Motivations underlying English language learning and achievement

Abstract

The study explored whether the 25-item Motivations Underlying English Language Learning (MUELL) scale designed in this study is a reliable and valid psychological measure and relates significantly to achievement. To achieve the objectives, the MUELL was administered to 493 female learners who studied English as a foreign language (EFL) in three branches of a semi-private language institute in Mashhad, Iran. When the data were subjected to Principal Axis Factoring and the extracted latent variables (LVs) were rotated via Varimax with Kaiser Normalization, three factors appeared, i.e., Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Communicative. Reliability and correlational analyses showed that the MUELL and its underlying factors are highly reliable and show significant relationships with each other. Although Intrinsic and Extrinsic LVs both correlate highly with the Communicative than with each other, none of them show any significant relationship with the total English achievement for three groups of achievers. However, the written achievement scores of both high and low achievers correlate significantly not only with the MUELL but also with Extrinsic and Intrinsic LVs, respectively, in opposite directions. The results are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.