SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY, 2013, 41(5), 715-720

© Society for Personality Research

http://dx.doi.org/10.2224/sbp.2013.41.5.715

MOTIVATIONAL CHANGES IN AN ENGLISH FOREIGN

LANGUAGE ONLINE READING CONTEXT

HSIN-CHOU HUANG
National Taiwan Ocean University

This study investigated how reading online affects English foreign language (EFL) learners’
motivation to read all-English texts. Two classes of intermediate Taiwanese EFL learners in
a college reading course participated. Each student read one online story every week during
the semester-long experiment. A pre- and postreading motivation questionnaire, adapted from
Mori’s study, was administered to ascertain students’ motivational changes. Results from a
t test showed that reading using an e-book had a positive effect on students’ motivations for
reading in terms of several dimensions: reading efficacy, challenge, curiosity, involvement,
reading for grades, and integrative orientation. Analysis of variance results showed that
female students in the low-proficiency group were significantly more positive about the
motivational effects of online reading than were low-proficiency male students.

Keywords: reading motivation, online reading, gender, language proficiency, English as a

foreign language.

Motivation theories are among the most important aspects of psychology and
language education (Guilloteaux & Dörnyei, 2008). Motivation is the primary
source of stimulus to initiate second language learning and serves as the driving
force to sustain students’ interest in learning (Dörnyei & Skehan, 2003). Without
sufficient motivation, good teaching and curriculum planning cannot ensure
successful learning. Students need to be continuously motivated during the long
and laborious language learning process (Grabe, 2009). It has been demonstrated
in extensive research on first language (L1) reading motivation that how much

Hsin-chou Huang, Institute of Applied English, National Taiwan Ocean University.

The author acknowledges support from the National Science Council in Taiwan, Grant # 100-2410-
H-019-012.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Hsin-chou Huang, Institute of
Applied English, National Taiwan Ocean University, 2 Pei-Ning Road, Keelung 202, Taiwan, ROC.
Email: joehuang@ntou.edu.tw; jo65huang@gmail.com

715
716 EFL LEARNERS’ MOTIVATION

students read and how well they comprehend the text can be predicted by the
intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of motivation (Gottfried, 1990; Guthrie,
Wigfield, Metsala, & Cox, 1999; Wang & Guthrie, 2004).
Motivation in second language (L2) contexts has been shown to follow a
different path, and few researchers have addressed its connection to reading
comprehension (Grabe, 2009). Until the 1990s, motivation for L2 learning was
dominated by Gardner’s (2002) integrative and instrumental motivation model.
It was not until the early 1990s that there was an emergence of a wider range of
motivation research (Dörnyei & Skehan, 2003), and it was found that students
with different language profiles had different learning motivations. For example,
English foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) students
may be more influenced by academic and classroom factors that include a focus
on goals, self-efficacy, and interest (Grabe, 2009; Ushioda, 2001).
Researchers’ focus in empirical studies of L2 reading motivation has been on
developing instruments to explore learners’ motivation. Mori (2002) developed
an L2 reading motivation questionnaire based on Wigfield and Guthrie’s (1997)
Motivations for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ). They tested 447 Japanese learners
of English, and found four factors influencing motivation: the intrinsic value of
reading, the extrinsic utility or value of reading, the importance of reading, and
reading efficacy. Takase (2007) investigated the motivational effects of extensive
reading among 219 high school EFL students in Japan. Results showed that the
amount of L2 reading was predicted by L1 and L2 motivation. Apple (2005)
surveyed 85 Japanese university learners’ motivational changes after a 3-month
extensive reading program. Results showed that students did not seem to improve
due to the relatively short timeframe and the difficulty of ascertaining increased
motivation among students whose motivation was initially high.
Individual differences have also been found to play a role in L2 motivation.
Researchers have found that females were more motivated than males to learn
languages (Carreira, 2011; Mori & Gabel, 2006; Sung & Padilla, 1998). Carreira
investigated 268 EFL Japanese sixth graders’ motivations for learning English
and found a significant effect on intrinsic motivation for learning EFL, on
interest in foreign countries, and on instrumental motivation, with girls having
higher scores than boys. Sung and Padilla investigated 591 American students in
Asian language programs and found that female students had more motivation
to study a foreign language than male students did. Mori and Gabel investigated
453 second-year non-English majors’ motivations in four dimensions: integra-
tiveness, intrinsic value, negative value, and attainment value. Results showed
that females had significantly higher scores in integrativeness than male students
did. As for language proficiencies, Lau and Chan (2003) investigated 159 Hong
Kong students’ Chinese reading comprehension and demonstrated that good
and poor readers had different strategy uses and reading motivations, with poor
 EFL LEARNERS’ MOTIVATION 717
readers’ motivations to read being very low. The pedagogical implications of
these studies are that poor readers will be helped by reading programs with
strategy training and teaching materials to enhance motivation.
Overall, the positive relationship between motivation and reading behaviors
has been supported by the extensive L1 reading motivation research. However,
relatively few researchers have focused on L2 reading motivation (Apple,
2005; Huang, 2008; Mori, 2002; Takase, 2007), and even fewer researchers
have explored the effects of learners’ proficiency levels and gender differences
on motivation. Because motivation is one of the key factors in L2 reading
development, and because a new and important opportunity for teaching reading
and increasing motivation is offered by online reading, empirical studies on L2
reading motivation, especially in a digital reading environment (Larson, 2009),
are urgently needed. In this study, I asked two specific research questions: (1) To
what extent is EFL learners’ reading motivation affected by online reading? (2)
What are the effects of gender and language proficiency on reading motivation
in an EFL online reading context?

Method

This study investigated the motivational changes of EFL learners who read
all-English storybooks on the Internet. During the semester-long experiment,
students in two first-year English classes read at least one online all-English
storybook each week. The texts came from Awesome Stories (http://www.
awesomestories.com), an online reading website that provides stories with
hyperlinks to the names of the characters and places, videos related to the
theme of the story, audio clips of the texts being read aloud, lesson plans, and
vocabulary builders. Among the 67 participants, 46% were engineering majors
(n = 31), and 54% were life science majors (n = 36). A sample Test of English
for International Communications (TOEIC) was administered at the beginning of
the online reading project to ascertain students’ proficiency levels. The TOEIC
test is recognized for its reliability and validity for assessing the proficiency
of non-native speakers of English (Zhang, 2006). The TOEIC sample test I
used included the standard listening and reading assessment items from the
TOEIC scale. The high proficiency group comprised 38 students whose scores
were above 550. TOEIC has established 550 as the lowest cut-off score for
an intermediate level of proficiency. The middle proficiency group comprised
15 students whose scores were between 460 and 545, and the low proficiency
group comprised 14 students whose scores were between 230 and 405. An
initial reading motivation questionnaire – adapted mainly from Mori’s (2002)
Motivational Questionnaire and items from other motivation studies (Apple,
2005; Takase, 2007; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997) – was administered as a pretest,
718 EFL LEARNERS’ MOTIVATION

and again at the end of the experiment to ascertain possible motivational changes.
Mori’s questionnaire was the primary source because it can be used to target a
similar EFL population and is a feasible orientation for investigating EFL reading
motivation (Grabe, 2009). The questionnaire in this study consisted of 35 5-point
Likert scale (ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) items that
covered nine dimensions: reading efficacy, challenge, curiosity, involvement,
the importance of reading in English, reading for grades, reading compliance,
reading avoidance, and integrative orientation (i.e., the desire to participate in an
English-speaking community). To ensure content validity, three experts in this
field judged the breadth and appropriateness of the content of this questionnaire.
As for reliability, Cronbach’s alphas were .88 for the entire scale and were
acceptable for all nine subscales (.61-.85).
Students turned in their reading logs via weblogs and participated in
semistructured interviews at the end of the project. Both quantitative and
qualitative methods were employed to document students’ motivational changes
after reading online texts and their perceptions of such an online reading project.

Results and Discussion

Overall, students’ motivation to read English-language texts increased during

the course of this e-book reading project (t(66) = 2.85, p < .05). There was
an increase for all three proficiency groups in 6 of the questionnaire’s 9
dimensions: reading efficacy (t(66) = 1.60, p < .05), challenge (t(66) = 2.23,
p < .05), curiosity (t(66) = 3.27, p < .05), involvement (t(66) = 2.00, p < .05),
reading for grades (t(66) = 2.04, p < .05), and integrative orientation (t(66) = 4.00,
p < .05). I found the positive motivational change encouraging compared with
Apple’s (2005) study, in which students’ motivational change was not significant
after extensively reading English texts. The new multimedia features of this
online reading project, which I considered more engaging than the paper-based
reading texts in Apple’s study, might explain this difference.
To investigate the effect of gender and language proficiency on students’
motivational changes toward English e-book reading, a 2-way ANOVA was
performed. The results from this showed that students’ motivational changes
were affected by both gender and proficiency (F(1, 48) = 6.54, p < .05). The
results of a Bonferroni multiple comparison showed that female students in
the low proficiency group were more positive about the motivational effects
of e-book reading (M = 12.36) than the male students in the low proficiency
group (M = -2.73). Similar tendencies were found in the dimension of curiosity
(F(1, 48) = 4.13, p < .05), with female low proficiency students (M = 3.00)
expressing more positive motivations as compared to that of low proficiency
male students (M = -.63). As for the importance of reading (F(1, 48) = 4.82,
p < .05), low proficiency female students (M = 1.68) once again showed more
 EFL LEARNERS’ MOTIVATION 719
positive motivations than low proficiency male students did (M = -1.09). The
low proficiency group’s greater motivational change might have been related to
their past reading experiences, when they often gave up reading lengthy English-
language materials because they found the language in the text too difficult. They
found reading online stories more interesting because of the website’s support
strategies and other special features, and they began to want to learn more about
the people, places, and ideas depicted in the stories. After cultivating the habit
of reading English-language e-books, students were more likely to agree that
reading would be important to their future careers and would help them become
more knowledgeable people. I believe the result that lower achievement students
became more motivated was promising, especially as compared to Lau and
Chan’s (2003) conclusion that poor readers were less motivated to read. I also
found that the females in the low-proficiency group had greater motivational
change, and were more receptive to book reading than were the males. Previous
studies (Carreira, 2011; Mori & Gabel, 2006; Sung & Padilla, 1998) on L2
motivation studies, in which females were more motivated to learn languages
than males, were corroborated by the finding on gender differences in this study.
The semistructured interviews revealed that students perceived themselves to
be good readers and that the reading project improved their self-image as readers.
Students also expressed a desire to read more online stories even though they had
encountered some difficulties in their reading. As students developed sufficient
patience and ability to read all-English texts, they unconsciously conquered their
fear of reading them. Students were curious about the plot of the story, and this
curiosity sustained their interest. They explored related texts about the story to
increase their background knowledge. They also felt that reading online was
important for learning about the world and for being exposed to a variety of
opinions. Larson’s (2009) call for integrating new literacies into more traditional
reading programs was reinforced by the positive effects of online reading
increasing EFL learners’ motivation to read. This study was limited because its
findings can only be applied to non-English majors in an EFL context. Future
researchers could investigate whether or not students’ motivational changes will
increase over a longer period of time.
Teachers should be encouraged to include online reading in their language
classes because of the positive effects of online reading on student motivation.
Our findings will help language teachers understand dissimilar motivational
change patterns within different proficiency and gender groups and thereby
enable them to appropriately differentiate instruction.

References

Apple, M. T. (2005). Extensive reading and the motivation to read: A pilot study [In Chinese].
Doshisha Studies in Language and Culture, 8, 193-212.
720 EFL LEARNERS’ MOTIVATION

Carreira, J. M. (2011). Relationship between motivation for learning EFL and intrinsic motivation
for learning in general among Japanese elementary school students. System, 39, 90-102. http://
doi.org/bnhp83
Dörnyei, Z., & Skehan, P. (2003). Individual differences in second language learning. In C. J.
Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 589-630).
Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Gardner, R. C. (2002). Social psychological perspective on second language acquisition. In R. B.
Kaplan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 160-169). New York: Oxford.
Gottfried, A. E. (1990). Academic intrinsic motivation in young elementary school children. Journal
of Educational Psychology, 82, 525-538. http://doi.org/c2tghf
Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Guilloteaux, M. J., & Dörnyei, Z. (2008). Motivating language learners: A classroom-oriented
investigation of the effects of motivational strategies on student motivation. TESOL Quarterly,
42, 55-77.
Guthrie, J. T., Wigfield, A., Metsala, J. L., & Cox, K. E. (1999). Motivational and cognitive predictors
of text comprehension and reading amount. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 231-256. http://
doi.org/dqv4qv
Huang, S. C. (2008). Assessing motivation and learning strategies using the Motivated Strategies for
Learning Questionnaire in a foreign language learning context. Social Behavior and Personality:
An international journal, 36, 529-534. http://doi.org/bkr63n
Larson, L. C. (2009). E-reading and e-responding: New tools for the next generation of readers.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53, 255-258. http://doi.org/fb6g2k
Lau, K. L., & Chan, D. W. (2003). Reading strategy use and motivation among Chinese good and
poor readers in Hong Kong. Journal of Research in Reading, 26, 177-190. http://doi.org/d8vvj4
Mori, S. (2002). Redefining motivation to read in a foreign language. Reading in a Foreign
Language, 14, 91-110. Retrieved from http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/october2002/mori/mori.pdf
Mori, S., & Gabel, P. (2006). Motivation and gender in the Japanese EFL classroom. System, 34,
194-210. http://doi.org/dwjhpr
Sung, H., & Padilla, A. M. (1998). Student motivation, parental attitudes, and involvement in
the learning of Asian languages in elementary and secondary schools. The Modern Language
Journal, 82, 205-216. http://doi.org/c72d6f
Takase, A. (2007). Japanese high school students’ motivation for extensive L2 reading. Reading in a
Foreign Language, 19, 1-18.
Wang, J. H. Y., & Guthrie, J. T. (2004). Modeling the effects of intrinsic motivation, extrinsic
motivation, amount of reading, and past reading achievement on text comprehension between
U.S. and Chinese students. Reading Research Quarterly, 39, 162-186. http://doi.org/ff3nm3
Wigfield, A., & Guthrie, J. T. (1997). Relations of children’s motivation for reading to the amount and
breadth of their reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 420-432. http://doi.org/cdf3bd
Ushioda, E. (2001). Language learning at university: Exploring the role of motivational thinking.
In Z. Dorneyi (Ed.), Motivational and second language acquisition (pp. 93-125). Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawaii Press.
Zhang, S. (2006). Investigating the relative effects of persons, items, sections, and languages on
TOEIC score dependability. Language Testing, 23, 351-369. http://doi.org/d6b7hq
Copyright of Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal is the property of
Society for Personality Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple
sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.