Gender Differences in Motivational Orientations of Thai EFL Students from Science and Technology Background

Abstract

Motivation plays an important role in learning a foreign language. Gender is also considered an important component in language learning.  Previous studies have posited the importance of gender differences in the motivational orientations of students (Mandel & Marcus, 1988; Greene & De Backer, 2004; Kissau, 2006).  However, gender differences in motivational orientation of university level Thai EFL students have received little consideration. Thus, this study attempted to investigate gender differences in motivational orientation of Thai EFL undergraduate level students of science and technology fields who studied English Conversation 1 course at King Mongkut’s University of Technology, North Bangkok. Gardner’s Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) and qualitative inquiry were employed to conduct this study.  The findings revealed that EFL students were highly motivated to study English albeit the level of instrumental motivation was slightly higher than integrative motivation. In terms of gender, this study revealed that there is no significant difference in terms of how motivated male and female students were.  However, female students showed a greater level of motivation than males regarding both types of motivational orientations.  Female students demonstrated a high level of instrumental and integrative orientations whereas male students demonstrated a high level of instrumental orientation but a slightly lower level of integrative motivation.

Keywords: motivation, gender, instrumental motivation, and integrative motivation