Examining Beninese EFL Pre-Service Teachers’ Motivation to Learn the English Language

It has been noted there is a dearth of data on foreign language learning motivation as far as pre-service teachers are concerned. Therefore, this study examines the motivation of Beninese EFL pre-service teachers with regards to the learning of the English language at the Teacher Training School of Porto-Novo. A free-response questionnaire was administered to 120 participants from first and second year of the programme. The framework developed by Ritchie & Spencer (1994) had been used to analyze responses. The analysis of the data indicated that second year participants were more motivated to learn the English language as they are the ones who made more effort to improve their capacities in listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. First year participants need instruction on ways to enhance their proficiency in the target language. English instructors are recommended to instruct them by using different strategies such as selfencouragement, anxiety reduction and monitoring emotions.