What Affects Motivation? A Study of Students’ Attitudes towards ESL Learning in Swedish Lower Secondary Schools

This study investigates how different educational activities affect students’ motivation and how teachers can induce students’ motivation to learn English as a second language (ESL) in Swedish lower secondary schools. Data was gathered through a questionnaire and analyzed through a sociocultural perspective. In the questionnaire, which was handed out to students in ages 13 to 15 at three different schools, the participants had to indicate if they become motivated or unmotivated by certain activities or if the activities do not have any impact on their motivation. The results indicate that the activities which most students become motivated by are likely to also be encountered outside school. These are activities such as watching a film, playing Monopoly, listening to a song, chatting online, playing a computer game or video game, or having a conversation with a close friend. In contrast, the activities which most students become unmotivated by are task- or fact-oriented activities which are likely to be encountered inside school or in work-related situations in their future adult life, such as holding a presentation, writing news articles, doing work-sheets and reading word lists with grammar exercises and glossary, or participating in job interviews. The results also show that students in Swedish lower secondary schools have positive attitudes towards ESL learning in general and that there are many similarities between the different schools regarding what students find motivating and non-motivating. Thus, the results do not encourage eliminating certain educational activities from the learning process. However, in order to induce students’ motivation for ESL learning, teachers could increase the use of activities that many of their students find motivating and decrease the use of activities that many of their students find non-motivating.