A comparative study of students' motivation for learning English as a foreign language according to their preferences for indirect learning strategies at Nelson English Language Centre, Yangon, Myanmar

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the difference between the students’ motivation for learning English as a Foreign Language according to their preferences for indirect learning strategies at Nelson English Language Centre in Yangon, Myanmar. This research was designed as a quantitative comparative study. A total of 215 students from Intro, Level 1 and Level 2 at Nelson English Language Centre in Yangon participated in this study research. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire, which was adapted from the international version of Gardner’s Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) for motivation and Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning questionnaire (SILL) for indirect learning strategies. The collected data were analyzed first through descriptive statistics (i.e., means, standard deviations, frequencies and percentages) and then through inferential statistics (i.e., one-way analysis of variance) for statistical hypothesis testing. The findings indicated that the students’ motivation for learning EFL in Nelson English Language Centre was “High”. Besides, the students preferred metacognitive strategies the most followed by social strategies, mixed strategies and affective strategies. These research findings showed that there was no significant difference between the students’ motivation for learning EFL according to their preferences for indirect learning strategies. The recommendations for teachers, school administrators and future researchers are provided based on the findings of this study.