Japanese learners of English: Their perceptions of teachers as a motivator

The current study of second language (L2) learners’ motivation is more oriented with factors affecting motivation (Csizér & Dörnyei, 2005) and among these, the teacher has been regarded as a major one that may determine the learners’ levels of performance in learning an L2 (Al Kaboody, 2013; Tanaka, 2005). On this basis, Japanese high school and university students (N = 382) of English as a foreign language were investigated to ascertain how their perceptions of teachers’ level of commitment towards English affect their own levels of motivation. The study attempted to reveal any differences in the students’ perceptions of three teacher-related factors: personality, classroom behaviour, and teaching skills/technique, in order to duly determine which of these three factors influence the students’ motivation more strongly than the other two. The results were analysed based on the students’ school years to examine the relationship between the study experience and the aforementioned three factors, and also on their evaluation of teachers between non-native and native English speakers. The study employed a questionnaire duplicated from a similar study conducted previously in an Australian context by one of the authors (Matsumoto, 2011) to collect valid data with the results computed statistically using SPSS 19. The T-test was conducted on the means drawn from the five-point Likert-scale. The results revealed that university students and also students learning from native English teachers view their teachers as influencing their own motivation more strongly than high school students and the students learning from non-native English teachers respectively. The Chi-Square test on the teacher-related factors also showed notable difference between the students in different institutions as well as between the students learning from native and non- native English teachers.