Introduction. Teaching is both a science and an art. At present, Belarusian EFL-teacher training has an urgent need for teachers to adopt new personalized methods to guide students towards more efficient learning, break away from the dull routines of traditional grammar classes and increase learners’ motivation.Issues of motivation are known to contribute to low standards of achievement in English teaching and learning [1]. Very few studies drawing on students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of teaching strategies to motivate English language learners have been conducted in Belarus [2]. At the same time, inCIS countriesthere has been a distinct increase in research papers dedicated to EFL-learning motivation issues in the recent years [3], [4], [5], [6], which makes it relevant to study the personal motivational peculiarities of students training for EFL-teaching career for further use of research results to customize educational content and activities accordingly.

Differences in students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the motivational effect of teaching strategies in an EFL classroom are a cause to students' ineffective processing of the material in the language class. If teachers are more aware of the impact of their teaching strategies on students’ motivation, they may be able to identify what teaching strategies, aids and authentic materials their students personally find interesting and engaging.

The idea of personalized learning rests on the foundation that humans learn through experience and by constructing knowledge. It is heavily influenced by a learner’s prior experiences and is accomplished via language and social interaction. Personalized learning is not the only way to think about teaching and learning. Moreover, learning will and should take many different forms. Proper instruction, blended instruction, differentiation, proactive supports, real-world connections, and applications are hallmarks of good, sound personalized learning. In general, personalized-learning models seek to adapt to the pace of learning and the instructional strategies, content and activities being used to fit best each learner’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Personalized learning is about giving students control over their learning, differentiating instruction for each child, and providing real-time feedback. Putting a framework together can help with practical personalized learning for all and can be developed as it faces challenges. The framework can help with having a structured common-sense personalized learning instead of a learning system that is being interpreted differently.

One-size-fits-all learning models do not consider important distinctions between learning types and, when necessary, try to manage these differences. So we are to pay our attention to personalized learning. The term personalized learning, or personalization, “refers to a diverse variety of educational programs, learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic-support strategies that are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students”[7]. Personalized learning is generally seen as an alternative to so-called one-size-fits-all approaches to schooling in which teachers may, for example, provide all students in a given course with the same type of instruction, the same assignments, and the same assessments with little variation or modification from student to student. Personalized learning may also be called student-centered learning, since the general goal is to make individual learning needs the primary consideration in important educational and instructional decisions, ratherthan what might be preferred, more convenient, or logistically easier for teachers and schools [7].

By considering the impact of emotions and intentions, educators can better understand how and why individuals learn differently. Meeting this challenge requires a better understanding of the psychological sources that influence an individual’s learning ability and how a learner may want or intend to learn. Specifically, the search for more sophisticated learning theories requires a better understanding of learners’ motivation.

The recent learning orientation research suggests that learners can be intrinsically driven (self-motivated to some degree). Nevertheless, research also suggests that we generally place too much emphasis on extrinsic motivation and not enough emphasis on fostering intrinsic or self-motivation toward learning more successfully. Due to this fact, the aim of our research is to determine the motivational profiles of first-year Belarusian university students who are to become EFL-teachers.

Research materials and methods. The study attempts to answer research questions related to students’ motivational profiles that may be used by the university teachers in teaching various aspects of a foreign language. These are as follows:

What type of motivational profile prevails among first-year Belarusian university students who are to become EFL-teachers?

What factors define which motivational profiles will prevail in a certain group of people, and which are supposed to be neglected?

Employed research methods include questionnaire, Reiss Motivation Profile test, qualitative and quantitative data analysis.

Sensitivity theory provides an analysis of personality based on what people say motivates their behavior. After Reiss and Havercamp confirmed a factor solution to self-reported human strivings, the Reiss Profile of Fundamental Goals and Motivation Sensitivities psychometric instrument was standardized [8]. Sensitivity theory holds that people go through life seeking to satisfy the motives, concentrating on those that are strongest and valued most highly (which depends on individuality). Each basic desire motivates everybody but not to the same extent. How strongly or weakly an individual usually experiences each of the strivings determines the individual’s priorities. A desire profile (or individual hierarchy) is a person’s unique prioritization of the strivings. Generally, the most important strivings for explaining a person’s behavior are those that are unusually strong (high) or unusually weak (low) compared to appropriate norms.

In order to suggest a possible way of personalizing educational content, we tuned to Reiss Motivational Profile (RMP) as the methodological basis for subsequent individual selection of authentic texts and teaching tools for conducting more effective English grammar practicals and workshops.First-year students (15 participants as a total) majoring in linguistics were offered a modified Reiss’ motivational profile test to assess their fundamental needs.

All the participants study at Baranovichi State University, which is located in a provincial (although relatively big) town of Baranovichi, Belarus. They were invited to voluntarily participate in October, 2021. Thirteen of the participants were girls, two – boys, which should be taken into account considering the results of motivational profile test characterized by vividly feminine worldview. The gender ratio of the respondents is illustrated below (See Figure 1).

The questionnaire containing 40 questions digitized via online platform Online Test Pad was taken as a basis for our research. The questions were designed by North-Western Coaching and Management University [9]. To avoid misunderstanding, the questionnaire was conducted in Russian.

The discussion of research results. Regarding the first research question, three prevailing motivational profiles were found: Flexibility, Saturation and Honor (See Figure 2).

It can be noticed that many people depend on the opinions of the people around them because of the desire to show themselves better than they really are, because of the fear of being condemned by the people around them for their shortcomings, that’s why Flexibility prevails among the respondents of our questionnaire. We should also take into consideration the fact that the participants of the questionnaire were first-year students with only three months of students’ live experience, who found themselves in a completely new educational environment with new subjects to study, many different teachers, each with their own set of demands, rules, values, personality traits and communicative style, and on a new level of pedagogical communication where they are expected to act as responsible adults. The need to adjust themselves to ever-changing pedagogical situations and produce the best impression possible on the instructors and professors empowered to assess their performance looks natural for a first-year student (a yesterday’s schoolchild).

The highest frequency of the Saturation profile echoes the well-known social stereotype about students’ perpetual food-craving. This stereotype does have a grain of truth in it, especially if we speak about first-year students who miss homemade food, while most of them cannot cook for themselves, and all of them have to change their eating habits in accordance with their newly developed daily routine.

From the psychological point of view, nutrition helps us to understand how what we eat influences how we feel – including our emotions, moods, sensations and motivations. The evidence supporting psychological determinants and food choice is limited and proposed mechanisms for the relationship are complex. Stress can trigger changes in human behaviours that affect health; the effect of stress on food choice is complex and individualistic: some people consume more food and make unhealthy food choices and others consume less food. It is believed that stress induced changes may be due to changes in motivation, physiological, changes in eating opportunities, food availability and meal preparation. So these factors possibly explain the leading role of the Saturation profile for the first-year students of Baranovichi State University, whose adaptation to their new lifestyle and educational environment is a stressful process.

The basic desire for Honor motivates people to embrace moral codes of conduct. So the fact that Honor is among the top three motivational profiles in the sample group means that the participants are loyal to their parents as well as other ancestors, and take pride in their ethnic heritage. The students’ adherence to moral codes and national traditions may be explained on the grounds of Belarusian mentality features. As I. Piniuta [10, p.49] suggests, Belarusians are characterized by a combination of respect for traditions and pragmatism, as well as modesty [10, p.47], which is also reflected in the prevalence of Honor over Status. The Status Profile is characterized with a highly negative numerical value, which describes the respondents as humble and down-to-earth people, who appear to be more impressed by moral values and principles than fame, popularity, public attention and the prestige value of the things they own.

According to I. Piniuta, Belarus represents a high-power distance culture, which means people accept a hierarchical order in which everybody has his/her place, and which needs no further justification [10, p.43]. This factor can have had some impact not only on the high frequency of the Flexibility profile, but also on the respondents’ lack of motivation towards Vengeance, Independence and Power.

Concerning the second research question, we came to the conclusion that the frequency of choosing particular motivational profiles byfirst-year students of Baranovichi state university, who are trained to be EFL-teachers, is heavily influenced by a number of psychological, social and cultural factors, such as stress level, the degree of personal independence, the need to adjust to a new educational environment and reconstruct one’s daily routine, and some features of national mentality cultivated in the process of family upbringing. As individual as they may be, the group-level results of the questionnaire proved to possess common features, which unite most of the group members according to the same prevailing motivational profiles. If the students’ motivational profiles are taken as a basis for further personalization of educational content and activities, we can anticipate that personalized learning in this case will turn out not as much individualized as one might expect.

Nevertheless, according to our observations, it is important to take students’ motivational profiles into consideration while developing teaching aids, selecting teaching materials and drawing out lesson plans, while the individual features of prevailing motivational profiles result from the impact of the students’ socio-cultural environment. It can be regarded as one of the reasons for a number of pedagogical cases when textbooks and teaching aids issued by foreign editors demotivate students from other countries, as the materials designed by native-speakers do not correspond to the motivational profiles peculiar of the students’ own national culture.

Conclusion. Overall, this study strengthens the idea that motivation is key for students’ development and that ways of supporting optimal motivation and basic psychological needs should be considered when planning learning activities. In everyday activities, it can be seen as a force that guides students’ intentions to act and is present in different degrees at various times. Consequently, our aim should be to create conditions where the predominant force is intrinsic motivation instead of controlled motivation. Differentiating motivational profiles offers the possibility for instructors to identify subgroups of students motivated towards specific aspects of interest and types of achievements, who might benefit from a more personal approach, different ways of mentoring and teacher-student interactions, and learning strategies that promote active student participation and provide a clear rationale for the content being taught.

The results presented in the given article are related to the initial phase of a more extensive research aimed to investigate how the English grammar teaching and learning is carried out within the framework of individualization of learning using personalized content approach.

References

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