Motivation of students in the process of teaching a foreign language

The object of our study was to identify the predominant types of instructional manner (style), which are used by the English language teachers at the transport university and their influence on the level of students’ motivation to language learning. Every teacher has his own philosophy, ideas, beliefs and special features in the manner of instruction, even if they follow the same teaching technology in their classrooms. It seems quite natural to assume that eventually a style of instruction affects the learners’ motivation. But when it comes to foreign language learning, it is the students’ motivation that appears to be an important factor in successful language acquisition. In this study we addressed the two main objectives: to try to determine and describe the main methodical styles of the English language teachers of our transport university and identify the motivational level of students to English language learning depending on different instructional styles. Our study was restricted by the first-year students’ contingent of our higher school and accordingly, the English language teachers of our chair. To determine instructional styles of our teachers, we used a tool - a questionnaire survey “Find out your instructional style”, and for identification of students’ level of motivation the questionnaire “English language motivational scale” was applied. After we collected and sorted out the findings it turned out that “Delegator” learners’-centered teaching style is the most preferred one for students. But the next two first choice instructional styles were teacher-oriented “Expert” and “Role Model”.