Tipos de motivación de los estudiantes de lingüística aplicada, de Esmeraldas hacia el aprendizaje del Inglés como idioma extranjero en el 2013

Abstract

In a recent work by Chalak and Kassaian (2010) the motivation and attitudes of university undergraduate students towards learning English as a second language is studied. The results of the study show that students in the English translating career are both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated as well as integrative and instrumentally oriented. The present study is based on the one conducted by Chalak and Kassaian (2010) and aims to investigate the motivation of the 45 students in the career of Applied Linguistics in Teaching English of the Pontifical University of Ecuador Esmeraldas Headquarters (PUCES-E). In this study, it is assumed that the link between language motivation and language learning is a missing point of discussion among researchers of English teaching in Esmeraldas. For the purpose of this investigation a questionnaire containing items related to five different domains is used: 1) Interest in Foreign Languages, 2) Motivational Intensity, 3) Integrative Orientation, 4) Desire to Learn English, 5) Instrumental Orientation. The results show that all the Applied Linguistics students are highly motivated, both integrative and instrumentally, since they affirm to want to learn English in order to get a better job and be able to communicate with English language speakers. They also state to be very interested on learning foreign languages, in this case English, and they would like to be able to speak several languages fluently, it can then be said that they are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated.