ESL Learners’ Motivation: Impact of Instrumental Motivation and Integrative Motivation on ESL Learning

Abstract

The present research is aimed at investigating the ESL learners’ motivation, highlighting the difference between instrumental and integrative motivation and variation on the gender basis (male and female) ESL learners’ motivation towards English language learning in the context of Pakistan. Motivation is an internal aspect that encourages a learner to proceed with the action, and it also initiates a spark for learning. This study applied the quantitative method. A questionnaire was adopted on five points Likert scale used to collect data from a total sample of fifty students of the English department in Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University. Concerning gender, 26 female and 24 male students were included in the study. The collected responses were transferred into SPSS software for the analysis procedure.  An independent sample t-test was employed to compare variances between male and female ESL/EFL learners. Moreover, a paired sample t-test was used to relate differences between the instrumental and integrative motivation of ESL/EFL learners. Finally, based on findings, generalisations were made regarding ESL/EFL learners’ motivation; it was indicated that students in Pakistan are more instrumentally motivated than integratively. Further, the result shows that female ESL learners are more instrumentally motivated than male learners.