Motivation to Learn Among English Language Learners in Sudan

Abstract

The present study was developed in order to investigate the impact of motivation on Iranian EFL learners' vocabulary learning. One hundred and twenty English major students who studied at undergraduate level \rparticipated in this study. Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was administered in order to manifestthe participants' \rhomogeneity in terms of language level of proficiency. Based on their performance on OPT, a sample of 89 \rhomogenized students were selected for the main study. The vocabulary knowledge test, extracted from McCarthy, McCarten, Sandiford (2004), was performed in order to check the participants' current knowledge of lexical items. The motivation of the participants was measured by means of Hermans' scale of achievement \rmotivation. Based on the learners' performance on motivation test, and with regard to the cut- off score of 45, they were divided to two groups of highly\r-motivated and less-motivated groups. In order to address the research question and hypothesis of the study, two motivation groups were compared to each other based on their performance on vocabulary achievement test. To do this, a paired\r-sample t-test was performed and it was found that there were significant differences between highly and less-\rmotivated learners and their vocabulary knowledge and the highly-motivated learners outperformed in this regard.