شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The current investigation is mainly concerned with the role of gender in shaping motivation of English foreign language learning. It attempts to determine whether there is a difference between girls and boys in motivation when learning English as a foreign language. It also meant to seek out the factors that lead learners to be motivated during language classes and the other ones that hinder them from improving themselves. In addition, this study emphasized the different motivational strategies used by teachers to increase their learners motivation. The study has been carried out in Krim Belkacem Secondary School at Draa Ben Khedda. To achieve these objectives, a mixed method research was used, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods. Thus, a questionnaire was distributed to a total number of one hundred learners including 50 girls and 50 boys; a structured interview was conducted with five (5) English language teachers of the school, as well as fifteen (15) classroom observations. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for statistical data analysis while Qualitative Content Analysis served to interpret the results of the interview. Relying on the results, it is clearly that gender is an unquestionable factor which has a remarkable effect on EFL learning motivation, that is, girls are more motivated to learn English as a foreign language than their counterparts. The results also pointed out that the main factors for their motivation are “the enjoyment of learning” for girls and “the parental encouragement” for boys, while their inhibiting factors are “the teacher behaviours” and “the lack of interest” respectively. To increase learners’ motivation, different motivational strategies were adopted and incorporated by EFL teachers. (Author’s abstract)