Abstract

This empirical survey aims at exploring Saudi freshmen students’ instrumental and integrative motivational orientation to learn English as a foreign language as well as to identify what demotivational factors negatively affect their language learning. A 38-item self-developed strongly-agree to strongly-disagree Likert-scale questionnaire was administered to 133 Saudi freshmen students from a Saudi university to generate data related to their motivational and demotivational factors. Data analyses were done to calculate percentages and means through descriptive analyses to measure the participants’ preferences for various questionnaire items. The results of this quantitative investigation have revealed that Saudi freshmen students bear stronger instrumental motivation along with a reasonably high integrative motivation and have demonstrated mild negative effect towards learning English caused by various demotivational factors. Among the primary instrumental motivational orientations of Saudi freshmen, the role of English language to enable them to better understand their textbooks and reference material, effectively interact with foreigners during their international travels and enhanced chances to secure better job have been ranked the highest. The results of this survey have disclosed an interesting fact that the participants of this study have exhibited extremely positive attitude towards the target language.  The descriptive analyses also suggest that Saudi freshmen have moderate inhibitory factors against learning the target language related to understanding English language teachers, difficult English textbooks, difficult English grammar and vocabulary and lack of chances of practicing the target language outside the university setting. The participants have mentioned that no major hinderances are caused by inappropriate behavior of their teachers and peers as well as lack of teaching aids. Some pedagogical implications and suggestions have been drawn based on the findings of this empirical survey.

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