The impact of individualized homework assignment on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ motivation

This study was designed to investigate the effectiveness of applying individualized homework assignments on Iranian intermediate level EFL learners’ motivation. To achieve this objective, 60 learners in the 16-21 age range who were studying at two private language institutes in Rasht, Iran, were selected from 122 participants based on their performance on QPT. The participants were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. A pretest piloted before with accepted reliability was administered to both groups. Next, the experimental group received the treatment for 20 sessions (doing homework materials designed based on each learner’s interests and preferred learning style), which is called ‘individualized homework’ here. Meanwhile, the control group received a placebo which was the use of exercises in the workbook of the coursebook American English File 3 (Second Edition) as homework assignment. The posttest was then administered to both groups. The results showed significantly higher scores on motivation test for experimental group.

Keywords:

Individual differences , individualized homework , learning styles , learners’ interests , motivation