Motivation, Integrativeness, Organizational Influence, Anxiety, and English Achievement

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of motivational factors on English achievement in an intensive English course. The participants consisted of 164 Iranian male military staff, aged from 20 to 30. The participants filled a translated and adapted version of the mini-Attitude Motivation Test Battery (α=.70). Factor analysis of the questionnaire yielded four principal variables namely, motivation, integrativeness, organizational influence, and anxiety. Descriptive statistics indicated that the military staff were highly motivated in learning English and had low English learning Anxiety. It also suggested that the military organization was not so much supportive in learners’ studying English. Furthermore, path analysis indicated that integrativeness predicted the motivation to learn English positively, and that motivation was a positive predictor of English achievement, whereas organizational influence was a negative predictor of English achievement. This study confirmed that motivation is the single most influential factor of language learning achievement, all other things being equal. The wider concluding argument of this paper is that motivation and its constructs are context dependent and therefore, any language learning context has its own uniquemotivational model. Finally, based on the context of language learning a path analytic model of L2 motivation was proposed.