Motivational Orientation and EFL Learning: A Study of Iranian Undergraduate Students

Research on language learning motivation has been augmented in the EFL context which reflects its significance as a socio-psychological factor in learning English as a foreign language. Due to the meager amount of work done on the issue in Iran, this study tries to investigate instrumental and integrative motivation (i.e., motivational orientations) among Iranian undergraduate students. It is also aimed to grasp their attitudes towards the target language and the community. Gardner's (1985) Attitude/Motivation Test Battery was given to 50 undergraduate students majoring in English Literature at Razi University of Kermanshah, Iran. Although it is mostly believed that instrumental motivation is more dominant in academic contexts, the results of the study indicate that Iranian EFL learners are both instrumentally and integratively motivated to learn English. The results of the study seem to be helpful for EFL teachers and curriculum developers to amend the common trends of ELT in Iran based on some realistic outlooks regarding the learners’ motivations.