Relationship between motivation and interaction in the SLA classroom: Insights from Bangladeshi ESL context

This article investigates the relationship between existing motivational trends and the positive propensity of Bangladeshi ESL students to classroom interaction on the one hand and to provide guidelines and suggestions to teachers, authority and policy makers on the other for bringing a change in the SLA classroom teaching through pragmatic steps and effective planning. Quantitative data has been collected through the administration of questionnaires and qualitative data has been obtained by the analysis of language related episodes identified in the transcripts of students’ conversation during task execution. Analysis of the students’ response to the questionnaire shows the positive relationship between students’ motivation and attitude to interaction in the SLA classroom since highly motivated students are showing much interest in interactive classroom. In addition findings of the classroom observation reveal that students can only give importance to the meaning of their unfamiliar word and the discourse markers instead of spelling and grammatical structure of the sentences during their both pre-test and post-test activities. It is concluded that students’ motivation and interaction are important factors in shaping the development of second language learning. Furthermore this study suggests an active role of teacher for explicit instruction in both strategies and approaches to enhance students’ motivation and interaction in the SLA classroom for developing their English proficiency.