Abstract:

Motivation has extensively been studied in English as a second and/or foreign language context. Yet, it seems worthwhile to conduct more research with different populations, as motivation is a dynamic quality that depends on a great number of variables and is rather difficult to attain. The present study aims to examine a group of Turkish university students' motivation to learn English as a foreign language and types of motivation they have. A total of 81 students at the English Language Teaching (ELT) department of a large and well-established state university in Turkey took part in the study. A 20-item questionnaire which was used by Vaezi (2008, adapted from Gardner, 1985; Clement et al., 1994) was administered to participants to find out ratio of integrativeness and instrumentality of participants' motivation. Besides, Pearson correlation test was used to investigate the relationship between participants' motivation and their age, gender and grades. Results showed that there was a weak correlation between motivation and age, and between motivation and the other two variables: gender and grade. It was also found out that students had high instrumental motivation, but that they also had a moderate degree of integrative motivation.

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