EFFECTS OF INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION ON ESL LEARNERS’ READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS AT TERTIARY LEVEL

Abstract

The primary purpose of the paper was to highlight the outcomes of reading comprehension skills of ESL learners at tertiary level in relation to different motivational factors (intrinsic and extrinsic), mixed method design was implemented. For the quantitative part, the data source is an adapted questionnaire, consisting of 24 items, to collect the relevant data from the sample of 121 undergraduate learners and for the qualitative part, interviews were conducted with 8 students belonging to different areas of Social Sciences. Intrinsic motivation (motivation which comes from internal factors: curiosity, involvement and preference for challenge) and extrinsic motivation (motivation which comes from external factors: Recognition, grades, social reading, competition and compliance), plays a huge role in the reading skills of an individual. Moreover, the principal issue was to determine the role of different motivational constructs in the reading comprehension of the students. And according to the results, the students at this moment in time are moderately extrinsically motivated to read because of the presence of the powerful competition and high appreciation for the students in L2 and factors of intrinsic motivation are also identified in the reading comprehension skills of ESL and EFL learners.