Teachers’ appraisal of affective strategies in teaching foreign language oral tasks.

Abstract

The problematic issue of teachers’ effectiveness is highly linked to their motivation and affect. On one hand, to be affective, one has to possess certain qualities at the different stages of the teaching/ learning process. Teacher quality is not only the prerequisites but also everything they do. On the other hand, to enhance motivation and communication, teachers should involve learners in every class activity where they have less teaching and focus their attention on the learners. Therefore, some learner-centred methods should be implemented such as task-based teaching which takes into account some aspects of motivation, confidence, anxiety, language ability, and the learning setting. In such a complex problem of teaching Oral Expression, the aim of the study was to explore teachers’ appraisal of affective strategies in teaching foreign language tasks so as to answer the following question: do teachers use a task-based design and whether they appraise affective strategies in teaching foreign language oral tasks. The study hypothesizes that when teachers appraise affective strategies, they would reach affective teaching. This main hypothesis needed to be checked by three underlying hypotheses: when teachers appraise affective strategies and use task based teaching, their teaching quality would be enhanced, their practices would be effective; and they would reach the objectives of learnercenteredness. The study was conducted in three Algerian Universities through a mixed method using the concurrent triangulation design. The data collected revealed that there is a huge gap in teacher quality which led to a deficiency in their practice. To compensate that shortage in teacher quality and education, alternative solutions might fill in the gap and solve some problems. By the end of this research, two software tools were designed to help teachers to evaluate their cognition and practice as well as to be evaluated by others. Further, a model of sample motivating tasks was provided based on the self–system model and task-based design.