EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of Motivational Strategies in the Chinese Tertiary Educational Context

EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of Motivational Strategies in the Chinese Tertiary Educational Context | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of Motivational Strategies in the Chinese Tertiary Educational Context Chun-guang TIAN This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-7421565/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Although Dörnyei’s (2001) taxonomy of motivational strategies has shaped L2 motivation research for two decades, its empirical fit in Chinese tertiary educational context—and the degree of alignment between teachers’ and learners’ espoused beliefs—remains further explored. This study offers the first multisite, mixed-methods investigation to fill that gap. Following a three-stage design, we conducted ( 1 ) semistructured interviews with 30 university EFL instructors; ( 2 ) large-scale online questionnaires (teachers, n = 251; students, n = 1,330) after pilot validation; and ( 3 ) follow-up interviews (30 teachers; 60 students). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified a seven-factor, 29-item model (proper teacher behavior, self-confidence enhancement, goal-orientedness, group cohesiveness, learner autonomy, task stimulation, and L2-related value) that demonstrated configural and metric invariance across stakeholder groups. The results of logistic regression revealed that teachers prioritized strategies linked to goal-orientedness and professional demeanour, whereas students valued autonomy support and affective engagement. The findings corroborate the contextual robustness of Dörnyei’s framework while highlighting nuanced stakeholder discrepancies that instructional interventions must address explicitly. motivation motivational strategies teachers’ perceptions students’ perceptions Chinese tertiary educational context Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 1 Introduction The word “motivation” originates from the Latin verb “movere”, which means “to move”. It is about the kinds of choices people may make, how actively they are involved in the action, and how much effort they expend and persist in action—all of which are at the heart of motivation theory and research (Dörnyei and Ushioda, 2011). Motivation is the term most commonly and widely used to explain success or failure in the process of learning (Brown, 1994). Therefore, it is easily taken for granted that one will be successful in a task simply because he or she is motivated. These claims are not erroneous because many studies have shown that motivation determines success or failure in learning (Crookes and Schmidt, 1991). In the field of language learning, motivation, as one of the individual differences, is also considered to be a critical aspect and has received much attention from many scholars, such as Gardner and Lambert (1972), Crookes and Schmidt (1991), Dörnyei (2001a, 2001b, 2005, 2011), and Ushioda (2006, 2008, 2009). In addition, how to create, foster and maintain language learners’ motivation is highly important, as is the study of motivational strategies adopted by language teachers, which lies at the center of the current study because they take up such a role in their language teaching. The extensive research into L2 motivation shows that motivation has a significant effect on language learners in the process of learning English as a foreign or second language (Dörnyei, 2005; Oxford and Shearin, 1994; Ushioda, 2012). With respect to the significance of motivation in language learning, it is necessary to conduct studies on how to foster and maintain language learners’ motivation in classroom teaching. Many studies on motivational strategies have been conducted in different countries and regions around the world, such as Hungary (Dörnyei and Csizér, 1998), Japan (Sugita and Takeuchi, 2014), Korea (Guilloteaux, 2013; Guilloteaux and Dörnyei, 2008), Saudi Arabia (Alrabai, 2011), Taiwan (Cheng and Dörnyei, 2007), Iran (Papi and Abdollahzadeh, 2012) and Turkey (Sucuoglu, 2017). Among these studies, some have investigated the degree to which language teachers attach importance to motivational strategies (Alrabai, 2011; Cheng and Dörnyei, 2007; Dörnyei and Csizér, 1998; Guilloteaux, 2013); others have investigated the role of motivational strategies in motivating students in classrooms and the relationship between the use of motivational strategies and students’ motivational status (Guilloteaux and Dörnyei, 2008; Moskovsky, Alrabai, Paolini, and Ratcheva, 2013; Papi and Abdollahzadeh, 2012). Few studies have focused on students’ views of motivational strategies (Deniz, 2010), and even fewer have compared both teachers’ and students’ perceptions of motivational strategies in the same context (Ruesch, Bown, and Dewey, 2012). Furthermore, Dörnyei and Csizér (1998) noted that motivational strategies may not be universally effective; that is, teaching practices might not be as important in one context as in another. As a result, it is necessary to conduct further studies to examine individuals’ perceptions of motivational strategies in different contexts to deepen our understanding of those teaching behaviors that could promote students’ learning motivation. In light of the research gap in which there is a paucity of research examining and comparing the differences between Chinese college English teachers’ and students’ views in motivating teaching behavior, the current study was conducted to identify pedagogical implications for college English teachers to motivate their students in classroom teaching. Since adding students’ views to such a study was a supplement to most previous studies where only teachers’ beliefs were examined, it is possible to develop a comprehensive understanding of motivational strategies. English language teachers are strongly encouraged to use those teaching behaviors, which are considered more important in students’ eyes. 2. Literature review 2.1 Motivation theories Although the term “motivation” has been widely mentioned in the fields of psychology, pedagogy, and linguistics, owing to its complexity, no consensus has been reached on its conceptual range of reference. Moreover, it cannot be explored by a single theory and has provoked heated debates and considerable disagreements among scholars of psychology, cognition and linguists, who have tried to account for it by incorporating different variables and different perspectives to form different constructs of motivation (e.g., Houston, 1985; Maehr and Meyer, 1997; McMeniman, 1989; Pintrich and Schunk, 1996; Williams and Burden, 1997; et al.). Since the 1950s, learning motivation in L2 has been heatedly discussed in the field of applied linguistics. Different L2 motivation theories have been proposed to explain language learners’ motivation, such as Gardner’s motivation theory (Gardner, 1985, 2000) from the sociocultural perspective, self-determination theory of L2 motivation (Crookes & Schmidt, 1991), a framework of three levels (Dornyei, 1994a), a process-oriented model of L2 motivation (Dornyei & Otto, 1998) and an L2 motivational self-system (Dornyei, 2005, 2009). Dörnyei and Otto (1998) proposed a process-oriented model of L2 motivation to examine the dynamic and fluctuating nature of L2 motivation in a classroom, whether during one class or over a period of time (Dörnyei, 2000), on the basis of action control theory (Heckhausen & Kuhl, 1985; Heckhausen, 1991). Action control theory points out that the motivated behavioral process involves two sequential phases, namely, the “predecisional phase” associated with the intention-formation process and the “postdecisional phase” associated with the action implementation process within the motivated behavioral sequence’ (Dörnyei, 2000, p.521). As shown in Fig. 2.1 , the process-oriented model consists of two dimensions: action sequence and motivational influences. The action sequence involves three consecutive phases, namely, the preactional, actional and postactional phases, during which different functions and motivational influences are listed. In different phases, different functions and motivational influences are cited accordingly. 2.2 Motivational strategies Motivational strategies are techniques that can promote language learners’ goal-related behavior. Because of the complexity and diversity of human behavior, any influence exposed to a person might have an impact on that person’s behavior. Therefore, “motivational strategies refer to those motivational influences that are consciously exerted to achieve some systemic and enduring positive effect” (Dornyei, 2001, p28). In the current study, motivational strategies are those techniques developed by teachers to “consciously generate and enhance student motivation, as well as maintain ongoing motivated behavior and protect it from distracting and/or competing action tendencies” (Dornyei and Ushioda, 2011, p 103). 2.3 Motivational strategies frameworks Drawing on the process-oriented model of motivation by Dörnyei and Otto (1998), Dörnyei (2001b) developed a comprehensive framework of motivational strategies that were organized into different “phases” (see Fig. 2.2 ). This model includes four dimensions, attempting to account for the dynamic and fluctuating nature of L2 motivation in the classroom (Dörnyei, 2000): creating basic motivational conditions, generating student motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation, and encouraging positive self-evaluations. Creating the basic motivational conditions involved setting three preconditions for the deployment of motivational strategies; generating student motivation corresponded to the preactional phase in the model; maintaining and protecting motivation corresponded to the actional phase; and encouraging positive self-evaluations corresponded to the postactional phase. In recognition of the nonstatic and cyclic nature of motivation in classroom teaching, these four key areas form a cyclic process, starting with the establishment of basic motivational conditions and ending with the rounding off of a complete learning experience. This framework will be adopted in the current study as one of the resources for the construction of questionnaires and interview questions in both preceding and follow-up interviews as well as questionnaire surveys. 2.4 Studies on motivational strategies L2 motivation theory and research are considered significant aspects of L2 learning, as are motivational strategies. Despite the limited research on designing and summarizing techniques, some scholars have started to shift their attention to classroom motivation and have published papers on the practice of motivating their learners (e.g., Alison and Halliwell, 2002; Brown, 1994; Chambers, 1999; Williams and Burden, 1997) so that classroom teachers and practitioners can select ways to improve their teaching practices by motivating their students. This vein of research originated from the debates of the mid-1990s in The Modern Language Journal, where a group of scholars focused on making L2 motivation research more education oriented, was challenged by Gardner and Tremblay (1994) to present empirical evidence to support their claims that language teachers could positively impact their students’ motivation. In response to this challenge, Dörnyei and Csizér’s (1998) pioneering study of the views of Hungarian EFL teachers bridged the gap in this research, where their “10 Commandments for Motivating Language Learners” were the ten techniques employed by Hungarian teachers to motivate their pupils. Building on this previous study, Dörnyei (2001b) published his famous masterpiece Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom, which provided a comprehensive theoretical framework, presenting a list of more than one hundred concrete motivational teaching techniques/or 102 microstrategies grouped into 35 categories. Dörnyei’s (2001) publication attracted the attention of scholars and researchers to validate his theory empirically. Some straightforward studies have examined teachers’ views on the importance and use frequency of given motivational strategies (e.g., Cheng and Dörnyei, 2007; Guilloteaux and Dörnyei, 2008); some studies have compared teachers’ views with those of students (e.g., Ruesch, Brown and Dewey, 2012; Sugita McEown and Takeuchi, 2014); some studies are even more sophisticated, evaluating the effectiveness of motivational strategies in terms of students’ classroom behavior and self-reported motivation (e.g., Guilloteaux and Dörnyei, 2008; Papi and Abdollahzadeh, 2012; Wong, 2014); and the most ambitious studies are Moskovsky et al.’s (2012) and Alrabai’s (2016) quasiexperimental studies, where a set of motivational strategies are selected and language teachers are trained to use them, after which the effects on classes of students are compared with those of traditional teaching. However, to date, this type of study has been carried out only in the Saudi Arabian context. The study of motivational strategies has also been extended to the field of language training (Waddington, 2018). However, all these efforts to classify and test motivational strategies were based on Dörnyei’s (2001) taxonomy. Other attempts in language education have been made to investigate the framework and effectiveness of motivational strategies in line with alternative approaches to such strategies (Bernaus and Gardner, 2008; Lamb and Wedell, 2015; Maeng and Lee, 2015; Mezei, 2014; et al.). These documents not only contributed to making a more comprehensive and clearer picture of motivational strategies but also raised doubts about whether it is worthwhile to make a full list of motivational strategies. Future studies on motivational strategies should be beyond teachers’ motivating behaviors themselves and should examine teachers’ mental life in combination with cognition to reveal why and how language teachers adopt and adapt motivational strategies in their classrooms. To date, there is few studies that have surveyed the views of motivational strategies from the perceptions of both teachers and students. To this end, the current study aimed to examine both Chinese English teachers’ and students’ views of motivational strategies in terms of their importance so that some gaps between teachers’ beliefs and those of students could be detected and the research findings could provide pedagogical suggestions for teaching practices in college classrooms. 3. Research design Three interrelated research instruments were selected to collect data in the current study, that is, preceding interviews, questionnaires, and follow-up interviews, which were utilized in sequence in the current study. The qualitative component included preceding and follow-up interviews; meanwhile, the quantitative component involved a questionnaire, which was a major source of data collection in the study. As mentioned above, the quantitative survey was a major part of the current study, and ensuring the reliability of the questionnaire, which could be realized by adding the preceding interview before the questionnaires were drafted, was vital. In the preceding interviews, the teachers’ opinions about the motivational strategies in terms of their importance as well as whether any other strategies should be added or deleted and the wordings used were crafted. All the data collected from the participating teachers in the preceding interviews were taken into account when the questionnaires were constructed because this could improve the reliability of the questionnaire and make the listed items in the form better reflect the English teaching situation of Chinese colleges. For the follow-up interviews, the purpose was to supplement the findings found in the questionnaire survey, that is, to provide an in-depth understanding of the results derived from the questionnaire survey. Therefore, the preceding interviews were exploratory, and the follow-up interviews provided evidence, which ensured the reliability and validity of the research. 3.1 Research questions The current study seeks to reveal possible discrepancies in terms of English teachers’ and students’ belief in motivational strategies at Chinese universities after validating a framework of motivational strategies fit for the Chinese tertiary educational teaching context. Specifically, the study endeavors to answer the following research questions: ( 1 ) Does Dörnyei’s (2001) framework of motivational strategies fit the Chinese EFL teaching context? ( 2 ) What is the difference between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of motivational strategies at Chinese universities? 3.2 Sampling The study involved three universities with a long history from the same province in the northern part of China, which recruit freshmen from all provinces across China. They were all public universities with more than 20,000 enrolled students, under the direct jurisdiction of the Provincial Education Department, with a variety of disciplines, including sciences, engineering, management, economics, liberal arts, pedagogy, and fine arts. The 300 EFL teachers were demographically diverse in terms of age, gender, teaching experience, in-service training, professional title, and overseas learning experience. They undertook English language teaching tasks for all undergraduate programs, with an average of 14 teaching hours per week. All the teachers were involved in the questionnaire survey. The students of the three universities were admitted after the National Entrance Examination. The non-English major students had a two-year mandatory English course, and some students might take up an advanced English course, namely, English for special purposes (ESP), in the next two years. In addition, they were required to pass the nationwide College English Test Band four (CET-4) before graduation. The English major students were supposed to pass the Test for English majors Band four (TEM-4) and a second foreign language test before graduation. Nearly 1500 students participated in the study. 3.3 Instruments 3.3.1 Proceeding interview In the exploratory interview, thirty EFL teachers from three universities, ten from each university, participated in the semi structured interview, the information of which can be found in Table 3.1 . The teacher participants were all Chinese and varied in terms of English teaching experience, title, and degree. Table 3.1 Demographic information of the participants in the exploratory interviews University Name University A University B University C Gender male 5 4 3 female 5 6 7 Teaching Experiences 1–5 years 1 1 2 6–10 years 2 1 2 11–15 years 3 4 3 16–20 years 2 2 1 more than 20 years 2 2 2 Titles Professor 4 4 3 Associate Professor 3 4 3 Lecturer 2 1 2 Teaching Assistant * 1 1 2 Total 10 10 10 *Note: In nearly all Chinese universities, teaching assistants are permitted to give lectures as teachers with higher titles, such as lecturers, associate professors, and professors. In the interview, a list of motivational strategies with a more than 100-item pool was established on the basis of Dörnyei’s (2001a) conceptualization of motivational teaching practices, the research findings of Cheng and Dörnyei (2007), and those studies in China, such as Ji (2004), You (2010), and Zhao and Wang (2010). The list of suggested motivational strategies was administered to the participants before the interviews. First, the topic of the current study was explained to them, and a certain amount of time was spared for the participants to read the list and save them time in preparation to express their thoughts and opinions. At the beginning of the interview, the researcher briefly explained the purpose of the study as well as the interview process. The participants were assured that the discussion and interviews were confidential and that the research results would only be used for the purpose of scientific studies. For the first few minutes, the researcher had a normal conversation with the participants to build a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. After that, the participants spent several minutes discussing the importance of motivational strategies on the list. At the end of the interviews, the participants were given tokens for their time and cooperation. The interview went smoothly because the teacher participants were willing to talk about the topic, which was interesting and practical in language teaching. The teachers talked about their teaching experiences related to their motivating practices in classrooms. The average length of the interviews was approximately 30 minutes. Exploratory interview was highly important because it helped explore EFL teachers’ views of motivational techniques in classrooms. In addition, the data gathered from exploratory interview was taken into consideration when questionnaire items were built to ensure the relevance of the questionnaire to the English teaching reality of Chinese colleges. 3.3.2 Constructing and piloting the questionnaires There were three main sources informing the development of the questionnaire items: the first one was Dörnyei's (2001a) framework of motivational strategies in the L2 classroom; the second one was the data of teachers’ beliefs of motivational strategies in the preceding interviews; and the third source was based on previous studies conducted in the area of L2 motivational strategies (e.g., Cheng and Dörnyei, 2007; Dörnyei and Csizér, 1998). The purpose of the pilot study was to make it closely related to the research context and to improve the reliability of the questionnaire. The pilot study was conducted via the Wenjuanxing online questionnaire service with 179 students and 50 teachers. Before the pilot study, the main link of the questionnaire was sent to the three teaching assistants, who helped collect data in their workplace. The mean score varied from 4.568 to 4.996, which meant that the participants agreed with the items in the questionnaire. This result was consistent with those of previous studies, although different scales were used. Such a result might be because of the positive explanation of each item. The standard deviation ranged from 1.0428–1.2322, which was within the acceptable range of 0.6–1.8, indicating fair variability among the different responses. The internal reliability of the questionnaire was measured by testing Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The Cronbach’s alpha scores ranged from 0.828 to 0.927, all higher than 0.7, the criteria recommended by Dörnyei (2007b) and DeVellis (2003). Therefore, it could be argued that the items of the questionnaire had good internal reliability. 3.3.3 The main questionnaires There were two versions of the questionnaire, namely, the teacher’s version and the student’s version. These two versions were mostly similar except for some items related to the participants’ background information. The questionnaire was composed of two parts. The first part focused on personal information. The teacher version included gender, age, years of English teaching, title, overseas experience, degree and so on. The students’ version covered information such as age, gender, language proficiency, major, overseas experience, and years of English learning. The second part was the main part; that is, the participants were asked to respond to the importance of each item. A six-point Likert scale was adopted from “strongly disagree” (coded 1) to “strongly agree” (coded 6) to measure the participants’ perceptions of motivational strategies in Chinese EFL classrooms. This part consisted of forty-eight items categorized into 10 macrostrategies, as shown in Table 3.2. Table 3.2 Microstrategies used in the questionnaires Bring in humor from time to time Show your respect, acceptance and concern for your students Arrange group work in class to facilitate students' mutual understanding Making students familiar with the English language Explain the importance of the ‘class rules’ that you regard as important (e.g., let’s not make fun of each other’s mistakes) and how these rules enhance learning Provide clear instructions about how to carry out a task and perform modeling if needed. Invite senior students who are enthusiastic about learning English to talk to their class about their positive English learning experiences/successes. Students’ accomplishments should be monitored, and time should be taken to celebrate any success or victory. Students are typically reminded that the successful mastery of English is beneficial to their future (e.g., getting a better job or pursuing further studies abroad). Encourage students to select specific, realistic and short-term learning goals for themselves (e.g., learning 5 words every day). Design tasks that are within the learners’ ability so that they experience success regularly. In your lessons, various interesting content and topics that students are likely to find exciting (e.g., TV programs, pop stars or traveling) are introduced. Make tasks challenging by including some activities that require students to solve problems or discover something (e.g., puzzles). Students self-motivate strategies (e.g., self-encouragement) to keep them motivated when they encounter distractions. Make sure grades reflect not only the students’ achievement but also the effort they have put into the task. Monitor students' attendance to make them abide by class regulations Show your enthusiasm for teaching English by being committed and motivated. Break the routine of the lessons by varying the presentation format (e.g., a grammar task can be followed by one focusing on pronunciation; a whole-class lecture can be followed by group work). Invite some native speakers of English as guest speakers to the class. Help the students develop realistic beliefs about their learning (e.g., explain to them realistically the amount of time needed for making real progress in English). Short and interesting opening activities (e.g., fun games) are used to start each class. Involve students as much as possible in designing and running the language course (e.g., provide them with opportunities to select the textbooks; make real choices about the activities and topics they are going to cover; decide whom they would like to work with). Establish a good relationship with your students. Encourage student participation by assigning activities that require active involvement from each participant (e.g., group presentation or peer teaching). Good reasons are given to students as to why a particular activity is meaningful or important. Try and determine your students’ needs, goals and interests and then build these into your curriculum as much as possible. Allow students to create products that they can display or perform (e.g., a poster, an information brochure or a radio program). Encourage learners to try harder by making it clear that they believe that they can do the tasks. Provide timely feedback on students' assignment and language learning A supportive and pleasant classroom climate where students are free from embarrassment and ridicule should be created. Emphasizing the deadline for completing tasks Various authentic cultural products (e.g., magazines, newspapers or song lyrics) are brought to class as supplementary materials. The importance of learning a foreign language is to communicate meaning effectively rather than worrying about grammar mistakes. Notice students’ contributions and progress and provide them with positive feedback. To promote cooperation, activities that require students to work in groups toward the same goal (e.g., planning a drama performance) should be included. Teaching students various learning techniques that make their learning easier and more effective Adopt the role of a ‘facilitator’ rather than a controller of the class The usefulness of English should be highlighted, and students should be encouraged to use English outside the classroom (e.g., internet chat rooms or English-speaking pen friends). Increase the amount of English you use in class. Share with students that you value English learning as a meaningful experience that produces satisfaction and enriches your life. Avoid ‘social comparison’ among your students Encouraging students to contribute failure to insufficient effort rather than poor abilities Make tasks attractive by including novel or fantasy elements to increase the curiosity of learners Encourage students to share personal experiences and thoughts as part of the learning tasks. Enrich the channel of communication by presenting various auditory and visual aids, such as pictures, media, tapes and films. Show students that their effort and achievement are being recognized by you. Try to be yourself in front of students and share with them your hobbies, likes and dislikes. Some material or spiritual rewards are given to those students who make great or striking progress. 3.3.4 Follow-up interviews Semi structured follow-up interview was conducted with ten EFL teachers and twenty EFL students from their classes at each university, resulting in a total of 30 teachers and 60 students. They were asked about their beliefs about the importance of motivational strategies, which were validated via quantitative analysis in the third stage. The teachers stated what macro- and microstrategies were important and the reasons for their importance; the students expressed their ideas about the importance of the motivational strategies as teachers did. The comparative results of the follow-up interviews could help strengthen the understanding of the major findings in the quantitative data analysis. The follow-up interviews were conducted via the same procedure as that used in the preceding interviews. The only difference was that the motivational strategies in the follow-up interviews were those items that were left after confirmatory factor analysis was performed because the purpose of the follow-up interviews was to provide support for the research findings in the questionnaire surveys. 3.4 Data collection 3.4.1 Interview data collection For the exploratory interviews, the researcher considered the teachers’ opinions on different motivational strategies: whether the given strategies were important or not and whether there was any strategy to be added or deleted according to the importance attached to these strategies. All the sources from the exploratory interviews were included and composed an important part of the questionnaire survey. The ten teachers who participated in the exploratory interviews were not included in the subsequent follow-up interviews. In the phase of the follow-up interviews, both the teachers and the students were asked about the importance and the time and reasons for their use in classroom practices to answer the research questions. All the interviews, including the exploratory interviews and the follow-up interviews, were conducted individually in place of the teachers, face-to-face and recorded. The interviews were conducted in Chinese to best allow the participants to express their ideas and thoughts. The purpose as to why was also explained to the teachers, and they all agreed to have the interviews. 3.4.2 Questionnaire data collection After the questionnaire was compiled, it was conducted online through the Wenjuanxing Question Online Service. The questionnaire was sent to the assistants and then forwarded to the teachers, who could finish it online through their cellphones, personal computers, tablets or laptops wherever the internet was available. After completing the questionnaire, they needed only one click for submission. A similar procedure was used for the data collection from the students. The questionnaire for the students was first sent to the assistants, and then it was forwarded to their students by the teachers. When the students finished the questionnaire, they could submit it online as well. 3.5 Data analysis 3.5.1 Interview data analysis The preceding interviews with English language teachers were recorded, and during the interviews, the researcher took notes about the interviewees’ opinions of motivational strategies in three aspects: the first was the importance of the motivational strategies and whether they should be included in the questionnaire; the second was whether the wording of the questionnaire was appropriate; the third aspect was whether it was necessary to add other motivational teaching practices to or delete some items from the questionnaire. The follow-up interviews followed almost the same procedure. However, in this phase, the participants were only required to talk about their opinions on the importance of motivational strategies, which were maintained after quantitative data analysis. 3.5.2 Questionnaire data analysis For the questionnaire data analysis, SPSS 23 and Amos Graphics 23 were used for quantitative data analysis to answer the research questions. In the pilot study, the responses of each item were analyzed in terms of the minimum and maximum scores, the average score and the standard deviation. Moreover, the internal reliability of each category was analyzed to test whether the questionnaire had good internal reliability in design. With respect to the main study, the data screening was conducted first, including the evaluation of missing data, identification of outliers, normality and reliability tests, homoscedasticity examination and collinearity of the data obtained from the questionnaire surveys to ensure that the data were fit for multivariate analysis. These kinds of analyses are prerequisites for multivariable analysis. Before performing the confirmatory factor analysis, the teacher dataset and the student dataset were merged, and the factor scores were subsequently transformed and calculated by averaging all the items belonging to the same macrostrategy. The teacher variable was coded as 1, and the student variable was coded as 0. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with the aid of Amos Graphics23 to validate a model of motivational strategies fit for Chinese EFL teachers and students in the tertiary education context on the basis of Dörnyei’s (2001) framework. Then, multigroup confirmatory analysis was performed to check whether there was any difference in regression weights across the teachers’ and students’ data. Then, on the basis of the results of the confirmatory factor analysis, logistic regression was conducted with those macrostrategies remaining after the confirmatory factor analysis to investigate the different perceptions of teachers and students concerning their beliefs of motivational strategies. 4. Results 4.1 Results of confirmatory factor analysis 4.1.1 Specifying the measurement model for CFA A suggested measurement model was provided on the basis of previous studies, especially Cheng and Dörnyei’s (2007), Dörnyei and Csizer’s (1998), and Guilloteaux and Dörnyei’s (2008) studies. The model consisted of ten factors, in other words, ten macrostrategies, namely, “classroom climate”, “teacher behavior”, “presenting tasks properly”, “recognizing students’ effort”, “goal orientation”, “promoting self-confidence”, “making tasks stimulating”, “L2-related value”, “group cohesiveness and group norms”, and “promoting learner autonomy”. The whole model was composed of 48 items (micostrategy). All the individual constructs were adapted from previous studies, which were previously established scales. The suggested measurement model of 10 factors can be seen in Table 4.1 , which shows the framework for confirmatory factor analysis. Table 4.1 Framework for confirmatory factor analysis Factor (Macrostrategies) Questionnaire items (Microstrategies) Classroom Climate 1. Bring in humor from time to time 21. Use short and interesting opening activities to start each class (e.g. fun games). 30. Create a supportive and pleasant classroom climate where students are free from embarrassment and ridicule. 41. Avoid ‘social comparison’ among your students Teacher Behavior 2. Show your respect, acceptance and concern for your students 17. Show your enthusiasm for teaching English by being committed and motivating yourself. 23. Establish a good relationship with your students. 40. Share with students that you value English learning as a meaningful experience that produces satisfaction and which enriches your life. 47. Try to be yourself in front of students and share with them your hobbies, likes and dislikes. Presenting tasks properly 6. Give clear instructions about how to carry out a task, and make modeling if needed. 25. Give good reasons to students as to why a particular activity is meaningful or important. Recognizing students' effort 8. Monitor students’ accomplishments, and take time to celebrate any success or victory. 15. Make sure grades reflect not only the students’ achievement but also the effort they have put into in the task 42. Encourage students to contribute failure to insufficient effort rather than poor abilities 46. Show students that their effort and achievement are being recognized by you. Goal orientation 10. Encourage students to select specific, realistic and short-term learning goals for themselves (e.g. learning 5 words every day). 20. Help the students develop realistic beliefs about their learning (e.g. explain to them realistically the amount of time needed for making real progress in English). 26. Try and determine about your students’ needs, goals and interests, and then build these into your curriculum as much as possible. 31. Emphasize the deadline of completing tasks Promoting self- confidence 11. Design tasks that are within the learners’ ability so that they get to experience success regularly. 28. Encourage learners to try harder by making it clear that you believe that they can do the tasks. 33. Make clear to students that the important thing in learning a foreign language is to communicate meaning effectively rather than worrying about grammar mistakes. 34. Notice students’ contributions and progress, and provide them with positive feedback. 36. Teach students various learning techniques that will make their learning easier and more effective. Making tasks stimulating 12. Introduce in your lessons various interesting content and topics which students are likely to find interesting (e.g. about TV programs, pop stars or traveling). 13. Make tasks challenging by including some activities that require students to solve problems or discover something (e.g. puzzles). 18. Break the routine of the lessons by varying presentation format (e.g. a grammar task can be followed by one focusing on pronunciation; a whole-class lecture can be followed by group work). 27. Allow students to create products that they can display or perform (e.g. a poster, an information brochure or a radio program). 43. Make tasks attractive by including novel or fantasy elements to raise the learners’ curiosity 45. Enrich the channel of communication by presenting various auditory and visual aids such as pictures, media, tapes and films. L2-related value 4. Make students familiarized with cultural background of English language 7. Invite senior students who are enthusiastic about learning English to talk to your class about their positive English learning experiences/successes. 9. Regularly remind students that the successful mastery of English is beneficial to their future (e.g. getting a better job or pursuing further studies abroad). 19. Invite some native speakers of English as guest speakers to the class. 32. Bring various authentic cultural products (e.g. magazines, newspapers or song lyrics) to class as supplementary materials. 38. Highlight the usefulness of English and encourage your students to use their English outside the classroom (e.g. internet chat room or English speaking pen-friends). 39. Increase the amount of English you use in class. Group cohesiveness and norms 3. Arrange group work in class to facilitate students' mutual understanding 5. Explain the importance of the ‘class rules’ that you regard as important (e.g. let’s not make fun of each other’s mistakes) and how these rules enhance learning 16 Monitor students' attendance to make them abide by class regulations 35. Include activities that require students to work in groups toward the same goal (e.g. plan a drama performance) in order to promote cooperation. 44. Encourage students to share personal experiences and thoughts as part of the learning tasks. Promoting learner autonomy 14. Teach the students self-motivating strategies (e.g. self-encouragement) to keep them motivated when they encounter distractions. 22. Involve students as much as possible in designing and running the language course (e.g. provide them with opportunities to select the textbooks; make real choices about the activities and topics they are going to cover; decide whom they would like to work with). 24. Encourage student participation by assigning activities that require active involvement from each participant (e.g. group presentation or peer teaching). 29. Give in-time feedback on students' assignment and language learning 37. Adopt the role of a ‘facilitator’ rather than a controller of the class 48. Give some material or spiritual reward to those students who make great or striking progress. The suggested measurement model was tested with students’ data. After the first round of testing, some items with low factor loadings of less than 0.7 were deleted because these items would affect the fitness of the model and reduce the validity of the construct. Finally, a seven-factor model was obtained through confirmatory factor analysis. This construct constituted seven macrostrategies, namely, “teacher behavior”, “promoting self-confidence”, “goal-orientedness”, “group cohesiveness and group norms”, “promoting learner autonomy”, “making tasks stimulating” and “L2-related value”. The modified model of CFA based on student data is illustrated in Fig. 4.1 . 4.1.2 Assessing the model validity 4.1.2.1 Fitness indices of the model For confirmatory factor analysis, several key indices could be used to assess the fitness of the specified model, including the chi-square (x 2 ), the normed chi-square (the chi-square value divided by the degree of freedom), the comparative fit index (CFI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). The overall model chi-square (x 2 ) was 3509.68 with 333 degrees of freedom. The model fit, as indicated by CFI (0.955) and RMSEA (0.085), was good, even though the RMSEA was slightly above the bottom line of 0.08. However, because the chi-square has an inherent bias against sample sizes, especially with those samples greater than 200, although there is a slight increase in the normed chi-square and RMSEA, it is close to the cutoff values and acceptable within the normal range. The model fit summary is provided in Table 4.2 . Table 4.2 Model fit summary Model CMIN DF CMIN/DF GFI AGFI PGFI CFI RMSEA Default model 3509.68 333 10.54 0.814 0.757 0.623 0.955 0.085 4.1.2.2 Convergent validity test Convergent validity refers to the concept that the indicators of a specific construct should converge or share a high proportion of variance in common. The convergent validity of a construct can be tested through standardized regression weights, average variance extracted (AVE) and construct reliability. Standardized regression weights, also referred to as the size of factor loadings, are good indicators of convergent validity. It refers to the proportion of variances explained by the factor (or the latent construct), whose value is suggested to be .5 or higher and, ideally, .7 or higher. Another indicator of convergent validity is the average variance extracted, which refers to the mean variance explained by items that are loaded on the same factor or a construct. The ideal value of the average variance extracted (AVE) should be .5 or greater to suggest adequate convergent validity. Construct reliability proves the degree to which the measurement could reflect the true conceptual construct or theoretical meaning, as it claims. The construct reliability should be 0.7 or higher to indicate adequate convergence or internal consistency. Table 4.3 Construct validity summary Factor Item No. Standardized regression weights Average variance extracted (AVE) Construct Reliability (CR) Behavior V47 0.908 0.815495 0.9464 V40 0.933 V23 0.868 V17 0.902 Confidence V36 0.933 0.864321 0.962223 V34 0.942 V28 0.945 V11 0.898 Goal V20 0.942 0.833625 0.952399 V26 0.951 V31 0.9 V10 0.856 Group V16 0.886 0.828676 0.906253 V35 0.934 Autonomy V37 0.925 0.871372 0.971319 V29 0.943 V24 0.938 V22 0.946 V14 0.915 Stimulating V45 0.922 0.851278 0.966235 V43 0.927 V27 0.927 V18 0.932 V13 0.905 L2-realted Value V9 0.813 0.776917 0.945501 V19 0.9 V32 0.936 V39 0.931 V7 0.819 The results of convergent validity for the confirmatory factor analysis are shown in Table 4.3 . In terms of the standardized regression weights, the values of factor loadings were within the range of 0.813–0.951, all above the 0.7 rule of thumb, indicating an adequate extraction of variance by latent factors. In light of the relatively high loading values, the overall AVE values were high, ranging from 0.776917 to 0.871372, suggesting good convergent validity. The construct validity seemed to be perfectly good because the values of construct reliability were overwhelmingly high, from 0.906253–0.971319. 4.2 Results of logistic regression To assess the difference between teachers’ perceptions and students’ perceptions of motivational strategies, logistic regression, rather than discriminant analysis, was adopted in the current study because it was more suitable to adopt logistic regression when the dependent variable was a categorical (nominal or nonmetric) variable and the independent variables were metric or nonmetric variables. Logistic regression is limited to two groups for the dependent variable, and it has the advantage of easily incorporating nonmetric variables as independent variables, much like in multiple regression. Table 4.4 Omnibus tests of model coefficients Chi-square df Sig. Step 1 Step 102.700 6 .000 Block 102.700 6 .000 Model 102.700 6 .000 The results of the omnibus test of model coefficients are presented in Table 4.4 , which tests the significance of the logistic regression model at the level of p < .05. Table 4.4 shows that the significance value was 0.000, which was smaller than 0.05, indicating that the logistic regression model was significantly effective overall. That is, the accuracy of the model improved when we added our predictor variables. Table 4.5 Logistic regression model summary Step -2 Log likelihood Cox & Snell R Square Nagelkerke R Square 1 1281.018 a .063 .108 a. Estimation terminated at iteration number 5 because parameter estimates changed by less than .001. Table 4.5 displays the model summary of logistic regression. In the table, the Cox & Snell R square and the Nagelkerke R square are two pseudo R squares used to test the percentage of variance explained by the independent variables in the logistic regression. They showed the proportion of variance explained by the independent variables to the total variance, which fell into the range of 0–1. In most cases, in logistic regression, their values were not very high. As shown in Table 4.10, the Nagelkerke R square was .108, which fell within the range of .1–0.2 and was acceptable for the explanatory ability of the regression model. Table 4.6 Hosmer–Lemeshow test Step Chi-square df Sig. 1 39.018 7 .188 The Hosmer–Lemeshow test was used to check the goodness-of-fit of the logistic regression model, which was statistically significant at the level of p > 0.05. The results of the Hosmer–Lemeshow test are shown in Table 4.6 . The p value was 0.188, bigger than 0.05; thus, the goodness-of-fit of the model was satisfactory. So the model could be adopted for further analysis. Table 4.7 Variables in the equation B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B) 95% C.I.for EXP(B) Lower Upper Step 1 a Climate -1.293 .248 27.228 1 .000 .275 .169 .446 Behavior .813 .292 7.764 1 .005 2.254 1.273 3.991 Goal 2.222 .333 44.409 1 .000 9.227 4.800 17.738 Confidence .792 .323 5.992 1 .014 2.207 1.171 4.161 Stimulating − .949 .358 7.015 1 .008 .387 .192 .781 Autonomy -1.433 .366 15.338 1 .000 .239 .116 .489 Constant -2.747 .476 33.335 1 .000 .064 a. Variable(s) entered on step 1: Climate, Behav, GL, Confi, Stimulating, and Autonymy. As shown in Table 4.7 , the most important information about the coefficients used to determine the direction, magnitude, and significance of each predictor is presented. B refers to the regression coefficient, similar to that in general linear regression. Generally, positive coefficients indicate that the event becomes more likely as the predictor increases. Negative coefficients indicate that the event becomes less likely as the predictor increases. Exp (B) is the odds ratio. Odds ratios that are greater than 1 indicate that the event is more likely to occur as the predictor increases. Odds ratios that are less than 1 indicate that the event is less likely to occur as the predictor increases. Typically, if the values of B are positive, the values of Exp (B) are greater than 1; accordingly, if the values of B are negative, the values of Exp (B) are less than 1. The results from Table 4.7 show that all six predictor variables (climate, behavior, goal, confidence, stimulating and autonomy) were statistically significant, with p values smaller than .05. Among the six predictor variables, behavior, goal and confidence had positive coefficients, which implied that as these variables increased, they were more likely to belong to group 1, i.e., the teacher group; meanwhile, climate, stimulating and autonomy had negative coefficients, which indicated that when these variables increased, they were less likely to belong to group 1. The predictor variables of behavior, goal and confidence had the largest values of Exp (B), which indicated that with the increase in these variables, the probability of belonging to group 1, i.e., the teacher group, would be much greater. Taking the predictor variable “teacher behavior” as an example, its value of Exp (B) was 2.254, indicating that controlling for the other predictor variables, with a 1 unit increase in behavior, the odds ratio would increase by 2.254 times; in other words, the probability of belonging to Group 1 would increase by 125.4% (2.254–1). This was the same for two other predictor variables: goal and confidence. With a 1 unit increase in the goal, controlling for the other predictor variables, the probability of belonging to group 1, i.e., the teacher group, would increase by 822.7% (9.227-1). With a 1 unit increase in promoting learners’ self-confidence, controlling for the other predictor variables, the probability of belonging to group 1, i.e., the teacher group, increased by 120.7% (2.207–1). From the above analysis, it can be inferred that teachers attach more importance to teacher behavior and goals and promote learners’ self-confidence; students pay much attention to a pleasant classroom climate, stimulating and promoting the autonomy of their learning tasks. 5. Discussion 5.1 Validating a model of motivational strategies in the Chinese EFL tertiary educational context The first research question concerns how Dörnyei’s (2001) motivational framework fits into the Chinese tertiary educational context. This question has been proven by evidence from many statistics, such as reliability of the questionnaires, the fitness index of confirmatory factor analysis, the convergent validity and the construct validity of the questionnaires. Generally, both the teacher’s and the student’s questionnaires yielded satisfying results in terms of instrument reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of 0.979 and 0.994, respectively. These Cronbach’s alpha coefficients suggested the high reliability of the questionnaire. For the confirmatory factor analysis, the overall model chi-square (x2) was 3509.68 with 333 degrees of freedom. The model fit, as indicated by CFI (0.955) and RMSEA (0.085), was good, even though the RMSEA was slightly above the bottom line of 0.08. Convergent validity refers to the concept that the indicators of a specific construct should converge or share a high proportion of variance in common. The convergent validity of a construct can be tested through standardized regression weights, AVE and construct reliability. Standardized regression weights, also referred to as the size of factor loadings, are good indicators of convergent validity. It refers to the proportion of variances explained by the factor (or the latent construct), whose value is suggested to be .5 or higher and, ideally, .7 or higher. Another indicator of convergent validity is the average variance extracted, which refers to the mean variance explained by items loaded on the same factor or a construct. The ideal value of the average variance extracted (AVE) should be .5 or greater to suggest adequate convergent validity. Construct reliability proves the degree to which the measurement could reflect the true conceptual construct or theoretical meaning, as it claims. The construct reliability should be 0.7 or higher to indicate adequate convergence or internal consistency. In the current study, the results of convergent validity for the confirmatory factor analysis were statistically significant. In terms of the standardized regression weights, the values of factor loadings were within the range of 0.813–0.951, all above the 0.7 rule of thumb, indicating an adequate extraction of variance by latent factors. In light of the relatively high loading values, the overall AVE values were high, ranging from 0.776917 to 0.871372, suggesting good convergent validity. The construct validity seemed to be perfectly good because the values of construct reliability were overwhelmingly high, from 0.906253–0.971319. 5.2 Different perceptions of EFL teachers and students One of the research objectives of the current study was to examine the difference between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of motivational teaching practices in the classroom. The results of the logistic regression suggested that proper teacher behavior, goal-orientedness and promoting self-confidence with positive logistic regression coefficients were the three most predictive variables for categorizing the teacher group; meanwhile, a pleasant classroom climate, stimulating tasks, and promoting learner autonomy with negative logistic regression coefficients were the other three predictor variables for distinguishing the student group. Consequently, it could be inferred that teachers attach more importance to teacher behavior and goals and promote learners’ self-confidence; students pay much attention to a pleasant classroom climate, stimulating and promoting learner autonomy. 5.2.1 Teachers’ perceptions of motivational strategies Compared with students, Chinese EFL teachers tended to highly regard important motivating teaching practices in the classroom related to “proper teacher behavior”, “increasing learners’ goal orientation” and “promoting learners’ self-confidence”. However, these three motivational practices were rated different degrees of importance in previous studies. “Proper teacher behavior” and “promoting learners’ self-confidence” are the five most important motivational strategies, as rated in previous studies (Alrabai, 2014; Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007; Dörnyei & Csizer, 1998; Guilloteaux, 2013; Ruesch et al., 2012). These two teaching practices were valued by language teachers because they were effective means to motivate students. Proper teacher behavior does matter in the process of language learning to make students motivated. What they do and how they behave in the classroom strongly influences their students. Teachers are encouraged to set a good example in front of their students through sharing their own language learning experience. Teachers are also advised to establish good relationships with their students by showing their commitment to language teaching and their respect for and concern for their students, as well as by showing their true selves when facing their students. Proper teacher behavior can create basic conditions for motivating students in the classroom. Therefore, through teachers’ projection of proper behavior, they are likely to have a strong impact on their students’ motivation. Self-confidence refers to the belief that one has the ability to finish a task, achieve certain goals and produce some results, which is a vital aspect of self-concept. It is a major part of the motivational system in foreign language learning (Clement, Dörnyei & Noels, 1994). Language learning is largely a “confidence game” (Cited from Dörnyei, 2012, p. 65). The confident learners can communicate with limited L1 knowledge, whereas no amount of certain language knowledge will help learners speak without confidence. This is consistent with the importance of self-efficacy in educational psychology. Increasing learners’ self-confidence is a way to maintain and protect their motivation by generating a “can-do-spirit” among their students. The agreement on the importance of these two teaching practices confirmed that some motivational strategies were equally important in different cultures; that is, some strategies were transferable in different cultural contexts (Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007). “Increasing learners’ goal orientation” was regarded as important in the current study but was not considered as important as it was in previous studies, where it was not included in the top ten important motivational strategies. This strategy ranked 9th in Hungarian teachers’ views (Dörnyei & Csizer, 1998) and 6th in Taiwanese EFL teachers’ perceptions (Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007). As a result, this strategy was not valued by all EFL teachers in different cultures; that is, some strategies were culture sensitive or culture dependent (Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007). This may be because teachers may not realize the value of setting goals or because they find it difficult to utilize this strategy in classrooms because of the national objectives set by official curriculum requirements (Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007). 5.2.2 Students’ perceptions of motivational strategies From the students’ viewpoint, three motivational strategies were rated more significantly. They were “creating a pleasant classroom climate”, “stimulating learning tasks” and “promoting learners’ autonomy. The results of the logistic regression indicate that the odds ratios of these motivational strategies are less than 1, which means that with an increase of one unit in these predictor variables, the probability of belonging to the teacher group decreases. In other words, these motivational strategies could be predictors of the decision of the student group. 5.2.2.1 Creating a pleasant classroom climate It is believed that learning a foreign language was a face-threatening experience that the students could have as a part of their language studies (Dörnyei, 2005). In fact, language learning anxiety caused by a tense classroom climate is considered an important factor that can hinder students’ language performance in classrooms (Young, 1999). Consequently, a pleasant classroom climate can provide a safe, harmonious, democratic and open environment for students’ involvement in classroom activities by reducing their anxiety. It is helpful to create basic conditions for fostering students’ learning motivation. Only in such a motivating atmosphere can students actively participate in classroom activities, and their learning interests can be improved. This motivational strategy ranked second in the Hungarian study (1998) and fourth in the Taiwanese study (2007), which proved the importance of promoting a secure learning environment and avoiding any comparison among students. This strategy is favored by all students with different levels of English proficiency (Fang & Chen, 2013) and is considered the most effective way to motivate students to be adopted by language teachers. All the students agreed unanimously on the importance of a pleasant classroom climate. Many students talked about how this climate might affect their learning in the classroom. Some mentioned teachers’ personalities and characteristics: “I truly like those teachers who are humorous, because they give me a feeling of intimacy and safety. This makes me think that my teacher is just like my elder sister and that there is no need to worry about anything when having English lessons. I just try and, actively and bravely do the class tasks, without worrying about making mistakes…so it is not necessary to feel nervous. I just follow the teacher’s instruction, and I can catch the flow of the course…..” (Student 3, from University A) “Teachers’ personality is very important in my English classroom. My current English teacher is very kind, humorous and considerate. Therefore, in her class, I never feel nervous, and I am always energetic when I have English lessons because her personality makes me feel that we are like close friends. I never think about anything but working hard, and I don’t have to wonder I will be punished if I make any mistakes. Even when I make some mistakes, my teacher can handle them in a humorous way, and this will not make me feel awkward. I like her very much. In addition, my English is improving day by day. However, in the past, in my senior middle school, my English teacher was always strict with us, and in classes, he was so serious that our class was always silent. Nobody would like to participate in classroom activities if we would be punished or in an embarrassing situation. During those three years, my English was not so good, and at least I was not crazy about English learning. Therefore, my English was not satisfactory. Therefore, the teacher’s personality and humor do matter in my English learning.” (Student 5, University A) 5.2.2.2 Making learning tasks stimulating The perceived importance of task-related motivating teaching practices by teachers was ranked sixth in the Hungary survey (Dörnyei & Csizer, 1998), seventh in the American study (Ruesch et al., 2012), and seventh in the Taiwanese study (Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007). This strategy was ranked seventh in American studies, with almost the same ranking as that of the corresponding teachers. It seemed that this motivated behavior was not as valued by either teachers or students in all the studies as other motivated teaching practices, such as teacher behavior, the classroom climate and the promotion of self-confidence. However, in the current study, it was an important indicator in terms of the students’ perceptions of motivational strategies. In the interviews, the students talked much about learning tasks in the classroom. They thought that their teachers should try their best to make tasks stimulating and interesting because tasks are the keys to learning languages inside and outside of classrooms. They talked about teachers’ several motivational behaviors, for example, using different ways of presenting tasks to avoid classroom routines, including novel or interesting elements to catch students’ curiosity, making tasks challenging and within students’ ability by including some activities that required students to solve problems and discover new things. All the students interviewed believed that adopting different forms of tasks could reduce the dullness and boredom of English classes; one example is as follows: “I totally agreed with this point; our teachers should break out the routine of English classes by adopting different forms of presentation. If not, our class will become dull and boring, and we will lose interest in learning English. It is suggested that teachers use different forms of presentations. ” (Student 1, University A) To stimulate learning tasks, language teachers should take some measures in terms of using different ways of presenting tasks to avoid classroom routines, including novel or interesting elements to catch students’ curiosity, making tasks challenging and within students’ ability by including activities that require students to solve problems cooperatively. 5.2.2.3 Promotion of learner autonomy Promotion of learners’ autonomy and allowing students to choose to do things ranked lower in all previous studies (e.g., Dörnyei & Csizer, 1998; Cheng & Dörnyei, 2007; You, 2010; Zhao & Wang, 2010; Ruesch et al., 2012; Guilloteaux, 2013 and Alrabai, 2014; Safdari, 2018). This strategy’s lower ranking in different learning contexts, such as Hungary, China (including Taiwan Province), America, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Iran, indicates that promoting learners’ autonomy was disregarded to some extent by language teachers, either because it was difficult to implement this strategy or because these teachers did not believe that this strategy could not facilitate students’ learning motivation. In the comparative studies conducted by Ruesch et al. (2012) in America, Alrabai (2014) in Saudi Arabia, and Safdari (2018) in Iran, autonomy was very low among students. This result might be attributed to the fact that all the students on the campus were provided fewer opportunities to make their own choices and that schools were not considered the best place for self-learning (Benson, 2000). Moreover, it is argued that teachers in these contexts functioned as controllers of the class with authoritative positions rather than as facilitators who helped students to allow for free choices (Warden & Lin, 2000). Under these circumstances, on the one hand, the teachers control the flow of the course and the whole class, whereas the students have no right to bring in their own ideas. Consequently, learning autonomy has been ignored. On the other hand, the teachers are accustomed to the role of the presenter of knowledge and the students to the role of the receiver, which is obedient to the teachers’ arrangement, not valuing autonomous learning inside and outside the classroom. Surprisingly, in the current study, this motivating teaching behavior was regarded as very important by the student participants. The reason for such a finding may be the follow-up interviews with the students. In the interviews, the students provided some fresh ideas about learning autonomy in their English learning. Their insights were instructive and deserve our deep consideration. They mainly mentioned the role of teachers as facilitators, allowing students to select interesting topics or materials favored by themselves, providing instant feedback to students and teaching them some strategies that could be used in autonomous learning. Many students insisted that teachers should not behave like fathers or mothers but rather like friends or brothers and sisters. They did not want to be controlled by their teachers and longed for their rights of individualized learning. They were keen for freedom and hated parent-like management because they were born in the new millennium, were open-minded and had a unique personality. “I definitely agree that teachers should act as facilitators and friends. Only if teachers work as helpers can students have more freedom and be in a motivating status. We truly don’t like such a classroom where we just follow teachers’ instructions without free choices. Even when we have to learn the textbooks, we still want to learn something beyond the textbooks, which can’t always be practical. Our teachers are not only presenters of knowledge but also helpers. When we encounter any difficulties, we can turn to our teachers for help whenever it is inside and outside the classroom.” (Student 3, University A) Another student from the same university agreed with the teachers’ role as facilitators: “We are new generations born in the new millennium. We don’t like to be always obedient to our teachers, just following their instructions. We don’t like parent-like management: we do as the teacher tells us to. We long for more free time and space in classrooms. English learning is the same.” (Student 8, University A) Some students from University B expressed his content with learning autonomy. He seemed to believe that teachers should teach them learning strategies to address different learning difficulties, and these strategies may vary from student to student. He said: “The teacher should teach us some ways or methods to improve our language proficiency independently, and we will do it…Everybody has their own learning habits, their own strengths, and weaknesses, so teachers should tell us how we can become successful autonomous learners. Having known ways of becoming autonomous learners, we practice when we are free. For example, the teacher can tell us how to practice spoken English when we do not have a native speaker at hand. In addition, these methods should be practical.” (Student 3, University B) Another student from the same university described his understanding of promoting autonomous learning: “Autonomous learning doesn’t mean learning everything without any help. I think our teachers should give us some hints or tips to complete the learning tasks for autonomous learning. They cannot just assign the tasks without any instructions, which is not responsible.” (Student 9, University B) One student from University C mentioned that he supported autonomous learning and suggested that teachers provide interesting materials in teaching, which was required to be finished by students in their extracurricular time. This kind of activity could be seemingly optional or possibly similar to homework assigned by the teacher. He said: “……The teacher can assign us some reading tasks, for example. After we have learned a passage in our textbook, he can suggest some reading articles that we can find online or from the library. Reading more related articles can help us learn more words and phrases as well as widen our horizons. All the reading tasks should be finished by ourselves, so we have to try our best to overcome the difficulties encountered in reading unassisted. This is a good way to promote our learning autonomy. Anyway, we should learn to do things autonomously, and this is a basic skill.” (Student 7, University C) 6. Conclusion Considering the paucity of studies on motivational strategies and the research gap in this field, this study aimed to answer two research questions. One was the reliability of Dörnyei’s (2001) framework of motivational strategies for Chinese EFL teachers and students in the tertiary educational context; the other was to examine the importance of motivational strategies attached to teachers and students to determine the differences/mismatches in their perceptions. First, on the basis of Dörnyei’s (2001) framework of motivational strategies and research findings from previous studies, a preliminary questionnaire was compiled. In accordance with the results of the exploratory interviews with teachers, the questionnaire was reworded or rewritten to make it fit the research context. After that, the pilot study was conducted to test the reliability of the questionnaire to ensure that it was applicable in later studies. The same questionnaire was then labeled the teacher version or the student version, which were administered for investigation. The questionnaires were sent to more than two thousand students and three hundred English language teachers from three universities through the online questionnaire service website “Wenjuanxing”. After data screening, only 1330 cases from students and 251 cases from teachers were valid and were included in the final data analysis. Confirmatory analysis and the multigroup test method were used to validate a model of motivational strategies suitable for both teachers and students. Logistic regression was adopted to examine different patterns of teachers’ and students’ views of motivational teaching practices, from which it could be seen what motivational strategies were more valued by teachers and what strategies were more valued by students. 6.1 Major findings The current study confirmed a model of motivational strategies of Chinese EFL teachers and students in a higher educational context, which consisted of 7 macrostrategies with 29 micromotivational strategies. The seven macrostrategies included “proper teacher behavior”, “promoting learners’ self-confidence”, “increasing learners’ goal-orientedness”, “promoting group cohesiveness and group norms”, “promoting learners’ autonomy”, “stimulating tasks” and “L2-related value”. All 29 micromotivating teaching practices were regarded as important by both teachers and students, but some had significantly different regression loadings. These microstrategies showing significant differences in regression weights between teachers and students included Item 15 (“Make sure grades reflect not only the students’ achievement but also the effort they have put into in the task”) and Item 46 (“Show students that their effort and achievement are being recognized by you”) within “Recognizing students’ efforts”; Item 26 (“Try and determine about your students’ needs, goals and interests, and then build these into your curriculum as much as possible) within “Goal orientation”; Item 33 (“Make clear to students that the important thing in learning a foreign language is to communicate the meaning effectively rather than worrying about grammar mistakes” within “Promoting self-confidence”; Item 18 (“Break the routine of the lessons by varying presentation formats”) within “Promoting tasks stimulating”; and almost all the microstrategies within “Promotion learner autonomy” except Item 48 (“Give some material or spiritual reward to those students who make great or striking progress”). This model of motivational strategies fit both EFL teachers and students in the Chinese tertiary educational context was proven to have good fit, with an overall model chi-square (x 2 ) of 3509.68 and 333 degrees of freedom. The model fit, as indicated by CFI (0.955) and RMSEA (0.085), was good. The questionnaires used in the current study had good validity and reliability. The results of the logistic regression analysis provided a reasonable picture of the differences in the perceptions of the importance of motivational strategies among Chinese EFL teachers and students at universities. Chinese EFL teachers regarded three important motivational strategies: “proper teacher behavior”, “promoting learners’ self-confidence” and “promoting learners’ goal orientation”. Moreover, the students considered three other motivational strategies to be effective: “pleasant classroom climate”, “making tasks stimulating” and “promoting learner autonomy”. 6.2 Pedagogical implications Considering students’ perceptions of motivational strategies, English teachers should adopt corresponding teaching techniques to create an environment that motivates students to initiate, foster, and maintain their students’ learning motivation. These teaching practices involve “creating a pleasant classroom climate”, “stimulating learning tasks” and “promoting learner autonomy”. First, teachers should cultivate students’ English learning interest. Confucius said, “They who love it are better than those who know it, and those who delight in it are better than those who love it.” As the old saying reads, “only by learning with pleasure can we be good at seeking new knowledge”. Therefore, only when students are interested in English learning can they arouse their thirst for knowledge, generate a positive learning attitude and motivation, actively participate in various classroom activities, and activate the classroom atmosphere. To cultivate students’ interest in learning, first, we should cultivate students’ desire to communicate in English so that their learning purpose can be transferred from passing an exam to communicating in English and understanding the life and culture of people in English-speaking countries. In classroom teaching, according to the teaching content and teaching aims, teachers are encouraged to use multimedia and adopt various classroom activities. These activities are variously close to students’ lives and involve a wide range of content and forms, such as group work, role play, debate, discussion and games. In terms of the organization of classroom activities, teachers are encouraged to create a pleasant, relaxed and interesting atmosphere to make students more dynamic and industrious. Thus, certain attention should be given to promoting students’ self-confidence and feelings of achievement. Teachers are supposed to adopt more interactive activities in the classroom, during which the students can obtain self-confidence because of reduced classroom anxiety through mutual learning and making progress among students. Students’ language anxiety can contribute to their lack of confidence. Those students who lack self-confidence tend to worry about failure in language learning and are afraid of being criticized by teachers and peers. They are sensitive to their behavior and heavily influenced by their impressions, which are left to others. Therefore, teachers should organize more group activities or pair work to reduce their anxiety rather than activities that target individual students, such as asking individuals to answer questions. When assessing students, teachers should give more encouragement and praise to help students understand that they are making progress so that they will be more energetic and exert more effort to study later. By doing so, the classroom climate will also become more active and pleasant. Next, the role of teachers in the classroom should be changed, and good teacher‒student relationships should be established. Teachers need to move away from the traditional role of controllers and play different roles. For example, in classroom activities, teachers should work as good organizers, as good assessors in class asking, and as consultants in answering questions. The teacher is a director and an actor in the classroom. It is recommended that teachers give enough instructions in activities while they are supposed to participate in the classroom activities with equal status as their students and make a demonstration. Consequently, teachers and students get along well with each other, establishing mutual trust. By creating a dynamic, good atmosphere in the classroom, students achieve greater academic achievements with less effort. Finally, teachers are advised to promote learners’ autonomy. Promoting students’ learning autonomy is one of the important changes for university students from the transition of middle school to university. It is far less enough for students to depend only on classroom learning, especially for language learning. The students are strongly encouraged to preview before class and review after class. Moreover, they should facilitate language skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and interpreting/translating. This would be supplementary to classroom teaching. Teachers can supervise and monitor students’ autonomous learning by checking regularly or by students’ mutual checking to foster students’ positive learning attitudes and to make students learn English actively rather than “forced to learn”. 6.3 Research limitations and future research directions There are some limitations in the current study. Three of them will be noted in this part. The first limitation relates to the research methodology adopted in this study. The current study mainly used quantitative statistics to examine the group’s characteristics of seeing motivational strategies, hence less attention was given to the individualistic features of perceiving the importance of motivational strategies. Questionnaire surveys have been administered to the participants to collect data, which was used to describe the characteristics of teachers and students groups in their views of motivating behavior in English classroom teaching. Yet, there were some limitations of the questionnaire itself. One outstanding point was that the participants’ responses lacked enough variation when rating the importance of the listed motivational strategies because these motivational strategies were considered to be important in whatever teaching and cultural context. This might contribute to other problems in analyzing data, such as collinearity and to some extent, relatively high correlations among different items. It would be another case to investigate the use of motivational strategies because every English teacher’ experience vary distinctively. Anyway, it is of great importance to investigate both teachers’ and students’ beliefs of motivational strategies because this can help provide a whole picture of the participants’ views of motivational teaching practice rather than being limited to their own experience. The second limitation is closely related to the first one. Since the current study aimed to unveil the groups’ trends of viewing motivational strategies, the quantitative methods were adopted to test potential patterns of teachers’ and students’ beliefs of motivational strategies. However, it is difficult or impossible to investigate the changing of their beliefs because of their different teaching/learning experiences or because of the changes in the social milieu. To address the limitations of the current study, future research should adopt a mixed-methods approach combining longitudinal surveys with qualitative case studies to capture dynamic shifts in motivational strategy perceptions. Specifically, three key directions are proposed: the first is to develop culture-specific assessment tools with contextualized items (e.g., strategy effectiveness in different skill domains) to mitigate response homogeneity; the second one is to implement teacher-student dyadic interviews to identify belief discrepancies that affect classroom implementation; and the last is to explore cross-cultural comparative designs across educational systems to examine how cultural values shape motivational strategy priorities. These advancements will move beyond group-level trends toward adaptive, context-sensitive motivational practices. Abbreviations EFL English as a Foreign Language Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participate The study was submitted to, and approved by, the academic committee of School of Foreign Languages, Shandong University of Aeronautics; and the current study adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki. For the consent statement, before the questionnaire was distributed and the semi-structured interview was conducted, the consent of all the participants was obtained. Consent for publication Not applicable. Availability of data and materials The data that support the findings of this study are available from the author, Chun-guang TIAN, upon reasonable request. Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests. Funding The research reported here was supported by the Doctoral Research Startup Fund [2019Y46] of Shandong Institute of Aeronautics and the National Project for Research among Foreign Language Teachers in Higher Education [BZXYHXRW201989]. Authors' contributions Chun-guang TIAN is the sole author for contributing to the conceptualization, methodology, original writing and reviewing writing. Acknowledgements The gratitude should be extended to Dr. Shim Jaewoo for his constructive advice in data analysis. The thanks should also be given to those participant who have participated in the data collection. References Alison J, Halliwell S. Challenging Classes: Focus on Pupil Behavior. London: CILT; 2002. Alrabai FA. (2011). Motivational instruction in practice: Do EFL instructors at King Khalid University motivate their students to learn English as a foreign language? Arab World English Journal , 2(4), 257–285. Retrieved from http://www.awej.org/ Alrabai F. Motivational practices in English as a foreign language classes in Saudi Arabia: Teachers’ beliefs and learners’ perceptions. Arab World Engl J. 2014;5(1):224–46. Bernaus M, Gardner RC. Teacher motivation strategies, student perceptions, student motivation, and English achievement. Mod Lang J. 2008;92(3):387–401. Brown HD. Principles of language learning and teaching. 3rd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents; 1994. Chambers GN. Motivating Language Learners. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters; 1999. Cheng H, Dörnyei Z. 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MA: Newbury House; 1972. Gardner RC, Tremblay PF. On motivation, research agendas, and theoretical frameworks. Mod Lang J. 1994;78:359–68. Guilloteaux MJ. Motivational strategies for the language classroom: Perceptions of Korean secondary school English teachers. System. 2013;41(1):3–14. Guilloteaux MJ, Dörnyei Z. Motivating language learners: A classroom-oriented investigation of the effects of motivational strategies on student motivation. TESOL Q. 2008;42(1):55–77. Houston JP. Motivation. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company; 1985. Lamb M, Wedell M. Cultural contrasts and commonalities in inspiring language teaching. Lang Teach Res. 2015;19(2):207–24. Maehr M, Meyer H. Understanding motivation and schooling: where we’ve been, where were are, and where we need to go. Educational Psychol Rev. 1997;9(4):371–409. Maeng U, Lee S-M. EFL teachers’ behavior of using motivational strategies: The case of teaching in the Korean context. Teach Teacher Educ. 2015;46:25–36. McCombs B, Pope J. Motivating hard to reach students. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 1994. McMeniman M. Motivation to learn. In: Langford P, editor. Educational psychology: an Australian perspective. Australia: Longman; 1989. Mezei G. The effects of motivational strategies on self-related aspects of student motivation and second language learning. In: Csizér K, Magid M, editors. The impact of self-concept on language learning. Bristol: Multilingual Matters; 2014. pp. 289–309. Moskovsky C, Alrabai F, Paolini S, Ratcheva S. The effects of teachers’ motivational strategies on learners’ motivation: A controlled investigation of second language acquisition. Lang Learn. 2012;63(1):34–62. Oxford RL, Shearin J. Language learning motivation: expanding the theoretical framework. Mod Lang J. 1994;78:12–28. Papi M, Abdollahzadeh E. Teacher motivational practice, student motivation, and possible L2 selves: An examination in the Iranian EFL context. Lang Learn. 2012;62(2):571–92. Pintrich PR, Schunk DH. Motivation in Education: theory, research and application. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; 1996. Ruesch A, Bown J, Dewey DP. Student and teacher perceptions of motivational strategies in the foreign language classroom. Innov Lang Learn Teach. 2012;6(1):15–27. Sucuoglu E. (2017). Analysis of motivational strategies used by English language teachers teaching in secondary schools, Procedia Computer Science , 120(2017), 189–195. Sugita McEown M, Takeuchi O. Motivational strategies in EFL classrooms: How do teachers impact students’ motivation? Innov Lang Learn Teach. 2014;8(1):20–38. Ushioda E. Language motivation in a reconfigured Europe: Access, identity, autonomy. J Multiling Multicultural Dev. 2006;27(2):148–61. Ushioda E. Motivation and good language learners. In: Griffiths C, editor. Lessons from Good Language Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2008. pp. 19–34. Ushioda E. A person-in-context relational view of emergent motivation, self and identity. In: Dörnyei Z, Ushioda E, editors. Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self. Bristol: Multilingual Matters; 2009. pp. 215–28. Ushioda E. Motivation: L2 learning as a special case? In: Mercer S, Ryan S, Williams M, editors. Psychology for language learning: Insights from research, theory and practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; 2012. pp. 58–73. Waddington J. Teacher understanding and implementation of motivational strategies in ELT. ELT J. 2018;72(2):162–74. Williams M, Burden RL. Psychology for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1997. Wong RMH. An investigation of strategies for student motivation in the Chinese EFL context. Innov Lang Learn Teach. 2014;8(2):132–54. You C. A study on the motivational strategies of Senior Middle School English teachers. Foreign Lang Bimon, 33 (0372–75. Zhao N, Wang J. On the motivational strategies used by high school teachers in Chinese EFL classrooms. Foreign Lang Learn Theory Pract. 2010;1:47–54. Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":72450,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eFigure 2.2 Motivational strategies in the L2 classroom (Cited from Dörnyei, 2001b, p. 29)\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"image2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7421565/v1/8c337c05d78df30f7654eca0.png"},{"id":92487712,"identity":"a3c6775c-1fcd-45c6-8b9a-a4b47d85493f","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-09-30 08:55:52","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":254364,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eFigure 4.1 Modified model of confirmatory factor analysis\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"image3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-7421565/v1/4c6bae813a2fa187f177a483.png"},{"id":98372725,"identity":"a2ee0c9c-1ddc-4546-b24b-d3b33d947191","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 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It is about the kinds of choices people may make, how actively they are involved in the action, and how much effort they expend and persist in action\u0026mdash;all of which are at the heart of motivation theory and research (D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Ushioda, 2011). Motivation is the term most commonly and widely used to explain success or failure in the process of learning (Brown, 1994). Therefore, it is easily taken for granted that one will be successful in a task simply because he or she is motivated. These claims are not erroneous because many studies have shown that motivation determines success or failure in learning (Crookes and Schmidt, 1991).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the field of language learning, motivation, as one of the individual differences, is also considered to be a critical aspect and has received much attention from many scholars, such as Gardner and Lambert (1972), Crookes and Schmidt (1991), D\u0026ouml;rnyei (2001a, 2001b, 2005, 2011), and Ushioda (2006, 2008, 2009). In addition, how to create, foster and maintain language learners\u0026rsquo; motivation is highly important, as is the study of motivational strategies adopted by language teachers, which lies at the center of the current study because they take up such a role in their language teaching.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe extensive research into L2 motivation shows that motivation has a significant effect on language learners in the process of learning English as a foreign or second language (D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2005; Oxford and Shearin, 1994; Ushioda, 2012). With respect to the significance of motivation in language learning, it is necessary to conduct studies on how to foster and maintain language learners\u0026rsquo; motivation in classroom teaching. Many studies on motivational strategies have been conducted in different countries and regions around the world, such as Hungary (D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Csiz\u0026eacute;r, 1998), Japan (Sugita and Takeuchi, 2014), Korea (Guilloteaux, 2013; Guilloteaux and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2008), Saudi Arabia (Alrabai, 2011), Taiwan (Cheng and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007), Iran (Papi and Abdollahzadeh, 2012) and Turkey (Sucuoglu, 2017). Among these studies, some have investigated the degree to which language teachers attach importance to motivational strategies (Alrabai, 2011; Cheng and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007; D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Csiz\u0026eacute;r, 1998; Guilloteaux, 2013); others have investigated the role of motivational strategies in motivating students in classrooms and the relationship between the use of motivational strategies and students\u0026rsquo; motivational status (Guilloteaux and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2008; Moskovsky, Alrabai, Paolini, and Ratcheva, 2013; Papi and Abdollahzadeh, 2012).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew studies have focused on students\u0026rsquo; views of motivational strategies (Deniz, 2010), and even fewer have compared both teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies in the same context (Ruesch, Bown, and Dewey, 2012).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFurthermore, D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Csiz\u0026eacute;r (1998) noted that motivational strategies may not be universally effective; that is, teaching practices might not be as important in one context as in another. As a result, it is necessary to conduct further studies to examine individuals\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies in different contexts to deepen our understanding of those teaching behaviors that could promote students\u0026rsquo; learning motivation.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn light of the research gap in which there is a paucity of research examining and comparing the differences between Chinese college English teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; views in motivating teaching behavior, the current study was conducted to identify pedagogical implications for college English teachers to motivate their students in classroom teaching. Since adding students\u0026rsquo; views to such a study was a supplement to most previous studies where only teachers\u0026rsquo; beliefs were examined, it is possible to develop a comprehensive understanding of motivational strategies. English language teachers are strongly encouraged to use those teaching behaviors, which are considered more important in students\u0026rsquo; eyes.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"2. Literature review","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e2.1 Motivation theories\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlthough the term \u0026ldquo;motivation\u0026rdquo; has been widely mentioned in the fields of psychology, pedagogy, and linguistics, owing to its complexity, no consensus has been reached on its conceptual range of reference. Moreover, it cannot be explored by a single theory and has provoked heated debates and considerable disagreements among scholars of psychology, cognition and linguists, who have tried to account for it by incorporating different variables and different perspectives to form different constructs of motivation (e.g., Houston, 1985; Maehr and Meyer, 1997; McMeniman, 1989; Pintrich and Schunk, 1996; Williams and Burden, 1997; et al.).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSince the 1950s, learning motivation in L2 has been heatedly discussed in the field of applied linguistics. Different L2 motivation theories have been proposed to explain language learners\u0026rsquo; motivation, such as Gardner\u0026rsquo;s motivation theory (Gardner, 1985, 2000) from the sociocultural perspective, self-determination theory of L2 motivation (Crookes \u0026amp; Schmidt, 1991), a framework of three levels (Dornyei, 1994a), a process-oriented model of L2 motivation (Dornyei \u0026amp; Otto, 1998) and an L2 motivational self-system (Dornyei, 2005, 2009).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eD\u0026ouml;rnyei and Otto (1998) proposed a process-oriented model of L2 motivation to examine the dynamic and fluctuating nature of L2 motivation in a classroom, whether during one class or over a period of time (D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2000), on the basis of action control theory (Heckhausen \u0026amp; Kuhl, 1985; Heckhausen, 1991). Action control theory points out that the motivated behavioral process involves two sequential phases, namely, the \u0026ldquo;predecisional phase\u0026rdquo; associated with the intention-formation process and the \u0026ldquo;postdecisional phase\u0026rdquo; associated with the action implementation process within the motivated behavioral sequence\u0026rsquo; (D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2000, p.521).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs shown in Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2.1\u003c/span\u003e, the process-oriented model consists of two dimensions: action sequence and motivational influences. The action sequence involves three consecutive phases, namely, the preactional, actional and postactional phases, during which different functions and motivational influences are listed. In different phases, different functions and motivational influences are cited accordingly.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec4\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e2.2 Motivational strategies\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eMotivational strategies are techniques that can promote language learners\u0026rsquo; goal-related behavior. Because of the complexity and diversity of human behavior, any influence exposed to a person might have an impact on that person\u0026rsquo;s behavior. Therefore, \u0026ldquo;motivational strategies refer to those motivational influences that are consciously exerted to achieve some systemic and enduring positive effect\u0026rdquo; (Dornyei, 2001, p28).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the current study, motivational strategies are those techniques developed by teachers to \u0026ldquo;consciously generate and enhance student motivation, as well as maintain ongoing motivated behavior and protect it from distracting and/or competing action tendencies\u0026rdquo; (Dornyei and Ushioda, 2011, p 103).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec5\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e2.3 Motivational strategies frameworks\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on the process-oriented model of motivation by D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Otto (1998), D\u0026ouml;rnyei (2001b) developed a comprehensive framework of motivational strategies that were organized into different \u0026ldquo;phases\u0026rdquo; (see Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2.2\u003c/span\u003e). This model includes four dimensions, attempting to account for the dynamic and fluctuating nature of L2 motivation in the classroom (D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2000): creating basic motivational conditions, generating student motivation, maintaining and protecting motivation, and encouraging positive self-evaluations.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCreating the basic motivational conditions involved setting three preconditions for the deployment of motivational strategies; generating student motivation corresponded to the preactional phase in the model; maintaining and protecting motivation corresponded to the actional phase; and encouraging positive self-evaluations corresponded to the postactional phase. In recognition of the nonstatic and cyclic nature of motivation in classroom teaching, these four key areas form a cyclic process, starting with the establishment of basic motivational conditions and ending with the rounding off of a complete learning experience.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis framework will be adopted in the current study as one of the resources for the construction of questionnaires and interview questions in both preceding and follow-up interviews as well as questionnaire surveys.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec6\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e2.4 Studies on motivational strategies\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eL2 motivation theory and research are considered significant aspects of L2 learning, as are motivational strategies. Despite the limited research on designing and summarizing techniques, some scholars have started to shift their attention to classroom motivation and have published papers on the practice of motivating their learners (e.g., Alison and Halliwell, 2002; Brown, 1994; Chambers, 1999; Williams and Burden, 1997) so that classroom teachers and practitioners can select ways to improve their teaching practices by motivating their students. This vein of research originated from the debates of the mid-1990s in The Modern Language Journal, where a group of scholars focused on making L2 motivation research more education oriented, was challenged by Gardner and Tremblay (1994) to present empirical evidence to support their claims that language teachers could positively impact their students\u0026rsquo; motivation. In response to this challenge, D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Csiz\u0026eacute;r\u0026rsquo;s (1998) pioneering study of the views of Hungarian EFL teachers bridged the gap in this research, where their \u0026ldquo;10 Commandments for Motivating Language Learners\u0026rdquo; were the ten techniques employed by Hungarian teachers to motivate their pupils. Building on this previous study, D\u0026ouml;rnyei (2001b) published his famous masterpiece Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom, which provided a comprehensive theoretical framework, presenting a list of more than one hundred concrete motivational teaching techniques/or 102 microstrategies grouped into 35 categories.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eD\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) publication attracted the attention of scholars and researchers to validate his theory empirically. Some straightforward studies have examined teachers\u0026rsquo; views on the importance and use frequency of given motivational strategies (e.g., Cheng and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007; Guilloteaux and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2008); some studies have compared teachers\u0026rsquo; views with those of students (e.g., Ruesch, Brown and Dewey, 2012; Sugita McEown and Takeuchi, 2014); some studies are even more sophisticated, evaluating the effectiveness of motivational strategies in terms of students\u0026rsquo; classroom behavior and self-reported motivation (e.g., Guilloteaux and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2008; Papi and Abdollahzadeh, 2012; Wong, 2014); and the most ambitious studies are Moskovsky et al.\u0026rsquo;s (2012) and Alrabai\u0026rsquo;s (2016) quasiexperimental studies, where a set of motivational strategies are selected and language teachers are trained to use them, after which the effects on classes of students are compared with those of traditional teaching. However, to date, this type of study has been carried out only in the Saudi Arabian context. The study of motivational strategies has also been extended to the field of language training (Waddington, 2018). However, all these efforts to classify and test motivational strategies were based on D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) taxonomy. Other attempts in language education have been made to investigate the framework and effectiveness of motivational strategies in line with alternative approaches to such strategies (Bernaus and Gardner, 2008; Lamb and Wedell, 2015; Maeng and Lee, 2015; Mezei, 2014; et al.). These documents not only contributed to making a more comprehensive and clearer picture of motivational strategies but also raised doubts about whether it is worthwhile to make a full list of motivational strategies. Future studies on motivational strategies should be beyond teachers\u0026rsquo; motivating behaviors themselves and should examine teachers\u0026rsquo; mental life in combination with cognition to reveal why and how language teachers adopt and adapt motivational strategies in their classrooms.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo date, there is few studies that have surveyed the views of motivational strategies from the perceptions of both teachers and students. To this end, the current study aimed to examine both Chinese English teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; views of motivational strategies in terms of their importance so that some gaps between teachers\u0026rsquo; beliefs and those of students could be detected and the research findings could provide pedagogical suggestions for teaching practices in college classrooms.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"3. Research design","content":"\u003cp\u003eThree interrelated research instruments were selected to collect data in the current study, that is, preceding interviews, questionnaires, and follow-up interviews, which were utilized in sequence in the current study. The qualitative component included preceding and follow-up interviews; meanwhile, the quantitative component involved a questionnaire, which was a major source of data collection in the study.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs mentioned above, the quantitative survey was a major part of the current study, and ensuring the reliability of the questionnaire, which could be realized by adding the preceding interview before the questionnaires were drafted, was vital. In the preceding interviews, the teachers\u0026rsquo; opinions about the motivational strategies in terms of their importance as well as whether any other strategies should be added or deleted and the wordings used were crafted. All the data collected from the participating teachers in the preceding interviews were taken into account when the questionnaires were constructed because this could improve the reliability of the questionnaire and make the listed items in the form better reflect the English teaching situation of Chinese colleges. For the follow-up interviews, the purpose was to supplement the findings found in the questionnaire survey, that is, to provide an in-depth understanding of the results derived from the questionnaire survey. Therefore, the preceding interviews were exploratory, and the follow-up interviews provided evidence, which ensured the reliability and validity of the research.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec8\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.1 Research questions\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe current study seeks to reveal possible discrepancies in terms of English teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; belief in motivational strategies at Chinese universities after validating a framework of motivational strategies fit for the Chinese tertiary educational teaching context. Specifically, the study endeavors to answer the following research questions:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e) Does D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) framework of motivational strategies fit the Chinese EFL teaching context?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(\u003cspan class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e) What is the difference between teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies at Chinese universities?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec9\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.2 Sampling\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe study involved three universities with a long history from the same province in the northern part of China, which recruit freshmen from all provinces across China. They were all public universities with more than 20,000 enrolled students, under the direct jurisdiction of the Provincial Education Department, with a variety of disciplines, including sciences, engineering, management, economics, liberal arts, pedagogy, and fine arts.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 300 EFL teachers were demographically diverse in terms of age, gender, teaching experience, in-service training, professional title, and overseas learning experience. They undertook English language teaching tasks for all undergraduate programs, with an average of 14 teaching hours per week. All the teachers were involved in the questionnaire survey.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe students of the three universities were admitted after the National Entrance Examination. The non-English major students had a two-year mandatory English course, and some students might take up an advanced English course, namely, English for special purposes (ESP), in the next two years. In addition, they were required to pass the nationwide College English Test Band four (CET-4) before graduation. The English major students were supposed to pass the Test for English majors Band four (TEM-4) and a second foreign language test before graduation. Nearly 1500 students participated in the study.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec10\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.3 Instruments\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec11\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.3.1 Proceeding interview\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the exploratory interview, thirty EFL teachers from three universities, ten from each university, participated in the semi structured interview, the information of which can be found in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3.1\u003c/span\u003e. The teacher participants were all Chinese and varied in terms of English teaching experience, title, and degree.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\n\u003ctable id=\"Tab1\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 3.1\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDemographic information of the participants in the exploratory interviews\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/caption\u003e\n\u003cthead\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003cth colspan=\"3\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUniversity Name\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/th\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/thead\u003e\n\u003ctbody\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUniversity A\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUniversity B\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUniversity C\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd rowspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGender\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003emale\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003efemale\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd rowspan=\"5\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeaching Experiences\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u0026ndash;5 years\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e6\u0026ndash;10 years\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e11\u0026ndash;15 years\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e16\u0026ndash;20 years\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003emore than 20 years\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd rowspan=\"4\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTitles\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProfessor\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAssociate Professor\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLecturer\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeaching Assistant\u003csup\u003e*\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd colspan=\"2\" align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTotal\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e10\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e10\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003ctd align=\"left\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e10\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/td\u003e\n\u003c/tr\u003e\n\u003c/tbody\u003e\n\u003c/table\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e*Note: In nearly all Chinese universities, teaching assistants are permitted to give lectures as teachers with higher titles, such as lecturers, associate professors, and professors.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the interview, a list of motivational strategies with a more than 100-item pool was established on the basis of D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001a) conceptualization of motivational teaching practices, the research findings of Cheng and D\u0026ouml;rnyei (2007), and those studies in China, such as Ji (2004), You (2010), and Zhao and Wang (2010). The list of suggested motivational strategies was administered to the participants before the interviews. First, the topic of the current study was explained to them, and a certain amount of time was spared for the participants to read the list and save them time in preparation to express their thoughts and opinions. At the beginning of the interview, the researcher briefly explained the purpose of the study as well as the interview process. The participants were assured that the discussion and interviews were confidential and that the research results would only be used for the purpose of scientific studies. For the first few minutes, the researcher had a normal conversation with the participants to build a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. After that, the participants spent several minutes discussing the importance of motivational strategies on the list. At the end of the interviews, the participants were given tokens for their time and cooperation. The interview went smoothly because the teacher participants were willing to talk about the topic, which was interesting and practical in language teaching. The teachers talked about their teaching experiences related to their motivating practices in classrooms. The average length of the interviews was approximately 30 minutes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExploratory interview was highly important because it helped explore EFL teachers\u0026rsquo; views of motivational techniques in classrooms. In addition, the data gathered from exploratory interview was taken into consideration when questionnaire items were built to ensure the relevance of the questionnaire to the English teaching reality of Chinese colleges.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec12\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.3.2 Constructing and piloting the questionnaires\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were three main sources informing the development of the questionnaire items: the first one was D\u0026ouml;rnyei's (2001a) framework of motivational strategies in the L2 classroom; the second one was the data of teachers\u0026rsquo; beliefs of motivational strategies in the preceding interviews; and the third source was based on previous studies conducted in the area of L2 motivational strategies (e.g., Cheng and D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007; D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Csiz\u0026eacute;r, 1998).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe purpose of the pilot study was to make it closely related to the research context and to improve the reliability of the questionnaire. The pilot study was conducted via the Wenjuanxing online questionnaire service with 179 students and 50 teachers. Before the pilot study, the main link of the questionnaire was sent to the three teaching assistants, who helped collect data in their workplace.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe mean score varied from 4.568 to 4.996, which meant that the participants agreed with the items in the questionnaire. This result was consistent with those of previous studies, although different scales were used. Such a result might be because of the positive explanation of each item. The standard deviation ranged from 1.0428\u0026ndash;1.2322, which was within the acceptable range of 0.6\u0026ndash;1.8, indicating fair variability among the different responses.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe internal reliability of the questionnaire was measured by testing Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s alpha coefficient. The Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s alpha scores ranged from 0.828 to 0.927, all higher than 0.7, the criteria recommended by D\u0026ouml;rnyei (2007b) and DeVellis (2003). Therefore, it could be argued that the items of the questionnaire had good internal reliability.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec13\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.3.3 The main questionnaires\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were two versions of the questionnaire, namely, the teacher\u0026rsquo;s version and the student\u0026rsquo;s version. These two versions were mostly similar except for some items related to the participants\u0026rsquo; background information.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe questionnaire was composed of two parts. The first part focused on personal information. The teacher version included gender, age, years of English teaching, title, overseas experience, degree and so on. The students\u0026rsquo; version covered information such as age, gender, language proficiency, major, overseas experience, and years of English learning. The second part was the main part; that is, the participants were asked to respond to the importance of each item. A six-point Likert scale was adopted from \u0026ldquo;strongly disagree\u0026rdquo; (coded 1) to \u0026ldquo;strongly agree\u0026rdquo; (coded 6) to measure the participants\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies in Chinese EFL classrooms. This part consisted of forty-eight items categorized into 10 macrostrategies, as shown in Table\u0026nbsp;3.2.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 3.2 Microstrategies used in the questionnaires\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBring in humor from time to time\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShow your respect, acceptance and concern for your students\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eArrange group work in class to facilitate students' mutual understanding\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMaking students familiar with the English language\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eExplain the importance of the \u0026lsquo;class rules\u0026rsquo; that you regard as important (e.g., let\u0026rsquo;s not make fun of each other\u0026rsquo;s mistakes) and how these rules enhance learning\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eProvide clear instructions about how to carry out a task and perform modeling if needed.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eInvite senior students who are enthusiastic about learning English to talk to their class about their positive English learning experiences/successes.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStudents\u0026rsquo; accomplishments should be monitored, and time should be taken to celebrate any success or victory.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStudents are typically reminded that the successful mastery of English is beneficial to their future (e.g., getting a better job or pursuing further studies abroad).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEncourage students to select specific, realistic and short-term learning goals for themselves (e.g., learning 5 words every day).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDesign tasks that are within the learners\u0026rsquo; ability so that they experience success regularly.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIn your lessons, various interesting content and topics that students are likely to find exciting (e.g., TV programs, pop stars or traveling) are introduced.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMake tasks challenging by including some activities that require students to solve problems or discover something (e.g., puzzles).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eStudents self-motivate strategies (e.g., self-encouragement) to keep them motivated when they encounter distractions.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMake sure grades reflect not only the students\u0026rsquo; achievement but also the effort they have put into the task.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMonitor students' attendance to make them abide by class regulations\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShow your enthusiasm for teaching English by being committed and motivated.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eBreak the routine of the lessons by varying the presentation format (e.g., a grammar task can be followed by one focusing on pronunciation; a whole-class lecture can be followed by group work).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eInvite some native speakers of English as guest speakers to the class.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eHelp the students develop realistic beliefs about their learning (e.g., explain to them realistically the amount of time needed for making real progress in English).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShort and interesting opening activities (e.g., fun games) are used to start each class.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eInvolve students as much as possible in designing and running the language course (e.g., provide them with opportunities to select the textbooks; make real choices about the activities and topics they are going to cover; decide whom they would like to work with).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEstablish a good relationship with your students.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEncourage student participation by assigning activities that require active involvement from each participant (e.g., group presentation or peer teaching).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eGood reasons are given to students as to why a particular activity is meaningful or important.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTry and determine your students\u0026rsquo; needs, goals and interests and then build these into your curriculum as much as possible.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAllow students to create products that they can display or perform (e.g., a poster, an information brochure or a radio program).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEncourage learners to try harder by making it clear that they believe that they can do the tasks.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eProvide timely feedback on students' assignment and language learning\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eA supportive and pleasant classroom climate where students are free from embarrassment and ridicule should be created.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEmphasizing the deadline for completing tasks\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eVarious authentic cultural products (e.g., magazines, newspapers or song lyrics) are brought to class as supplementary materials.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe importance of learning a foreign language is to communicate meaning effectively rather than worrying about grammar mistakes.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNotice students\u0026rsquo; contributions and progress and provide them with positive feedback.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTo promote cooperation, activities that require students to work in groups toward the same goal (e.g., planning a drama performance) should be included.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTeaching students various learning techniques that make their learning easier and more effective\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAdopt the role of a \u0026lsquo;facilitator\u0026rsquo; rather than a controller of the class\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe usefulness of English should be highlighted, and students should be encouraged to use English outside the classroom (e.g., internet chat rooms or English-speaking pen friends).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIncrease the amount of English you use in class.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShare with students that you value English learning as a meaningful experience that produces satisfaction and enriches your life.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAvoid \u0026lsquo;social comparison\u0026rsquo; among your students\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEncouraging students to contribute failure to insufficient effort rather than poor abilities\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eMake tasks attractive by including novel or fantasy elements to increase the curiosity of learners\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEncourage students to share personal experiences and thoughts as part of the learning tasks.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEnrich the channel of communication by presenting various auditory and visual aids, such as pictures, media, tapes and films.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eShow students that their effort and achievement are being recognized by you.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTry to be yourself in front of students and share with them your hobbies, likes and dislikes.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eSome material or spiritual rewards are given to those students who make great or striking progress.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3.3.4 Follow-up interviews\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec31\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSemi structured follow-up interview was conducted with ten EFL teachers and twenty EFL students from their classes at each university, resulting in a total of 30 teachers and 60 students. They were asked about their beliefs about the importance of motivational strategies, which were validated via quantitative analysis in the third stage. The teachers stated what macro- and microstrategies were important and the reasons for their importance; the students expressed their ideas about the importance of the motivational strategies as teachers did. The comparative results of the follow-up interviews could help strengthen the understanding of the major findings in the quantitative data analysis. The follow-up interviews were conducted via the same procedure as that used in the preceding interviews. The only difference was that the motivational strategies in the follow-up interviews were those items that were left after confirmatory factor analysis was performed because the purpose of the follow-up interviews was to provide support for the research findings in the questionnaire surveys.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec32\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.4 Data collection\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec33\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.4.1 Interview data collection\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the exploratory interviews, the researcher considered the teachers\u0026rsquo; opinions on different motivational strategies: whether the given strategies were important or not and whether there was any strategy to be added or deleted according to the importance attached to these strategies. All the sources from the exploratory interviews were included and composed an important part of the questionnaire survey. The ten teachers who participated in the exploratory interviews were not included in the subsequent follow-up interviews.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the phase of the follow-up interviews, both the teachers and the students were asked about the importance and the time and reasons for their use in classroom practices to answer the research questions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll the interviews, including the exploratory interviews and the follow-up interviews, were conducted individually in place of the teachers, face-to-face and recorded. The interviews were conducted in Chinese to best allow the participants to express their ideas and thoughts. The purpose as to why was also explained to the teachers, and they all agreed to have the interviews.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec34\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.4.2 Questionnaire data collection\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter the questionnaire was compiled, it was conducted online through the Wenjuanxing Question Online Service. The questionnaire was sent to the assistants and then forwarded to the teachers, who could finish it online through their cellphones, personal computers, tablets or laptops wherever the internet was available. After completing the questionnaire, they needed only one click for submission. A similar procedure was used for the data collection from the students. The questionnaire for the students was first sent to the assistants, and then it was forwarded to their students by the teachers. When the students finished the questionnaire, they could submit it online as well.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec35\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.5 Data analysis\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec36\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.5.1 Interview data analysis\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe preceding interviews with English language teachers were recorded, and during the interviews, the researcher took notes about the interviewees\u0026rsquo; opinions of motivational strategies in three aspects: the first was the importance of the motivational strategies and whether they should be included in the questionnaire; the second was whether the wording of the questionnaire was appropriate; the third aspect was whether it was necessary to add other motivational teaching practices to or delete some items from the questionnaire.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe follow-up interviews followed almost the same procedure. However, in this phase, the participants were only required to talk about their opinions on the importance of motivational strategies, which were maintained after quantitative data analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv id=\"Sec37\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e3.5.2 Questionnaire data analysis\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the questionnaire data analysis, SPSS 23 and Amos Graphics 23 were used for quantitative data analysis to answer the research questions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the pilot study, the responses of each item were analyzed in terms of the minimum and maximum scores, the average score and the standard deviation. Moreover, the internal reliability of each category was analyzed to test whether the questionnaire had good internal reliability in design.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith respect to the main study, the data screening was conducted first, including the evaluation of missing data, identification of outliers, normality and reliability tests, homoscedasticity examination and collinearity of the data obtained from the questionnaire surveys to ensure that the data were fit for multivariate analysis. These kinds of analyses are prerequisites for multivariable analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBefore performing the confirmatory factor analysis, the teacher dataset and the student dataset were merged, and the factor scores were subsequently transformed and calculated by averaging all the items belonging to the same macrostrategy. The teacher variable was coded as 1, and the student variable was coded as 0. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with the aid of Amos Graphics23 to validate a model of motivational strategies fit for Chinese EFL teachers and students in the tertiary education context on the basis of D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) framework. Then, multigroup confirmatory analysis was performed to check whether there was any difference in regression weights across the teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; data.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen, on the basis of the results of the confirmatory factor analysis, logistic regression was conducted with those macrostrategies remaining after the confirmatory factor analysis to investigate the different perceptions of teachers and students concerning their beliefs of motivational strategies.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"4. Results","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec39\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e4.1 Results of confirmatory factor analysis\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec40\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e4.1.1 Specifying the measurement model for CFA\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eA suggested measurement model was provided on the basis of previous studies, especially Cheng and D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2007), D\u0026ouml;rnyei and Csizer\u0026rsquo;s (1998), and Guilloteaux and D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2008) studies. The model consisted of ten factors, in other words, ten macrostrategies, namely, \u0026ldquo;classroom climate\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;teacher behavior\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;presenting tasks properly\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;recognizing students\u0026rsquo; effort\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;goal orientation\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;promoting self-confidence\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;making tasks stimulating\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;L2-related value\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;group cohesiveness and group norms\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;promoting learner autonomy\u0026rdquo;. The whole model was composed of 48 items (micostrategy). All the individual constructs were adapted from previous studies, which were previously established scales. The suggested measurement model of 10 factors can be seen in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.1\u003c/span\u003e, which shows the framework for confirmatory factor analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab2\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4.1\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFramework for confirmatory factor analysis\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"2\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFactor\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(Macrostrategies)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eQuestionnaire items\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(Microstrategies)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eClassroom Climate\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1. Bring in humor from time to time\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e21. Use short and interesting opening activities to start each class (e.g. fun games).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e30. Create a supportive and pleasant classroom climate where students are free from embarrassment and ridicule.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e41. Avoid \u0026lsquo;social comparison\u0026rsquo; among your students\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eTeacher Behavior\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2. Show your respect, acceptance and concern for your students\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e17. Show your enthusiasm for teaching English by being committed and motivating yourself.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e23. Establish a good relationship with your students.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e40. Share with students that you value English learning as a meaningful experience that produces satisfaction and which enriches your life.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e47. Try to be yourself in front of students and share with them your hobbies, likes and dislikes.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ePresenting tasks properly\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e6. Give clear instructions about how to carry out a task, and make modeling if needed.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e25. Give good reasons to students as to why a particular activity is meaningful or important.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecognizing students' effort\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e8. Monitor students\u0026rsquo; accomplishments, and take time to celebrate any success or victory.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e15. Make sure grades reflect not only the students\u0026rsquo; achievement but also the effort they have put into in the task\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e42. Encourage students to contribute failure to insufficient effort rather than poor abilities\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e46. Show students that their effort and achievement are being recognized by you.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eGoal orientation\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e10. Encourage students to select specific, realistic and short-term learning goals for themselves (e.g. learning 5 words every day).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e20. Help the students develop realistic beliefs about their learning (e.g. explain to them realistically the amount of time needed for making real progress in English).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e26. Try and determine about your students\u0026rsquo; needs, goals and interests, and then build these into your curriculum as much as possible.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e31. Emphasize the deadline of completing tasks\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ePromoting self-\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003econfidence\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e11. Design tasks that are within the learners\u0026rsquo; ability so that they get to experience success regularly.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e28. Encourage learners to try harder by making it clear that you believe that they can do the tasks.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e33. Make clear to students that the important thing in learning a foreign language is to communicate meaning effectively rather than worrying about grammar mistakes.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e34. Notice students\u0026rsquo; contributions and progress, and provide them with positive feedback.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e36. Teach students various learning techniques that will make their\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003elearning easier and more effective.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"5\" rowspan=\"6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaking tasks stimulating\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e12. Introduce in your lessons various interesting content and topics which students are likely to find interesting (e.g. about TV programs, pop stars or traveling).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e13. Make tasks challenging by including some activities that require students to solve problems or discover something (e.g. puzzles).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e18. Break the routine of the lessons by varying presentation format (e.g. a grammar task can be followed by one focusing on pronunciation; a whole-class lecture can be followed by group work).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e27. Allow students to create products that they can display or perform (e.g. a poster, an information brochure or a radio program).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e43. Make tasks attractive by including novel or fantasy elements to raise the learners\u0026rsquo; curiosity\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e45. Enrich the channel of communication by presenting various auditory and visual aids such as pictures, media, tapes and films.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"6\" rowspan=\"7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eL2-related value\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e4. Make students familiarized with cultural background of English language\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e7. Invite senior students who are enthusiastic about learning English to talk to your class about their positive English learning experiences/successes.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e9. Regularly remind students that the successful mastery of English is beneficial to their future (e.g. getting a better job or pursuing further studies abroad).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e19. Invite some native speakers of English as guest speakers to the class.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e32. Bring various authentic cultural products (e.g. magazines, newspapers or song lyrics) to class as supplementary materials.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e38. Highlight the usefulness of English and encourage your students to use their English outside the classroom (e.g. internet chat room or English speaking pen-friends).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e39. Increase the amount of English you use in class.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eGroup cohesiveness and norms\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3. Arrange group work in class to facilitate students' mutual understanding\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e5. Explain the importance of the \u0026lsquo;class rules\u0026rsquo; that you regard as important (e.g. let\u0026rsquo;s not make fun of each other\u0026rsquo;s mistakes) and how these rules enhance learning\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e16 Monitor students' attendance to make them abide by class regulations\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e35. Include activities that require students to work in groups toward the same goal (e.g. plan a drama performance) in order to promote cooperation.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e44. Encourage students to share personal experiences and thoughts as part of the learning tasks.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"5\" rowspan=\"6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ePromoting learner autonomy\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e14. Teach the students self-motivating strategies (e.g. self-encouragement) to keep them motivated when they encounter distractions.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e22. Involve students as much as possible in designing and running the language course (e.g. provide them with opportunities to select the textbooks; make real choices about the activities and topics they are going to cover; decide whom they would like to work with).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e24. Encourage student participation by assigning activities that require active involvement from each participant (e.g. group presentation or peer teaching).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e29. Give in-time feedback on students' assignment and language learning\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e37. Adopt the role of a \u0026lsquo;facilitator\u0026rsquo; rather than a controller of the class\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e48. Give some material or spiritual reward to those students who make great or striking progress.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe suggested measurement model was tested with students\u0026rsquo; data. After the first round of testing, some items with low factor loadings of less than 0.7 were deleted because these items would affect the fitness of the model and reduce the validity of the construct. Finally, a seven-factor model was obtained through confirmatory factor analysis. This construct constituted seven macrostrategies, namely, \u0026ldquo;teacher behavior\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;promoting self-confidence\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;goal-orientedness\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;group cohesiveness and group norms\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;promoting learner autonomy\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;making tasks stimulating\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;L2-related value\u0026rdquo;. The modified model of CFA based on student data is illustrated in Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.1\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec41\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e4.1.2 Assessing the model validity\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec42\" class=\"Section4\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e4.1.2.1 Fitness indices of the model\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor confirmatory factor analysis, several key indices could be used to assess the fitness of the specified model, including the chi-square (x\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e), the normed chi-square (the chi-square value divided by the degree of freedom), the comparative fit index (CFI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe overall model chi-square (x\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e) was 3509.68 with 333 degrees of freedom. The model fit, as indicated by CFI (0.955) and RMSEA (0.085), was good, even though the RMSEA was slightly above the bottom line of 0.08. However, because the chi-square has an inherent bias against sample sizes, especially with those samples greater than 200, although there is a slight increase in the normed chi-square and RMSEA, it is close to the cutoff values and acceptable within the normal range. The model fit summary is provided in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.2\u003c/span\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab3\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4.2\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eModel fit summary\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"9\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c7\" colnum=\"7\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c8\" colnum=\"8\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c9\" colnum=\"9\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eModel\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCMIN\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDF\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCMIN/DF\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eGFI\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAGFI\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ePGFI\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCFI\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eRMSEA\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDefault model\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3509.68\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e333\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e10.54\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.814\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.757\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.623\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.955\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.085\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec43\" class=\"Section4\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e4.1.2.2 Convergent validity test\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eConvergent validity refers to the concept that the indicators of a specific construct should converge or share a high proportion of variance in common. The convergent validity of a construct can be tested through standardized regression weights, average variance extracted (AVE) and construct reliability.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStandardized regression weights, also referred to as the size of factor loadings, are good indicators of convergent validity. It refers to the proportion of variances explained by the factor (or the latent construct), whose value is suggested to be .5 or higher and, ideally, .7 or higher.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother indicator of convergent validity is the average variance extracted, which refers to the mean variance explained by items that are loaded on the same factor or a construct. The ideal value of the average variance extracted (AVE) should be .5 or greater to suggest adequate convergent validity.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConstruct reliability proves the degree to which the measurement could reflect the true conceptual construct or theoretical meaning, as it claims. The construct reliability should be 0.7 or higher to indicate adequate convergence or internal consistency.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab4\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4.3\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eConstruct validity summary\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"5\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eFactor\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eItem No.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStandardized regression weights\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAverage variance extracted\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(AVE)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eConstruct Reliability\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e(CR)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eBehavior\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV47\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.908\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.815495\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.9464\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV40\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.933\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV23\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.868\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV17\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.902\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eConfidence\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV36\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.933\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.864321\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.962223\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV34\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.942\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV28\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.945\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV11\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.898\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eGoal\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV20\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.942\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.833625\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"3\" rowspan=\"4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.952399\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV26\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.951\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV31\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.9\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV10\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.856\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eGroup\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV16\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.886\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.828676\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.906253\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV35\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.934\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAutonomy\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV37\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.925\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.871372\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.971319\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV29\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.943\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV24\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.938\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV22\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.946\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV14\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.915\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStimulating\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV45\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.922\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.851278\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.966235\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV43\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.927\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV27\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.927\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV18\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.932\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV13\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.905\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eL2-realted Value\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV9\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.813\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.776917\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"4\" rowspan=\"5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.945501\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV19\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.9\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV32\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.936\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV39\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.931\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eV7\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e0.819\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results of convergent validity for the confirmatory factor analysis are shown in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.3\u003c/span\u003e. In terms of the standardized regression weights, the values of factor loadings were within the range of 0.813\u0026ndash;0.951, all above the 0.7 rule of thumb, indicating an adequate extraction of variance by latent factors. In light of the relatively high loading values, the overall AVE values were high, ranging from 0.776917 to 0.871372, suggesting good convergent validity. The construct validity seemed to be perfectly good because the values of construct reliability were overwhelmingly high, from 0.906253\u0026ndash;0.971319.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec44\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e4.2 Results of logistic regression\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo assess the difference between teachers\u0026rsquo; perceptions and students\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies, logistic regression, rather than discriminant analysis, was adopted in the current study because it was more suitable to adopt logistic regression when the dependent variable was a categorical (nominal or nonmetric) variable and the independent variables were metric or nonmetric variables. Logistic regression is limited to two groups for the dependent variable, and it has the advantage of easily incorporating nonmetric variables as independent variables, much like in multiple regression.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab5\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4.4\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eOmnibus tests of model coefficients\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"5\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colspan=\"2\" nameend=\"c2\" namest=\"c1\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eChi-square\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003edf\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eSig.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"2\" rowspan=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStep 1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStep\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e102.700\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.000\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eBlock\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e102.700\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.000\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eModel\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e102.700\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e6\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.000\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results of the omnibus test of model coefficients are presented in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.4\u003c/span\u003e, which tests the significance of the logistic regression model at the level of p\u0026thinsp;\u0026lt;\u0026thinsp;.05. Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab5\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.4\u003c/span\u003e shows that the significance value was 0.000, which was smaller than 0.05, indicating that the logistic regression model was significantly effective overall. That is, the accuracy of the model improved when we added our predictor variables.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab6\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4.5\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eLogistic regression model summary\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"4\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStep\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e-2 Log likelihood\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eCox \u0026amp; Snell R Square\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eNagelkerke R Square\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1281.018\u003csup\u003ea\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.063\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.108\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colspan=\"4\" nameend=\"c4\" namest=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ea. Estimation terminated at iteration number 5 because parameter estimates changed by less than .001.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTable\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab6\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.5\u003c/span\u003e displays the model summary of logistic regression. In the table, the Cox \u0026amp; Snell R square and the Nagelkerke R square are two pseudo R squares used to test the percentage of variance explained by the independent variables in the logistic regression. They showed the proportion of variance explained by the independent variables to the total variance, which fell into the range of 0\u0026ndash;1. In most cases, in logistic regression, their values were not very high. As shown in Table\u0026nbsp;4.10, the Nagelkerke R square was .108, which fell within the range of .1\u0026ndash;0.2 and was acceptable for the explanatory ability of the regression model.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab7\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4.6\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHosmer\u0026ndash;Lemeshow test\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"4\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStep\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eChi-square\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003edf\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eSig.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e39.018\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e7\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.188\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Hosmer\u0026ndash;Lemeshow test was used to check the goodness-of-fit of the logistic regression model, which was statistically significant at the level of p\u0026thinsp;\u0026gt;\u0026thinsp;0.05. The results of the Hosmer\u0026ndash;Lemeshow test are shown in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab7\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.6\u003c/span\u003e. The p value was 0.188, bigger than 0.05; thus, the goodness-of-fit of the model was satisfactory. So the model could be adopted for further analysis.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"gridtable\"\u003e\u003ctable float=\"Yes\" id=\"Tab8\" border=\"1\"\u003e\u003ccaption language=\"En\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionNumber\"\u003eTable 4.7\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"CaptionContent\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eVariables in the equation\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/caption\u003e\u003ccolgroup cols=\"10\"\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c1\" colnum=\"1\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c2\" colnum=\"2\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c3\" colnum=\"3\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c4\" colnum=\"4\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c5\" colnum=\"5\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c6\" colnum=\"6\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c7\" colnum=\"7\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c8\" colnum=\"8\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c9\" colnum=\"9\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv align=\"left\" class=\"colspec\" colname=\"c10\" colnum=\"10\"\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cthead\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colspan=\"2\" morerows=\"1\" nameend=\"c2\" namest=\"c1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eB\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eS.E.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eWald\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003edf\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eSig.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\" morerows=\"1\" rowspan=\"2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eExp(B)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colspan=\"2\" nameend=\"c10\" namest=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e95% C.I.for EXP(B)\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eLower\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003cth align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eUpper\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/th\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/thead\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c1\" morerows=\"6\" rowspan=\"7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStep 1\u003csup\u003ea\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eClimate\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e-1.293\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.248\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e27.228\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.000\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.275\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.169\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.446\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eBehavior\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.813\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.292\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e7.764\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.005\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.254\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.273\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e3.991\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eGoal\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.222\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.333\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e44.409\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.000\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e9.227\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e4.800\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e17.738\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eConfidence\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.792\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.323\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e5.992\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.014\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e2.207\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1.171\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e4.161\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eStimulating\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026minus;\u0026thinsp;.949\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.358\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e7.015\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.008\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.387\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.192\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.781\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eAutonomy\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e-1.433\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.366\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e15.338\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.000\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.239\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.116\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.489\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c2\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eConstant\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e-2.747\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c4\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.476\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c5\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e33.335\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c6\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e1\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c7\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.000\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c8\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e.064\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c9\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colname=\"c10\"\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd align=\"left\" colspan=\"10\" nameend=\"c10\" namest=\"c1\"\u003e\u003cp\u003ea. Variable(s) entered on step 1: Climate, Behav, GL, Confi, Stimulating, and Autonymy.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/td\u003e\u003c/tr\u003e\u003c/tbody\u003e\u003c/colgroup\u003e\u003c/table\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs shown in Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab8\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.7\u003c/span\u003e, the most important information about the coefficients used to determine the direction, magnitude, and significance of each predictor is presented. B refers to the regression coefficient, similar to that in general linear regression. Generally, positive coefficients indicate that the event becomes more likely as the predictor increases. Negative coefficients indicate that the event becomes less likely as the predictor increases. Exp (B) is the odds ratio. Odds ratios that are greater than 1 indicate that the event is more likely to occur as the predictor increases. Odds ratios that are less than 1 indicate that the event is less likely to occur as the predictor increases. Typically, if the values of B are positive, the values of Exp (B) are greater than 1; accordingly, if the values of B are negative, the values of Exp (B) are less than 1.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results from Table\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Tab8\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4.7\u003c/span\u003e show that all six predictor variables (climate, behavior, goal, confidence, stimulating and autonomy) were statistically significant, with p values smaller than .05. Among the six predictor variables, behavior, goal and confidence had positive coefficients, which implied that as these variables increased, they were more likely to belong to group 1, i.e., the teacher group; meanwhile, climate, stimulating and autonomy had negative coefficients, which indicated that when these variables increased, they were less likely to belong to group 1.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe predictor variables of behavior, goal and confidence had the largest values of Exp (B), which indicated that with the increase in these variables, the probability of belonging to group 1, i.e., the teacher group, would be much greater. Taking the predictor variable \u0026ldquo;teacher behavior\u0026rdquo; as an example, its value of Exp (B) was 2.254, indicating that controlling for the other predictor variables, with a 1 unit increase in behavior, the odds ratio would increase by 2.254 times; in other words, the probability of belonging to Group 1 would increase by 125.4% (2.254\u0026ndash;1). This was the same for two other predictor variables: goal and confidence. With a 1 unit increase in the goal, controlling for the other predictor variables, the probability of belonging to group 1, i.e., the teacher group, would increase by 822.7% (9.227-1). With a 1 unit increase in promoting learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence, controlling for the other predictor variables, the probability of belonging to group 1, i.e., the teacher group, increased by 120.7% (2.207\u0026ndash;1).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the above analysis, it can be inferred that teachers attach more importance to teacher behavior and goals and promote learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence; students pay much attention to a pleasant classroom climate, stimulating and promoting the autonomy of their learning tasks.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"5. Discussion","content":"\u003cdiv id=\"Sec46\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e5.1 Validating a model of motivational strategies in the Chinese EFL tertiary educational context\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first research question concerns how D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) motivational framework fits into the Chinese tertiary educational context. This question has been proven by evidence from many statistics, such as reliability of the questionnaires, the fitness index of confirmatory factor analysis, the convergent validity and the construct validity of the questionnaires.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGenerally, both the teacher\u0026rsquo;s and the student\u0026rsquo;s questionnaires yielded satisfying results in terms of instrument reliability, with Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s alpha coefficients of 0.979 and 0.994, respectively. These Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s alpha coefficients suggested the high reliability of the questionnaire.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor the confirmatory factor analysis, the overall model chi-square (x2) was 3509.68 with 333 degrees of freedom. The model fit, as indicated by CFI (0.955) and RMSEA (0.085), was good, even though the RMSEA was slightly above the bottom line of 0.08.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConvergent validity refers to the concept that the indicators of a specific construct should converge or share a high proportion of variance in common. The convergent validity of a construct can be tested through standardized regression weights, AVE and construct reliability.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStandardized regression weights, also referred to as the size of factor loadings, are good indicators of convergent validity. It refers to the proportion of variances explained by the factor (or the latent construct), whose value is suggested to be .5 or higher and, ideally, .7 or higher.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother indicator of convergent validity is the average variance extracted, which refers to the mean variance explained by items loaded on the same factor or a construct. The ideal value of the average variance extracted (AVE) should be .5 or greater to suggest adequate convergent validity.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConstruct reliability proves the degree to which the measurement could reflect the true conceptual construct or theoretical meaning, as it claims. The construct reliability should be 0.7 or higher to indicate adequate convergence or internal consistency.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the current study, the results of convergent validity for the confirmatory factor analysis were statistically significant. In terms of the standardized regression weights, the values of factor loadings were within the range of 0.813\u0026ndash;0.951, all above the 0.7 rule of thumb, indicating an adequate extraction of variance by latent factors. In light of the relatively high loading values, the overall AVE values were high, ranging from 0.776917 to 0.871372, suggesting good convergent validity. The construct validity seemed to be perfectly good because the values of construct reliability were overwhelmingly high, from 0.906253\u0026ndash;0.971319.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec47\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e5.2 Different perceptions of EFL teachers and students\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of the research objectives of the current study was to examine the difference between teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational teaching practices in the classroom. The results of the logistic regression suggested that proper teacher behavior, goal-orientedness and promoting self-confidence with positive logistic regression coefficients were the three most predictive variables for categorizing the teacher group; meanwhile, a pleasant classroom climate, stimulating tasks, and promoting learner autonomy with negative logistic regression coefficients were the other three predictor variables for distinguishing the student group. Consequently, it could be inferred that teachers attach more importance to teacher behavior and goals and promote learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence; students pay much attention to a pleasant classroom climate, stimulating and promoting learner autonomy.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec48\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e5.2.1 Teachers\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eCompared with students, Chinese EFL teachers tended to highly regard important motivating teaching practices in the classroom related to \u0026ldquo;proper teacher behavior\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;increasing learners\u0026rsquo; goal orientation\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;promoting learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence\u0026rdquo;. However, these three motivational practices were rated different degrees of importance in previous studies.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Proper teacher behavior\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;promoting learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence\u0026rdquo; are the five most important motivational strategies, as rated in previous studies (Alrabai, 2014; Cheng \u0026amp; D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007; D\u0026ouml;rnyei \u0026amp; Csizer, 1998; Guilloteaux, 2013; Ruesch et al., 2012). These two teaching practices were valued by language teachers because they were effective means to motivate students. Proper teacher behavior does matter in the process of language learning to make students motivated. What they do and how they behave in the classroom strongly influences their students. Teachers are encouraged to set a good example in front of their students through sharing their own language learning experience. Teachers are also advised to establish good relationships with their students by showing their commitment to language teaching and their respect for and concern for their students, as well as by showing their true selves when facing their students. Proper teacher behavior can create basic conditions for motivating students in the classroom. Therefore, through teachers\u0026rsquo; projection of proper behavior, they are likely to have a strong impact on their students\u0026rsquo; motivation. Self-confidence refers to the belief that one has the ability to finish a task, achieve certain goals and produce some results, which is a vital aspect of self-concept. It is a major part of the motivational system in foreign language learning (Clement, D\u0026ouml;rnyei \u0026amp; Noels, 1994). Language learning is largely a \u0026ldquo;confidence game\u0026rdquo; (Cited from D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2012, p. 65). The confident learners can communicate with limited L1 knowledge, whereas no amount of certain language knowledge will help learners speak without confidence. This is consistent with the importance of self-efficacy in educational psychology. Increasing learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence is a way to maintain and protect their motivation by generating a \u0026ldquo;can-do-spirit\u0026rdquo; among their students. The agreement on the importance of these two teaching practices confirmed that some motivational strategies were equally important in different cultures; that is, some strategies were transferable in different cultural contexts (Cheng \u0026amp; D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Increasing learners\u0026rsquo; goal orientation\u0026rdquo; was regarded as important in the current study but was not considered as important as it was in previous studies, where it was not included in the top ten important motivational strategies. This strategy ranked 9th in Hungarian teachers\u0026rsquo; views (D\u0026ouml;rnyei \u0026amp; Csizer, 1998) and 6th in Taiwanese EFL teachers\u0026rsquo; perceptions (Cheng \u0026amp; D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007). As a result, this strategy was not valued by all EFL teachers in different cultures; that is, some strategies were culture sensitive or culture dependent (Cheng \u0026amp; D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007). This may be because teachers may not realize the value of setting goals or because they find it difficult to utilize this strategy in classrooms because of the national objectives set by official curriculum requirements (Cheng \u0026amp; D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007).\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec49\" class=\"Section3\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e5.2.2 Students\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the students\u0026rsquo; viewpoint, three motivational strategies were rated more significantly. They were \u0026ldquo;creating a pleasant classroom climate\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;stimulating learning tasks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;promoting learners\u0026rsquo; autonomy. The results of the logistic regression indicate that the odds ratios of these motivational strategies are less than 1, which means that with an increase of one unit in these predictor variables, the probability of belonging to the teacher group decreases. In other words, these motivational strategies could be predictors of the decision of the student group.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec50\" class=\"Section4\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e5.2.2.1 Creating a pleasant classroom climate\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is believed that learning a foreign language was a face-threatening experience that the students could have as a part of their language studies (D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2005). In fact, language learning anxiety caused by a tense classroom climate is considered an important factor that can hinder students\u0026rsquo; language performance in classrooms (Young, 1999). Consequently, a pleasant classroom climate can provide a safe, harmonious, democratic and open environment for students\u0026rsquo; involvement in classroom activities by reducing their anxiety. It is helpful to create basic conditions for fostering students\u0026rsquo; learning motivation. Only in such a motivating atmosphere can students actively participate in classroom activities, and their learning interests can be improved. This motivational strategy ranked second in the Hungarian study (1998) and fourth in the Taiwanese study (2007), which proved the importance of promoting a secure learning environment and avoiding any comparison among students.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis strategy is favored by all students with different levels of English proficiency (Fang \u0026amp; Chen, 2013) and is considered the most effective way to motivate students to be adopted by language teachers.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll the students agreed unanimously on the importance of a pleasant classroom climate. Many students talked about how this climate might affect their learning in the classroom. Some mentioned teachers\u0026rsquo; personalities and characteristics:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I truly like those teachers who are humorous, because they give me a feeling of intimacy and safety. This makes me think that my teacher is just like my elder sister and that there is no need to worry about anything when having English lessons. I just try and, actively and bravely do the class tasks, without worrying about making mistakes\u0026hellip;so it is not necessary to feel nervous. I just follow the teacher\u0026rsquo;s instruction, and I can catch the flow of the course\u0026hellip;..\u0026rdquo; (Student 3, from University A)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Teachers\u0026rsquo; personality is very important in my English classroom. My current English teacher is very kind, humorous and considerate. Therefore, in her class, I never feel nervous, and I am always energetic when I have English lessons because her personality makes me feel that we are like close friends. I never think about anything but working hard, and I don\u0026rsquo;t have to wonder I will be punished if I make any mistakes. Even when I make some mistakes, my teacher can handle them in a humorous way, and this will not make me feel awkward. I like her very much. In addition, my English is improving day by day. However, in the past, in my senior middle school, my English teacher was always strict with us, and in classes, he was so serious that our class was always silent. Nobody would like to participate in classroom activities if we would be punished or in an embarrassing situation. During those three years, my English was not so good, and at least I was not crazy about English learning. Therefore, my English was not satisfactory. Therefore, the teacher\u0026rsquo;s personality and humor do matter in my English learning.\u0026rdquo; (Student 5, University A)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec51\" class=\"Section4\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e5.2.2.2 Making learning tasks stimulating\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe perceived importance of task-related motivating teaching practices by teachers was ranked sixth in the Hungary survey (D\u0026ouml;rnyei \u0026amp; Csizer, 1998), seventh in the American study (Ruesch et al., 2012), and seventh in the Taiwanese study (Cheng \u0026amp; D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007). This strategy was ranked seventh in American studies, with almost the same ranking as that of the corresponding teachers. It seemed that this motivated behavior was not as valued by either teachers or students in all the studies as other motivated teaching practices, such as teacher behavior, the classroom climate and the promotion of self-confidence. However, in the current study, it was an important indicator in terms of the students\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the interviews, the students talked much about learning tasks in the classroom. They thought that their teachers should try their best to make tasks stimulating and interesting because tasks are the keys to learning languages inside and outside of classrooms. They talked about teachers\u0026rsquo; several motivational behaviors, for example, using different ways of presenting tasks to avoid classroom routines, including novel or interesting elements to catch students\u0026rsquo; curiosity, making tasks challenging and within students\u0026rsquo; ability by including some activities that required students to solve problems and discover new things.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll the students interviewed believed that adopting different forms of tasks could reduce the dullness and boredom of English classes; one example is as follows:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I totally agreed with this point; our teachers should break out the routine of English classes by adopting different forms of presentation. If not, our class will become dull and boring, and we will lose interest in learning English. It is suggested that teachers use different forms of presentations. \u0026rdquo; (Student 1, University A)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo stimulate learning tasks, language teachers should take some measures in terms of using different ways of presenting tasks to avoid classroom routines, including novel or interesting elements to catch students\u0026rsquo; curiosity, making tasks challenging and within students\u0026rsquo; ability by including activities that require students to solve problems cooperatively.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec52\" class=\"Section4\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e5.2.2.3 Promotion of learner autonomy\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003ePromotion of learners\u0026rsquo; autonomy and allowing students to choose to do things ranked lower in all previous studies (e.g., D\u0026ouml;rnyei \u0026amp; Csizer, 1998; Cheng \u0026amp; D\u0026ouml;rnyei, 2007; You, 2010; Zhao \u0026amp; Wang, 2010; Ruesch et al., 2012; Guilloteaux, 2013 and Alrabai, 2014; Safdari, 2018). This strategy\u0026rsquo;s lower ranking in different learning contexts, such as Hungary, China (including Taiwan Province), America, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Iran, indicates that promoting learners\u0026rsquo; autonomy was disregarded to some extent by language teachers, either because it was difficult to implement this strategy or because these teachers did not believe that this strategy could not facilitate students\u0026rsquo; learning motivation.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the comparative studies conducted by Ruesch et al. (2012) in America, Alrabai (2014) in Saudi Arabia, and Safdari (2018) in Iran, autonomy was very low among students. This result might be attributed to the fact that all the students on the campus were provided fewer opportunities to make their own choices and that schools were not considered the best place for self-learning (Benson, 2000). Moreover, it is argued that teachers in these contexts functioned as controllers of the class with authoritative positions rather than as facilitators who helped students to allow for free choices (Warden \u0026amp; Lin, 2000). Under these circumstances, on the one hand, the teachers control the flow of the course and the whole class, whereas the students have no right to bring in their own ideas. Consequently, learning autonomy has been ignored. On the other hand, the teachers are accustomed to the role of the presenter of knowledge and the students to the role of the receiver, which is obedient to the teachers\u0026rsquo; arrangement, not valuing autonomous learning inside and outside the classroom.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSurprisingly, in the current study, this motivating teaching behavior was regarded as very important by the student participants. The reason for such a finding may be the follow-up interviews with the students. In the interviews, the students provided some fresh ideas about learning autonomy in their English learning. Their insights were instructive and deserve our deep consideration. They mainly mentioned the role of teachers as facilitators, allowing students to select interesting topics or materials favored by themselves, providing instant feedback to students and teaching them some strategies that could be used in autonomous learning.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany students insisted that teachers should not behave like fathers or mothers but rather like friends or brothers and sisters. They did not want to be controlled by their teachers and longed for their rights of individualized learning. They were keen for freedom and hated parent-like management because they were born in the new millennium, were open-minded and had a unique personality.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I definitely agree that teachers should act as facilitators and friends. Only if teachers work as helpers can students have more freedom and be in a motivating status. We truly don\u0026rsquo;t like such a classroom where we just follow teachers\u0026rsquo; instructions without free choices. Even when we have to learn the textbooks, we still want to learn something beyond the textbooks, which can\u0026rsquo;t always be practical. Our teachers are not only presenters of knowledge but also helpers. When we encounter any difficulties, we can turn to our teachers for help whenever it is inside and outside the classroom.\u0026rdquo; (Student 3, University A)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother student from the same university agreed with the teachers\u0026rsquo; role as facilitators:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;We are new generations born in the new millennium. We don\u0026rsquo;t like to be always obedient to our teachers, just following their instructions. We don\u0026rsquo;t like parent-like management: we do as the teacher tells us to. We long for more free time and space in classrooms. English learning is the same.\u0026rdquo; (Student 8, University A)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSome students from University B expressed his content with learning autonomy. He seemed to believe that teachers should teach them learning strategies to address different learning difficulties, and these strategies may vary from student to student. He said:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;The teacher should teach us some ways or methods to improve our language proficiency independently, and we will do it\u0026hellip;Everybody has their own learning habits, their own strengths, and weaknesses, so teachers should tell us how we can become successful autonomous learners. Having known ways of becoming autonomous learners, we practice when we are free. For example, the teacher can tell us how to practice spoken English when we do not have a native speaker at hand. In addition, these methods should be practical.\u0026rdquo; (Student 3, University B)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnother student from the same university described his understanding of promoting autonomous learning:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;Autonomous learning doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean learning everything without any help. I think our teachers should give us some hints or tips to complete the learning tasks for autonomous learning. They cannot just assign the tasks without any instructions, which is not responsible.\u0026rdquo; (Student 9, University B)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne student from University C mentioned that he supported autonomous learning and suggested that teachers provide interesting materials in teaching, which was required to be finished by students in their extracurricular time. This kind of activity could be seemingly optional or possibly similar to homework assigned by the teacher. He said:\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip;\u0026hellip;The teacher can assign us some reading tasks, for example. After we have learned a passage in our textbook, he can suggest some reading articles that we can find online or from the library. Reading more related articles can help us learn more words and phrases as well as widen our horizons. All the reading tasks should be finished by ourselves, so we have to try our best to overcome the difficulties encountered in reading unassisted. This is a good way to promote our learning autonomy. Anyway, we should learn to do things autonomously, and this is a basic skill.\u0026rdquo; (Student 7, University C)\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"6. Conclusion","content":"\u003cp\u003eConsidering the paucity of studies on motivational strategies and the research gap in this field, this study aimed to answer two research questions. One was the reliability of D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) framework of motivational strategies for Chinese EFL teachers and students in the tertiary educational context; the other was to examine the importance of motivational strategies attached to teachers and students to determine the differences/mismatches in their perceptions.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFirst, on the basis of D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) framework of motivational strategies and research findings from previous studies, a preliminary questionnaire was compiled. In accordance with the results of the exploratory interviews with teachers, the questionnaire was reworded or rewritten to make it fit the research context. After that, the pilot study was conducted to test the reliability of the questionnaire to ensure that it was applicable in later studies. The same questionnaire was then labeled the teacher version or the student version, which were administered for investigation. The questionnaires were sent to more than two thousand students and three hundred English language teachers from three universities through the online questionnaire service website \u0026ldquo;Wenjuanxing\u0026rdquo;. After data screening, only 1330 cases from students and 251 cases from teachers were valid and were included in the final data analysis. Confirmatory analysis and the multigroup test method were used to validate a model of motivational strategies suitable for both teachers and students. Logistic regression was adopted to examine different patterns of teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; views of motivational teaching practices, from which it could be seen what motivational strategies were more valued by teachers and what strategies were more valued by students.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec54\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e6.1 Major findings\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe current study confirmed a model of motivational strategies of Chinese EFL teachers and students in a higher educational context, which consisted of 7 macrostrategies with 29 micromotivational strategies. The seven macrostrategies included \u0026ldquo;proper teacher behavior\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;promoting learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;increasing learners\u0026rsquo; goal-orientedness\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;promoting group cohesiveness and group norms\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;promoting learners\u0026rsquo; autonomy\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;stimulating tasks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;L2-related value\u0026rdquo;. All 29 micromotivating teaching practices were regarded as important by both teachers and students, but some had significantly different regression loadings. These microstrategies showing significant differences in regression weights between teachers and students included Item 15 (\u0026ldquo;Make sure grades reflect not only the students\u0026rsquo; achievement but also the effort they have put into in the task\u0026rdquo;) and Item 46 (\u0026ldquo;Show students that their effort and achievement are being recognized by you\u0026rdquo;) within \u0026ldquo;Recognizing students\u0026rsquo; efforts\u0026rdquo;; Item 26 (\u0026ldquo;Try and determine about your students\u0026rsquo; needs, goals and interests, and then build these into your curriculum as much as possible) within \u0026ldquo;Goal orientation\u0026rdquo;; Item 33 (\u0026ldquo;Make clear to students that the important thing in learning a foreign language is to communicate the meaning effectively rather than worrying about grammar mistakes\u0026rdquo; within \u0026ldquo;Promoting self-confidence\u0026rdquo;; Item 18 (\u0026ldquo;Break the routine of the lessons by varying presentation formats\u0026rdquo;) within \u0026ldquo;Promoting tasks stimulating\u0026rdquo;; and almost all the microstrategies within \u0026ldquo;Promotion learner autonomy\u0026rdquo; except Item 48 (\u0026ldquo;Give some material or spiritual reward to those students who make great or striking progress\u0026rdquo;).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis model of motivational strategies fit both EFL teachers and students in the Chinese tertiary educational context was proven to have good fit, with an overall model chi-square (x\u003csup\u003e2\u003c/sup\u003e) of 3509.68 and 333 degrees of freedom. The model fit, as indicated by CFI (0.955) and RMSEA (0.085), was good. The questionnaires used in the current study had good validity and reliability.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe results of the logistic regression analysis provided a reasonable picture of the differences in the perceptions of the importance of motivational strategies among Chinese EFL teachers and students at universities. Chinese EFL teachers regarded three important motivational strategies: \u0026ldquo;proper teacher behavior\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;promoting learners\u0026rsquo; self-confidence\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;promoting learners\u0026rsquo; goal orientation\u0026rdquo;. Moreover, the students considered three other motivational strategies to be effective: \u0026ldquo;pleasant classroom climate\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;making tasks stimulating\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;promoting learner autonomy\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec55\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e6.2 Pedagogical implications\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eConsidering students\u0026rsquo; perceptions of motivational strategies, English teachers should adopt corresponding teaching techniques to create an environment that motivates students to initiate, foster, and maintain their students\u0026rsquo; learning motivation. These teaching practices involve \u0026ldquo;creating a pleasant classroom climate\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;stimulating learning tasks\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;promoting learner autonomy\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFirst, teachers should cultivate students\u0026rsquo; English learning interest. Confucius said, \u0026ldquo;They who love it are better than those who know it, and those who delight in it are better than those who love it.\u0026rdquo; As the old saying reads, \u0026ldquo;only by learning with pleasure can we be good at seeking new knowledge\u0026rdquo;. Therefore, only when students are interested in English learning can they arouse their thirst for knowledge, generate a positive learning attitude and motivation, actively participate in various classroom activities, and activate the classroom atmosphere. To cultivate students\u0026rsquo; interest in learning, first, we should cultivate students\u0026rsquo; desire to communicate in English so that their learning purpose can be transferred from passing an exam to communicating in English and understanding the life and culture of people in English-speaking countries.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn classroom teaching, according to the teaching content and teaching aims, teachers are encouraged to use multimedia and adopt various classroom activities. These activities are variously close to students\u0026rsquo; lives and involve a wide range of content and forms, such as group work, role play, debate, discussion and games. In terms of the organization of classroom activities, teachers are encouraged to create a pleasant, relaxed and interesting atmosphere to make students more dynamic and industrious.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThus, certain attention should be given to promoting students\u0026rsquo; self-confidence and feelings of achievement. Teachers are supposed to adopt more interactive activities in the classroom, during which the students can obtain self-confidence because of reduced classroom anxiety through mutual learning and making progress among students. Students\u0026rsquo; language anxiety can contribute to their lack of confidence. Those students who lack self-confidence tend to worry about failure in language learning and are afraid of being criticized by teachers and peers. They are sensitive to their behavior and heavily influenced by their impressions, which are left to others. Therefore, teachers should organize more group activities or pair work to reduce their anxiety rather than activities that target individual students, such as asking individuals to answer questions. When assessing students, teachers should give more encouragement and praise to help students understand that they are making progress so that they will be more energetic and exert more effort to study later. By doing so, the classroom climate will also become more active and pleasant.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNext, the role of teachers in the classroom should be changed, and good teacher‒student relationships should be established. Teachers need to move away from the traditional role of controllers and play different roles. For example, in classroom activities, teachers should work as good organizers, as good assessors in class asking, and as consultants in answering questions. The teacher is a director and an actor in the classroom. It is recommended that teachers give enough instructions in activities while they are supposed to participate in the classroom activities with equal status as their students and make a demonstration. Consequently, teachers and students get along well with each other, establishing mutual trust. By creating a dynamic, good atmosphere in the classroom, students achieve greater academic achievements with less effort.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFinally, teachers are advised to promote learners\u0026rsquo; autonomy. Promoting students\u0026rsquo; learning autonomy is one of the important changes for university students from the transition of middle school to university. It is far less enough for students to depend only on classroom learning, especially for language learning. The students are strongly encouraged to preview before class and review after class. Moreover, they should facilitate language skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing and interpreting/translating. This would be supplementary to classroom teaching. Teachers can supervise and monitor students\u0026rsquo; autonomous learning by checking regularly or by students\u0026rsquo; mutual checking to foster students\u0026rsquo; positive learning attitudes and to make students learn English actively rather than \u0026ldquo;forced to learn\u0026rdquo;.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv id=\"Sec56\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e\u003ch2\u003e6.3 Research limitations and future research directions\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere are some limitations in the current study. Three of them will be noted in this part. The first limitation relates to the research methodology adopted in this study. The current study mainly used quantitative statistics to examine the group\u0026rsquo;s characteristics of seeing motivational strategies, hence less attention was given to the individualistic features of perceiving the importance of motivational strategies. Questionnaire surveys have been administered to the participants to collect data, which was used to describe the characteristics of teachers and students groups in their views of motivating behavior in English classroom teaching. Yet, there were some limitations of the questionnaire itself. One outstanding point was that the participants\u0026rsquo; responses lacked enough variation when rating the importance of the listed motivational strategies because these motivational strategies were considered to be important in whatever teaching and cultural context. This might contribute to other problems in analyzing data, such as collinearity and to some extent, relatively high correlations among different items. It would be another case to investigate the use of motivational strategies because every English teacher\u0026rsquo; experience vary distinctively. Anyway, it is of great importance to investigate both teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; beliefs of motivational strategies because this can help provide a whole picture of the participants\u0026rsquo; views of motivational teaching practice rather than being limited to their own experience.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe second limitation is closely related to the first one. Since the current study aimed to unveil the groups\u0026rsquo; trends of viewing motivational strategies, the quantitative methods were adopted to test potential patterns of teachers\u0026rsquo; and students\u0026rsquo; beliefs of motivational strategies. However, it is difficult or impossible to investigate the changing of their beliefs because of their different teaching/learning experiences or because of the changes in the social milieu.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo address the limitations of the current study, future research should adopt a mixed-methods approach combining longitudinal surveys with qualitative case studies to capture dynamic shifts in motivational strategy perceptions. Specifically, three key directions are proposed: the first is to develop culture-specific assessment tools with contextualized items (e.g., strategy effectiveness in different skill domains) to mitigate response homogeneity; the second one is to implement teacher-student dyadic interviews to identify belief discrepancies that affect classroom implementation; and the last is to explore cross-cultural comparative designs across educational systems to examine how cultural values shape motivational strategy priorities. These advancements will move beyond group-level trends toward adaptive, context-sensitive motivational practices.\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Abbreviations","content":"\u003cdiv class=\"DefinitionList\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"DefinitionListEntry\"\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"Term\"\u003eEFL\u003c/div\u003e\u003cdiv class=\"Description\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eEnglish as a Foreign Language\u003c/p\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEthics approval and consent to participate\u0026nbsp;\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe study was submitted to, and approved by, the academic committee of School of Foreign Languages, Shandong University of Aeronautics; and the current study adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki. For the consent statement, before the questionnaire was distributed and the semi-structured interview was conducted, the consent of all the participants was obtained.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eConsent for publication\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot applicable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAvailability of data and materials\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe data that support the findings of this study are available from the author, Chun-guang TIAN, upon reasonable request.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCompeting Interests\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe author declares no competing interests.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFunding\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe research reported here was supported by the Doctoral Research Startup Fund [2019Y46] of Shandong Institute of Aeronautics and the National Project for Research among Foreign Language Teachers in Higher Education [BZXYHXRW201989].\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthors' contributions\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChun-guang TIAN is the sole author for contributing to the conceptualization, methodology, original writing and reviewing writing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAcknowledgements\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe gratitude should be extended to Dr. Shim Jaewoo for his constructive advice in data analysis. The thanks should also be given to those participant who have participated in the data collection.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAlison J, Halliwell S. Challenging Classes: Focus on Pupil Behavior. London: CILT; 2002.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAlrabai FA. (2011). Motivational instruction in practice: Do EFL instructors at King Khalid University motivate their students to learn English as a foreign language? \u003cem\u003eArab World English Journal\u003c/em\u003e, 2(4), 257\u0026ndash;285. Retrieved from \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttp://www.awej.org/\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"http://www.awej.org/\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAlrabai F. 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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1997.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWong RMH. An investigation of strategies for student motivation in the Chinese EFL context. Innov Lang Learn Teach. 2014;8(2):132\u0026ndash;54.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eYou C. A study on the motivational strategies of Senior Middle School English teachers. Foreign Lang Bimon,\u003cem\u003e33\u003c/em\u003e(0372\u0026ndash;75.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eZhao N, Wang J. On the motivational strategies used by high school teachers in Chinese EFL classrooms. Foreign Lang Learn Theory Pract. 2010;1:47\u0026ndash;54.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"motivation, motivational strategies, teachers’ perceptions, students’ perceptions, Chinese tertiary educational context","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7421565/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7421565/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eAlthough D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s (2001) taxonomy of motivational strategies has shaped L2 motivation research for two decades, its empirical fit in Chinese tertiary educational context\u0026mdash;and the degree of alignment between teachers\u0026rsquo; and learners\u0026rsquo; espoused beliefs\u0026mdash;remains further explored. This study offers the first multisite, mixed-methods investigation to fill that gap. Following a three-stage design, we conducted (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e) semistructured interviews with 30 university EFL instructors; (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e) large-scale online questionnaires (teachers, n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;251; students, n\u0026thinsp;=\u0026thinsp;1,330) after pilot validation; and (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003e) follow-up interviews (30 teachers; 60 students). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified a seven-factor, 29-item model (proper teacher behavior, self-confidence enhancement, goal-orientedness, group cohesiveness, learner autonomy, task stimulation, and L2-related value) that demonstrated configural and metric invariance across stakeholder groups. The results of logistic regression revealed that teachers prioritized strategies linked to goal-orientedness and professional demeanour, whereas students valued autonomy support and affective engagement. The findings corroborate the contextual robustness of D\u0026ouml;rnyei\u0026rsquo;s framework while highlighting nuanced stakeholder discrepancies that instructional interventions must address explicitly.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions of Motivational Strategies in the Chinese Tertiary Educational Context","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-09-30 08:55:47","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-7421565/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"177b1369-1267-4146-bae1-19a96001cc30","owner":[],"postedDate":"September 30th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2025-12-17T06:08:12+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-09-30 08:55:47","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-7421565","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-7421565","identity":"rs-7421565","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}