Exploring the relationship between students’ perceptions of the language teacher and the development of foreign language learning motivation

Abstract

The present study aims to examine the nature of the relationship between students’ subjective perceptions of their foreign language teachers and language learning motivation. The participants were 592 Croatian elementary school learners who learn English as a foreign language as a compulsory subject. The findings of the current study reveal that the teacher’s instructional competence was perceived as the most important characteristics, whereas the teacher’s personality and his/her intercultural competence were perceived as less important. The results have also revealed that subjective interpretations of both competences related to the foreign language classroom instruction and personal characteristic affect students’ motivation the most i.e. that the attitudes towards the learning situation may account for the variability in motivation. The present study findings draw on the importance of a quality language learning situation built on quality teacher-student relationship which, as such, facilitates both language learning motivation and the relative degree of success.