Motivations Underlying English Language Learning and Achievement

The study explored whether the 25-item Motivations UnderlyingEnglish Language Learning (MUELL) Scale designed in this study is a reliable and validpsychological measure and relates significantly to achievement. To achieve theobjectives, the MUELL was administered to 493 female learners who studied English as aforeign language (EFL) in three branches of a semiprivate language institute in Mashhad,Iran. When the data were subjected to principal axis factoring (PAF) and the extractedlatent variables (LVs) were rotated via Varimax with Kaiser Normalization, three factorsappeared, that is, Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Communicative. Reliability andcorrelational analyses showed that the MUELL and its underlying factors are highlyreliable and show significant relationships with each other. Although Intrinsic andExtrinsic LVs correlate highly with the Communicative than with each other, none of themshow any significant relationship with the total English achievement for three groups ofachievers. However, the written achievement scores of high and low achievers correlatesignificantly not only with the MUELL but also with Extrinsic and Intrinsic LVs,respectively, in opposite directions. The results are discussed and suggestions are madefor future research