VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* TRẦN TUẤN CƯỜNG RESEARCH ON STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH AT COLLEGE OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS Nghiên cứu động lực học tiếng Anh sinh viên trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế đối ngoại M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 HoChiMinh, 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* TRẦN TUẤN CƯỜNG RESEARCH ON STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING ENGLISH AT COLLEGE OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS Nghiên cứu động lực học tiếng Anh sinh viên trường Cao đẳng Kinh tế đối ngoại M.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60140111 SUPERVISOR: VŨ THỊ PHƯƠNG ANH, PhD HoChiMinh, 2014 DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby certify that the research report I am submitting is entirely my own original work except where otherwise indicated I am aware of the University's regulations concerning plagiarism, including those regulations concerning disciplinary actions that may result from plagiarism Any use of the works of any other author, in any form, is properly acknowledged at their point of use Student's signature: _ Name (in capitals): _ Date of submission: i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express many thanks to University of Language and Foreign Studies – VNU and the Faculty of Post Graduate that offer me a chance to the thesis My deepest gratitude is sent to Ms Vu Thi Phuong Anh who conveyed all her enthusiasm in instructing me and giving me vital help in all the time of carrying out the research I would like to show my most sincere thanks to the Faculty of Foreign Languages at College of Foreign Economic Relations for accepting my research and assisting me I am deeply indebted to Ms Tong Thi Thu Dung who helped me carry out the survey in her classes She also provided me with all necessary information about the students and the course This thesis would not have been possible unless I had not received sincere cooperation of the whole classes KT17A and KT17B who provided main source of data for the thesis as well as had memorable time with me I engrave in my mind my beloved family‘s continuous encouragement which brings up my motivation to overcome difficulties in my life and to reach to the peak of success ii ABSTRACT English is assigned in the curricula at almost all colleges and universities in Vietnam In fact, Vietnam gains little success in ELT, especially at public schools One of the reasons for this unexpected fact is related to students‘ attitudes and motivation in learning English This is also the concern of the researcher who is teaching at College of Foreign Economic Relations (COFER) The researcher will carry out a survey at his institution to find out the answers for the question – What is COFER students‘ motivation level in learning English? 85 students in two classes of English are intended to participate in the survey The researcher will gather data from questionnaires and the final test of the subject English The students‘ motivation in learning English will be analyzed via the findings from questionnaires Besides, the researcher determines the relationship between students‘ motivation and their learning achievement with the data from questionnaires and the test The researcher hopes to reveal the current situation related to students‘ motivation at his college in order to complete his teaching job better Key words: motivation, acquisition, instrumental, integrative, achievement iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv DEFINITION OF TERMS vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES viii PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Aim of the study Research questions Scope of the study Methods Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Motivation 1.2 Language learning motivation 1.2.1 Gardner‘s socioeducational model 1.2.2 Deci‘s self determination theory 1.3 Correlation between LLM and learning achievement 1.4 Previous studies about LLM and the correlation between LLM and learning achievement 10 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 14 2.1 Participants and setting of the study 14 iv 2.1.1 Participants 14 2.1.2 Setting of the study 14 2.2 Data collection 15 2.2.1 Data Collection instruments 15 2.2.2 Data collection procedures 15 2.2.3 Data analysis procedures 16 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 18 3.1 COFER students‘ attitudes toward learning English 18 3.2 COFER students‘ motivation in learning English 18 3.2.1 Integrative motivation 21 3.2.1 Instrumental motivation 22 3.3 Correlation between the students‘ motivation and their learning achievement 23 3.3.1 The correlation in comparisons of motivated students and lowmotivated students 23 3.3.2 The correlation in comparisons of instrumentally-motivated students and integratively-motivated ones 24 3.4 Pedagogical implication 24 PART C: CONCLUSION Conclusions of the study 26 Limitations of the study 26 Suggestions of the study 26 REFERENCES 28 APPENDIX A 32 v DEFINITION OF TERMS Attitude refers to an evaluative reaction to some referent or attitude object, inferred on the basis of an individual‘s beliefs or opinions about the referent (Gardner, 1985) Motivation means the combination of effort plus desire to achieve the goal of learning the language which leads to a conscious decision to act, and which gives rise to a period of sustained intellectual and/or physical effort in order to attain previous set goals In this study, motivation is classified into two types: Instrumental and integrative motivation (Gardner & Lambert, 1972) Instrumental motivation refers to a learner‘s desire to acquire a new language for utilitarian reasons and to reflect the practical value and advantages of learning a target language (Gardner & Lambert, 1959; Hudson, 2000) Integrative motivation refers to a learner‘s desire to learn more about the cultural community of the target language or to assimilate in the target community (Gardner & Lambert, 1959; Norris-Holt, 2001) vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AMTB: Attitude/motivation test battery COFER: College of Foreign Economic Relations ELT: English language teaching EFL: English as foreign language IM: Intrinsic motivation MS: Motivation Survey L2: Second language LLM: Language learning motivation SLA: Second language acquisition vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1: A simple representation of the socioeducational model Figure 2: The students‘ integrative motivation components 21 Figure 3: The students‘ instrumental motivation components 22 Table 1: The students‘ attitudes toward learning English 18 Table 2: The students‘ motivation in learning English 19 Table 3: Student groups arranged by motivation type 20 Table 4: The comparison of the learning achievement of motivated students and lowmotivated students 23 Table 5: The comparison of the learning achievement of instrumentally-motivated students and integratively-motivated students 24 viii 3.2.1 Integrative motivation Figure 2: The students’ integrative motivation components Figure showed three components of integrative motivation As can be seen from the figure, the desire to understand people of English-speaking countries was the lowest The students thought this type of desire was right for them but they found little interest in satisfying the need Besides, they may get access to English culture and language in academic ways, and lack practice these terms; therefore, they perceive culture and language as the essential parts to learn instead of desirable and enjoyable things when they study English As a result, culture and language did not got the highest value in integration motivation It seemed that communicative activities to join the society were more attractive for the students Thus, they built integrative motivation the most effectively among the three factors 21 3.2.2 Instrumental motivation 4.35 4.04 4.0 3.78 3.73 3.78 Figure 3: The students’ instrumental motivation components The statistics in Figure clarified the students‘ six purposes of learning English The result divided six purposes into two groups The preferred group with higher values consisted of job, knowledge and entertainment and the less preferred group with lower values included social assumption, enjoyable feelings and communication tool In the first group, learning English for entertainment dominated with the average score 4.35 The students stimulated themselves to learn for their future job and their widened knowledge In the later group, learning English for communication and enjoyable feelings reached the same score 3.78 It revealed that motivation for communication was not higher than motivation for entertainment and future job Also, the feelings of success in learning English did not become the main motivator for the students to give their efforts to their English studies Learning to satisfy the social assumption which 22 highly appreciates competent users of English worked for the research participants‘ motivation but the effect was still limited at the score 3.73 3.3 Correlation between the students’ motivation and their learning achievement 3.3.1 The correlation in comparisons of motivated students and low-motivated students Motivation type No of marks Percentage No of marks >=7 Percentage =7 Percentage