The preferences of Turkish university EFL students for instructional activities in relation to their motivation

Abstract

This study investigates a) the components of motivation that Turkish university EFL students hold, b) their preferences for instructional activities, c) how these two concepts relate to each other, and d) whether the proficiency level affects responses toward motivation and instructional activity types. The study was conducted at Hacettepe University, School of Foreign Languages, with the participation of 343 students from three different proficiency levels (pre-intermediate, intermediate, and upper-intermediate). The data were collected using a 81-item questionnaire related to motivation and instructional activity types. Factor analysis was conducted for the collected data and the factors found formed the basis of the scales used in the subsequent analysis. In the motivation section, nine factors were determined which formed the internal structure of motivation. Among these factors, instrumental motivation, which had the highest median score, was found the most important motivation type in this population. The anxiety factor had the lowest median score. In the instructional activity section, four factors were found. While the communicative focus factor had the highest median score, the traditional approach factor had the lowest score. This study also indicated that there is a relationship between preferences for activity types in relation to students’ motivation. In fact, significant correlations were found between almost all motivation styles and communicative and challenging activities. But, the effect sizes of the correlations were not the same with all activity types in each motivation style. Some of the correlations were much stronger than the others. This result shows that even though there was not a clear-cut difference between students’ preferences for activity types in relation to motivational styles, some activity types were favored more than the others in each motivation style. This finding revealed a variation across the groups and thus confirmed this possible link between motivation and instructional activity types. Additionally, the results in this study indicated that there were large differences in motivation and activity type preferences among different language proficiency levels.