Expectancy Of Value Theory In The Classroom

However and in association with my context, the focus will be paid on two main factors in this theory ;

(1) Expectancy of success: According to psychological studies, the students are influenced by their past experiences (attribution theory) beliefs, perceptions of peoples’ attitude and expectations from them. All these expectations are linked to their previous achievement outcomes. Also, the learners’ perceptions and judgment of handling certain tasks and their efficiency levels dealing with difficult tasks (self- efficacy theory). In addition to maintaining self-esteem (self- worth theory) acted as an important factor in my students’ engagement in classroom practices (Dorynei 1998, Eccles and Wigfield, 2002, Atkinson’s 1964, Eccles 2005).

They outlined it in four main factors:

a. Attainment value is defined as the interest and the personal importance the learners pay to tasks. This was recorded with my learners as long as there is the relevance of the task to their future studies.

As previously mentioned, the science students are more keen on learning the language as it is part of their future study and will be used as their communication language with their specialty tutors. This reason is considered the main motive for them to take part in their learning process and as the students’ in one class are from the same field of specialty; Art or science, they share and reflect on their concerns, beliefs, obstacles and worries. On the contrary, the Art students who don’t expect any further communication with English for their future study, count the EFL learning as a burden and a real challenge in their progress. They trust that language learning is for communication purposes only and not for study and it should be optional and shouldn’t affect their cumulative

Although the society in Saudi Arabia has witnessed great changes of being more exposed and open to the world which has led to paying to learn a second language to a great extent. English now is one of the basic requirements for applying for any job and sometimes even if it is a governmental job. These new changes acted as motives to learn English as a second language more appropriately. Consequently, the university environment encourages the learners to use English in their communication. However, the learners start to lose this interest after being exposed to the modular system because they have to go through a long process of assessments and tests (8 quizzes and a test in each module). The learners’ interest is directly shifted to learning and participating in assessment techniques only rather than engaging in classroom practices for enhancing the learning skills that might not be part of the