Measuring motivation and its degree among higher education students in non-English Pedagogy Majors: On the adaptation of MAALE questionnaire to the Chilean context

Abstract

Motivation is the most important factor when acquiring a second language, a crucial feature throughout the learning process. Motivation drives individuals in showing persistence and effort to attain certain goals. Thus, identifying the types of students’ motivation towards language learning is fundamental, so that the teaching-learning processes may be fixed and encouraged. However, in our national context, there is a lack of suitable instruments to fulfill this endeavor. Therefore, encouraged by the lack of instruments to identify Chilean student’s type of motivation, the current investigation is aimed at examining the reliability of the first two sections of the questionnaire “Motivación y actitudes en el aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera (MAALE)”, instrument that measures learner's motivation towards a foreign language learning. The questionnaire was adapted linguistically and culturally. A group of experts judge these changes which allowed to develop a final version in order to apply it to a group of 161 first year students whose ages fluctuated between 18 and 25 years old. All of them were from four pedagogy majors, which curriculum included a mandatory English course in the second semester. The results showed that most of the students possessed instrumental motivation as predominant reasons to learn a second language, with the main purpose of traveling abroad. The second most predominant type of motivation was intrinsic motivation as students consider the process of learning gratifying. The motivation with the lowest predominance was integrative motivation with the intention of being better prepared/instructed for the language. In the case of the degree of motivation, most of the students presented a high degree of motivation in relation to learn the English Language in a mandatory course. The Cronbach analyses show both dimensions of the questionnaire stand as reliable tools for their purposes (α> .80).