Iranian EFL Learners’ Perception of the Importance and Frequency of Teachers’ Motivational Strategies

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study the perception of Iranian EFL learners of the importance andfrequency of their teachers’ motivational strategies. Preceded by a few similar studies, this researchstudy was conducted in the cultural milieu of Iran where learners have different characteristicscompared to their counterparts in other areas of the world. A total of 168 students took part in the studyand completed a Likert scale questionnaire on both importance and frequency of the motivationalstrategies in their language classrooms. The descriptive and correlational analyses revealed that there isrelative congruence between what the students regarded to be important and what their teachersperformed in the classrooms. Besides, the students’ choice of the strategies shows that they consider theteacher as the major model and source of confidence. The results are discussed with particular attentionto the cultural context of Iran.© 2018 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-accessarticle distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND)(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).