A comparative study of students' motivation for learning English as a foreign language and their preferences for instructional strategies in Grades 9-12 at Pan-Asia international school, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

This study focused on Grades 9-12 at Pan-Asia International School in the academic year 2016. The main purposes of this study were: 1) to determine the level of students’ motivation for learning English as a foreign language (EFL); 2) to determine the students’ preferences among five instructional strategies for teaching EFL; 3) to compare the students’ motivation for learning social studies according to their preferences for instructional strategies. The study was designed as a quantitative and comparative study using two questionnaires: a motivation questionnaire and an instructional strategies preferences questionnaire. The respondents were 123 EFL students during the academic year 2015-2016 in PAIS. The data collected by the 2 questionnaires was analyzed first by descriptive statistics, frequency & percentage, mean, standard deviation and then by inferential statistics, i.e., a One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results of this study indicated that student motivation for learning EFL in Grades 9-12 was high. Among the five motivation subscales, task value, control of learning beliefs, extrinsic goal orientation, self-efficacy for learning & performance were all high, but intrinsic goal orientation was moderate. For the five instructional strategies preferences, 26.8% of the students preferred experiential learning, 20.3% preferred indirect instruction, 18.7% preferred interactive instruction, 17.9% preferred independent study and 16.3% preferred direct instruction. The research indicated that there was no significant difference between the students’ motivation for learning EFL according to their preferences for instructional strategies in Grades 9-12 at PAIS.