Stdent motivation in individual and pair work

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate whether learner motivation differs when EFL learners carry out a certain language learning task, i.e. translation, in pairs or individually. The participants were two English language teachers and a total of 31 seventh grade students (with pre-intermediate level of proficiency) at Quantum College, which is a private secondary school in Armenia. Eight texts of the same difficulty level were chosen for translation from English into Armenian. The experiment lasted for four weeks (students met twice a week). The participants were divided into two groups and these groups, switching turns, completed eight tasks individually or in pairs. Three data collection instruments were used to collect data for the study. (1) The lessons were observed by the teacher- researcher and field notes were taken, (2) students filled out a motivation questionnaire after each task, and (3) a selected number of students were interviewed after each task completion and two English language teachers, each teaching one of the two groups of students participating in the study, were interviewed at the end of the study. The data collected through the field notes and interviews were analyzed qualitatively, and the data collected through the questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively using t-test analysis. The analyses indicated that both individual and pair work contributed to student motivation in English language learning, and that the difference of student motivation for both modes of task completion was not significant.