Relationships Between Learners’ Motivation Factors and Speaking Strategy Factors to Learn Oral Communication in English

Abstract

This study investigates the relationships between motivation and speaking strategy factors of Bangladeshi university students to learn oral communication in English. 355 university students participated in the study. To measure students’ degree of motivation a modified version of questionnaire used by Schmidt et al. (1996) was administered. Participants reported their strategy use on a modified version of SILL (7.0) (Oxford, 1990). Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the motivation factors and speaking strategy factors. Seven motivation factors were extracted: (a) Positive attitude, (b) L2 (second/foreign language) speaking anxiety, (c) Determination to learn, (d) Instrumentality, (e) Intrinsic motivation, (f) Social appeal, (g) Immigration tendency; and five speaking strategy factors were extracted: (a) Sharing strategies, (b) Coping strategies, (c) Active processing strategies, (d) Memory strategies, (e) Involving strategies. To examine the relationships between motivation factors and speaking strategy factors, Pearson Correlations were performed. According to the correlation results, motivation factors c, d, e, and a (mentioned above) had positive correlations, and motivation factor b had negative correlations with many speaking strategy factors.