In the recent years, students' engagement has been the focus of concern in the US Various studies have found that students' academic performances were directly affected by students' engagement In Hong Kong, research on this topic has not yet been found This research aimed to find out how the behaviors of three primary school English teachers' affect their students' engagements The teachers were observed on how they presented their lessons on one of the units of the textbooks Each teacher chose three students as samples of this research Ways of data collection included: lesson observation, video-taping of classroom teaching, in-class tape-recording of the sample students, and interviewing the teachers and sample students
The findings of this research perceived the following six behaviors that were of vital importance to students' engagement: (1) Providing learning opportunities for students, (2) Roles of teachers, (3) Student-teacher dialogue, (4) Teachers' demand on students' understanding of what they have been taught, (5) Teachers' self-reflection while teaching, and (6) Teachers' expectations on students
There are three aspects of engagements: affective engagement, behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement Students display different levels of engagements due to their teachers' behaviors while teaching This research found that students' behavioral engagement is associated with superficial affective engagement but does not necessarily correlate with cognitive engagement On the other hand, cognitive engagement is closely associated with profound affective engagement It was also found that students' engagement is influenced by the following psychological factors: (1) autonomy, competence and relatedness of the Self Determination Theory, (2) self-efficacy, and (3) students' learning goal orientation In order to elevate students' engagement, teachers have to provide learning opportunities at a suitable level of difficulties for the students and at the