Rapport Building Strategies of Teachers in ELT Classroom: A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

This study entitled Rapport Building Strategies of Teachers in ELT Classroom: A Narrative Inquiry aimed to explore the rapport building strategies of teachers in ELT classroom and the importance of rapport building for teaching and learning. It also identified the challenges to the building good rapport with the students. I used qualitative research method adopting narrative inquiry design to carry out the study. The population of the study included all the secondary level English language teachers from Kathmandu district. Four English language teachers were selected as the sample for the study by using non- random purposive sampling. Required data were elicited conducting open ended in-depth interview. The data were analyzed by using thematic approach. From the analysis and interpretation of the data, it was found that the teachers used different strategies of rapport building with the students in ELT classroom such as knowing the students, respecting them, treating equally to them, listening to them and their problems, recognizing birthdays, sharing personal topics, conducting interactive activities, behaving with them friendly, moving around in the classroom, using sufficient teaching materials in the classroom and students talking time in the classroom. Moreover, rapport building has a significant role to make the students motivated and satisfied towards learning as well as help to have high academic performance. Besides that, findings of the study also showed that it is difficult to establish good rapport with students in heterogeneous, diversified and overcrowded classrooms for teaching and learning. This thesis consists of five chapters. The first introduction chapter consists of background of the study, statement of the problem, objectives of the study, research questions, rationale of the study, delimitations of the study and operational definitions of the key terms. Similarly, second chapter deals with the review of theoretical as well as empirical literature and its implication for the study. Moreover, it also includes the conceptual framework. Likewise, the third chapter deals with the methodology of the study which covers design and method of the study, population, sample and sampling strategy, research tools, sources of data, data collection procedures, data analysis procedures, and ethical considerations. Similarly, the fourth chapter includes the results and discussion. Finally, the fifth chapter incorporates the conclusions and recommendations of this research.