A Study of the Impact of Motivation and Attitude on Speaking in Academic Contexts: A Case of Iranian EFL University Students

This study aimed at investigating the interlaced relationship between attitude and motivation on the one hand, and speaking within the context of Iranian EFL university students on the other hand. The participants of the study consisted of 65 freshmen majoring in English Translation, English Literature, and Electrical Engineering at the University of Isfahan. Three instruments were used to gather the needed data: Oxford Placement Test (OPT) for homogenizing the students in terms of their English proficiency level , two subscales of AMTB (Attitudes and Motivation Test Battery) designed by Gardner (1985), to measure students’ motivation and attitude toward learning English, a kind of indirect interview with the 65 chosen students in order to assess their speaking ability. Analysis of the results revealed that there were significant differences between the students with positive attitude and those with negative attitude regarding their speaking ability; namely, the students with positive attitude had higher speaking scores than the students with negative attitude. Further analyses showed that there was a significant difference between the speaking scores of integratively-motivated students and the instrumentally-motivated ones. That is, integratively-motivated students scored higher than instrumentally-motivated ones on speaking test. Moreover, gender did not make any differences amongst EFL learners as far as attitude, motivation, and speaking ability were concerned

A Study of the Impact of Motivation and Attitude on Speaking in Academic Contexts: A Case of Iranian EFL University Students Keywords:

attitude , motivation , speaking ability