Cross-Gender Investigation of Instrumental and Integrative Motivation among the Students Enrolled in a Course Delivered via Technology

Abstract

Online language learning has become a growing phenomenon in todays' times. The real questions lie in what motivates the learners to study language in a non-traditional and a technology-integrated environment. This question was explored with the help of a small-scale survey conducted from 60 students of a technology integrated language course offered by a language institution. This study investigated the motivational orientation of the learners with the help of thirty-five-item questionnaire adopted from AMTB- Attitude Motivation Test Battery. Modest differences were found in students’ motivation for learning English via technology (M=2.57, SD=.811) for integrative and (M=2.71, SD=.811) for instrumental motivation. Moreover, the relationship of motivational orientation to the individual background, especially in the context of gender was investigated with the help of one-way ANOVA and Tukey Post hoc tests. The results implied that gender plays a vital role for deciding the integrative or instrumental motivation among the respondents. Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean scores for the integrative motivation in females (M = 2.60, SD = .892) was significantly different from the mean integrative motivation in males (M = 2.54, SD = .735). The females tend to show higher integrative motivation than males. Hence, the mean scores for instrumental motivation in females (M =2.74, SD = .778) is modestly different from males (M = 2.69, SD = .653). It is confirmed by this study that distinction between instrumental and integrative orientation are significant in technology integrated language learning and are very much related to gender differences.