students in speaking activities. The teachers also reported that providing students with different activities, asking them to do presentation, adopting student-centered approach, paying attention to individual needs and preventing students from using L1 are among strategies teachers can use to help students engage in speaking activities. Finally, the study presented some pedagogical implications including providing students with adequate motivation, vocabulary and up to date teaching materials. However, teachers should adopt student-centered approach, provide topics which reflect students' needs, celebrate and reward the students' success and pay more attention to the employment of role-play and group/pair work discussion to motivate EFL students to speak English in the English classrooms.