Exploring the Role of Gamified Pedagogical Tasks in Elevating First-Year Middle School Pupils’ Motivation: Case Study of Boudiaf Mohammed and Badri Abd El Hafid Middle Schools in Tébessa.

Abstract

Instructing English at the middle school level presents notable struggle, especially for novice pupils. As a matter of fact, English as foreign language (EFL) instructors always try to motivate their pupils depending on many approaches like gamification, trying to transform traditional classrooms, where often pupils have lack of motivation, into more engaging and interactive ones. The present study has an exploratory nature that relies on qualitative approach. The classroom observation was implemented as the only data-gathering tool in order to get deep insights if gamification enhances first year middle school pupils ' motivation during tutorial sessions and how do they interact during the gamified pedagogical tasks. It was applied during 20 sessions in two different middle schools in Tebessa. The first one was Boudiaf Mohammed middle school, and the second was Badri Abd el Hafid middle school, with 227 pupils who were selected based on purposive sampling technique. The findings revealed that gamification increases first-year middle school pupils’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, it also helps them to become more interactive and engaged during the English classes. Eventually, a set of recommendations are proposed for possible future research like conducting the same study with a larger population so that the results can be generalized.