Teacher Perceptions and Strategies for Activating Prior Knowledge in the Moroccan EFL Context

Departing from the assumptions that reading in a second language presents many difficulties and challenges that what EFL learners bring to text is more important than what they get from it, and that prior knowledge activation plays a significant role in learners’ comprehension of texts in a foreign language, this study sets off to first examine Moroccan EFL teachers’ attitudes towards students’ prior knowledge activation. Second, investigate the frequency with which Moroccan EFL teachers activate students’ prior knowledge. Third, unveil some benefits brought about by prior knowledge activation and some constraints that may hinder the process of activating students’ schemata, and fourth to examine the influence of the participants’ internal and external factors on the frequency with which they activate their students’ schemata. To this end, an explanatory sequential mixed methods design was utilized. Quantitative data was obtained from a convenience sample of N=136 Moroccan EFL teachers, whereas qualitative data was obtained from a purposive sample of N=10 participants using semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that Moroccan EFL teachers hold positive attitudes towards students’ prior knowledge activation though they encounter many difficulties while activating learners’ schemata. The findings also revealed that there is a statistically significant positive, though moderate, association between the participants’ internal and external variables and the frequency with which they activate learners’ schemata. However, when examining individual relationships between predictor and outcome variables, the results indicated that not all predictor variables were found to influence Moroccan EFL teachers’ tendency to activate learners’ schemata.