Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to clarify the causal relation between Japanese teenagers’ motivational types toward English language learning and their academic grades of English. The results of a questionnaire survey indicate that the most heteronomous type of motivation influences negatively on the learners’ academic grades.

In the field of educational psychology, one of the most widely applied theories is Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (SDT). In SDT, different types of motivational regulations are proposed and each regulation are defined according to the degree of self-determination. To be more specific, four different motivational regulations are assumed; intrinsic, identified, introjected, and external regulations in the order of the degree of self-determination from the most autonomous to the least.

These regulations are graphically described on a one-dimensional line to show that the continuum of four motivational regulations has a simplex structure. Although it brings us clear understanding of the idea of SDT, it seems to be impossible to express learners’ real state of motivational regulations with the one-dimensional line. This is because learners’ behaviors are usually affected not by any single regulation, but by various regulations. Some learners, for example, may have both intrinsic and identified regulations, and others may be motivated with introjected and external regulations. What is more, our previous survey shows even two ambivalent regulations, intrinsic and external, coexist in some cases. This implies that various motivational regulations affect learners’ performances dynamically, and this kind of interrelations among regulations are not assumed in the framework of SDT.

In this study, therefore, we try:
(1) to visualize the complex system of Japanese teenagers’ motivational state toward English learning using a three-dimensional scatter plot,
(2) to cluster the learners according to their motivational patterns toward their learning, and
(3) to clarify how each motivational regulation affects the learners’ academic grades.

A questionnaire survey was conducted to 325 technological college students aged 16 to 17 a week before their final term exams. The scores of their final term English exam was used as a scale of their English grades. The obtained data was statistically analyzed. First, the data description was visualized through a three-dimensional scatter plot. By doing this, we can see the learners’ actual motivational state both as a group and as individuals. The subsequent cluster analysis suggests that the group can be divided into five groups according to their motivational states; high autonomous motivation group, high external motivation group, high identified regulation group, high identified and external regulations group, and low motivation group. All the groups, except for low motivation group, showed high motivational level on identified regulation. Also, the average score of each group is significantly different from one another, and this obviously proposes that each motivational regulation affects each other and it results in the difference of academic scores. In order to see it in more detail, multiple regression analysis was applied to clarify causal relation and correlation between motivational regulations and exam scores. The result shows that intrinsic, identified, and introjected regulations affect positively on the exam scores while external regulation causes negative impact on them.

Keywords:

Foreign Language Learning, Motivation, Academic Grades, Causality.