Motivational Orientations of Secondary School EFL Learners toward Language Learning

Abstract

This study aimed to examine to what extent Turkish EFL learners’ L2 motivational dispositions whichare ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self and language learning experiences predict their intended effort forlanguage learning. The study was designed from a quantitative perspective in which the participantswere given a composite instrument. The study was conducted at a state run secondary school in Turkeyand the participants were 254 students including 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders. The results indicated thatsecondary level Turkish EFL students have high scores on all of the L2 motivation variables. However,the statistical analyses suggested that the participants’ level of ought-to L2 self was significantly higherthan their level of ideal L2 self. It was also seen that when the participants got older, their levels ofought-to L2 self appeared to indicate a decreasing trend. Besides, the results asserted that the secondaryschool students’ intended effort for learning a language was found to be predicted mostly by languagelearning experiences, then ought-to L2 self and lastly ideal L2 self, according to hierarchical multipleregression analysis. The results were discussed in line with L2 motivational self system studies in theliterature and it was concluded that the results in favor of ought-to L2 self might imply the existence ofpeer or community pressure in language learning process of secondary school EFL students in Turkishcontext.© 2018 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-access article distributedunder the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/).