17042

17042

Professor-Student Rapport an​d Student Motivation: The Case of EAP classes at the Iran University of Science an​d Technology

كارشناسي ارشد

Foreign Languages

June 2016

Dr. S. Vaezi

Dr. A. Nayernia

زبان

1396/01/19

1/1/1900 12:00:00 AM

Abstract Professor-student rapport, which is a topic of significance in general education as well as language teaching has lead to numerous positive student outcomes including high student motivation in the academic context of universities. In some contexts, however, unmotivated an​d unengaged undergraduate students have been observed recently. Consequently, calls have been made for faculty in university classrooms to teach classrooms by creating a hospitable learning environment helping students better engage in the learning process. One possible way of providing such an environment is by enhancing professor/student rapport. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between professor-student rapport an​d students’ motivation as well as the prediction of motivation among EAP students. The descriptive correlational research was conducted on 217 male an​d female EAP students in various fields of engineering in the Foreign Language Department of the University of Science an​d Technology. The data was collected by means of two questionnaires: Professor-Student Rapport Scale (PSRS) developed by Wilson, Ryan, an​d Pugh (2010) to explore the nature an​d quality of instructor-student relationship an​d the Students’ Motivational State Questionnaire (SMSQ) used in the 2008-2009 comparative survey project in Japan, China, an​d Iran by Taguchi, Magid, & Papi (2009). In order to better understand the thoughts an​d beliefs of Iranian learners of English, the Persian versions of both questionnaires were administered to the students during one session. The findings suggest that professor-student rapport is significantly correlated with EAP students’ motivation in the expected direction, an​d the scale is the predictor (30% of common variance) of motivation on SMSQ. Specifically, the rapport scale correlated positively with all the subscales of motivation, an​d instrumentality-promotion aspect of motivation was reported to be the most influenced by rapport (27% of common variance). Lastly, the rapport scale correlated negatively with English anxiety as was expected.