The motivation questionnaire was developed for and has been used in the Hungarian context of EFL learning (Kormos, Csizér, Menyhárt, & Török, 2008;
Kormos & Csizér, 2008, 2009). The creators of the instrument have also investigated its componential structure and tested whether the theoretical constructs underlying motivation are indeed measured by the instrument. Kormos and Csizér (2008) in the Hungarian secondary school setting found strong evidence that out of the fourteen components, the items of the questionnaire tapped ten dimensions reliably. These
findings served as the starting points of the analysis of the motivation questionnaire used with the present sample of N = 214 EFL learners in Budapest high schools.
The suggested components and the item loadings, as depicted in Table 10, indicate the existence of the same dimensions described in previous studies and also present similar problems. One cause for concern is the fact that the ought-to self and linguistic self-confidence dimensions are explained by too few items and their KMO statistic are rather low. In addition to this, in the present analysis, the integrativeness, milieu, and instrumentality components were also found problematic for similar reasons.
Table 10
Componential Structure of the Motivation Questionnaire Component Item loadings Variance
explained
Det. KMO Bartlett’s test significance Language learning
attitude
mot26 .883 mot36 .915 mot46 .893
80.48% .202 .736 .001
Motivated
language learning behavior
mot29 .838 mot39 .726 mot65 .759 mot68 .819 mot69 .713
59.70% .173 .841 .001
Ideal self (image of future self)
mot27 .785 mot37 .841 mot47 .828 mot66 .877
69.41% .155 .763 .001
Knowledge orientation
mot33 .597 mot10 .588 mot18 .758 mot28 .810 mot48 .789
51.10% .261 .725 .001
Table 10 (continued)
Component Item loadings Variance explained
Det. KMO Bartlett’s test significance Parental
encouragement
mot25 .862 mot35 .874 mot45 .841 mot55 .839
72.92% .123 .802 .001
Language use anxiety
mot22 .834 mot32 .882 mot42 .885
75.23% .301 .713 .001
Language class anxiety
mot24 .857 mot34 .805 mot44 .864 mot54 .788
68.72% .189 .815 .001
Cultural interest-vitality of
community (US)
mot1 .830 mot6 .814 mot11 .688 mot16 .749
59.65% .339 .754 .001
Integrativeness mot5 .801 mot15 .597 mot17. 823
55.83% .693 .586 .001
International posture
mot30 .742 mot40 .704 mot51 .743 mot59 .704
52.34% .532 .741 .001
Milieu mot43 .802
mot38n .819 mot57n .647
57.75% .665 .610 .001
Instrumentality mot3 .786 mot13 .806 mot18 .673
57.30% .686 .621 .001
ought-to self mot57n .735 mot61 .448 mot38n .794
45.7% .884 .522 .001
Linguistic self-confidence
mot21 .835 mot41n .835
69.67% .845 .500 .001
Note: After the item number, the letter ‘n’ refers to a key reversed item.
The investigation of the scales’ characteristics yielded similar results to those presented by Kormos and Csizér (2008). The authors disregarded vitality and cultural interest, instrumentality and ought-to self due to the low reliabilities of these scales.
The present results with reference to instrumentality and linguistic self-confidence follow the same pattern as in Kormos and Csizér’s (2008) study (see Table 11).
Interestingly the reliability coefficient was also rather low for integrativeness and the milieu. The former has been suggested by Kormos and Csizér (2008) to be a problematic construct and is currently the subject of debate: it has been suggested that it is rather integration into an international community that language learners aim for rather than wanting to become part of a specific L2 community (Yashima, as cited in Kormos & Csizér, 2008).
The rest of the scales were found to possess satisfactory psychometric properties with α values between .69 and .88. All multi-item scales were created based on minimum three items. The means, variances and SD values pertaining to each scale can be found in Table 11 below.
Table 11
Descriptive Statistics of the Motivation Questionnaire’s Scales
Item Item M Variance SD Item
N
Reliability (α) (present
study)
Reliability (α) (Kormos &
Csizér, 2008) Language learning
attitude
3.57 .56 .75 3 .88 .87
Motivated
language learning behavior
3.65 .34 .58 5 .83 .82
Table 11 (continued)
Item Item M Variance SD Item
N
Reliability (α) (present
study)
Reliability (α) (Kormos &
Csizér, 2008)
Ideal L2 self 4.30 .004 .06 4 .85 .83
Knowledge orientation
3.91 .08 .28 5 .76 .77
Parental
encouragement
4.13 .04 .19 4 .88 .86
Language use anxiety
2.53 .03 .17 3 .84 .80
Language class anxiety
2.16 .08 .28 4 .84 .87
Cultural
interest/vitality of community US
3.28 .18 .42 4 .76 .65
Integrativeness 3.47 .36 .60 3 .58 .64
International posture
3.99 .60 .77 4 .69 .73
Milieu 4.18 .13 .35 3 .61 .61
Instrumentality 4.46 .19 .44 3 .58 .56
Ought-to self 3.59 .56 .75 3 .39 NA
Linguistic self-confidence
3.28 .82 .90 2 .55 -.04
For the purposes of the present study, the components of interest are those that provide information about learners’ ideal and ought-to self, linguistic self-confidence,
parental encouragement, milieu, knowledge orientation and motivated language learning behavior, since these are the aspects of motivation that have been associated with language anxiety. Out of these dimensions, the questionnaire measures ideal L2 self, parental encouragement, knowledge orientation and motivated language learning behavior adequately. The constructs of ought-to self and the milieu, however, were further investigated.
The ought-to self comprised three items (mot38, mot57and mot61) where item mot61 loaded very weakly on the dimension. These three items only account for 45.70% of the variance instead of a desirable 50%. The determinant value is very high at .88 and the KMO very low at .52. Consequently, these items do not seem to explain well the ought-to self dimension in a statistical sense. Kormos and Csizér in their research published in 2008 were not able to identify such a dimension due to some of the items loading onto other dimensions as well. In a 2009 study, the same authors demonstrated in their structural model that a strong influence (R = .83) is exerted by the parents on learners’ ought-to self in case of university students and a moderately strong but significant influence (R = .66) is evident in the case of high school students.
If we consider the content of the items of the ought-to self component and the parental encouragement dimension, it can be noted that all allude to the learners’
immediate social environment, or what Higgins (1987) in his self-discrepancy theory mentions as the significant others.
ought-to self
mot57: For people where I live learning English is not really necessary.
mot61: If I fail to learn English, I’ll be letting other people down.
mot38: Nobody really cares whether I learn English or not.
parental encouragement
mot25: My parents really encourage me to study English.
mot35: My parents encourage me to practice my English as much as possible.
mot45: My parents have stressed the importance English will have for me in my future.
mot55: My parents feel that I should really try to learn English.
In fact, Higgins (1987) further theorizes that we can distinguish between the ought-to self/own and ought-to self/ other aspects of the proposed ought-to self component.
The first is established as one’s own expectations of oneself, whereas the second refers to how the learner perceives what others’ expectations are. This was recognized and investigated by Taguchi, Magid and Papi (2009) in their study of the L2 motivational self system in three different contexts. In their analysis, “the ought-to L2 self was combined with family influence, since the ought-to L2 self contain[ed] not only aspects related to friends and colleagues, but also to family” (p. 78). Finally, in this sense the milieu can also be considered as the group of significant others and some of the items (e.g. mot57 and mot38) do appear in Csizér and Kormos (2009) as part of this component. Hence, it is proposed here that the operationalization of the ought-to self construct be reconsidered: it is postulated that the items loading onto ought-to self, parental encouragement and milieu indeed measure one construct, namely ought-to self/other.
Another very much related issue is the necessity of re-conceptualizing knowledge orientation as ought-to self/own. The re-conceptualization in a sense is adding a different label to the group of items that define one component. Once again,
if the content of these items is considered, it can be seen that most of the statements (with the exception of item mot10) depict the learner’s expectations of him/herself in that what they expect they ought-to be able to do in order to be considered knowledgeable:
mot10 How important do you think learning English is in order to learn more about the culture and art of its speakers?
mot18 How much do you think knowing English would help you to become a more knowledgeable person?
mot28 For me to be an educated person I should be able to speak English.
mot33 I think that foreign languages are important school subjects.
mot48 A knowledge of English would make me a better educated person.
To see whether these theoretical considerations can be backed with empirical evidence, it was tested whether the items of ought-to self and parent encouragement, and milieu indeed load on to one ought-to self/other component. According to the results of principal component analysis (see Table 12), all items as hypothesized, aligned on one dimension explaining 51.47% of the variance and with an acceptably high KMO value of .856. The ought-to-to self/own possessed the same characteristics as the knowledge orientation component, since only a re-labeling of the concept was suggested. As speculated above, item mot10 had the weakest loadings on this component, presumably due to its indirect relevance to what the learners’ expect of themselves as regards language learning.
Table 12
Componential Structure of the Re-conceptualized Ought-to Self/Other and Ought-to Self/Own
Component Item loadings Variance explained
Det. KMO Bartlett’s test significance Ought-to self/
other
mot43 .795 mot57n .409 mot61 .356 mot38n .696 mot25 .846 mot35 .836 mot45 .831 mot55 .822
51.47% .027 .856 .001
Ought-to self/own
mot10 .588 mot18 .758 mot28 .810 mot48 .789 mot33 .597
51.10% .261 .725 .001
Note: After the item number, the letter ‘n’ refers to a key reversed item.
Factor analysis using maximum likelihood estimation with varimax rotation confirmed the two distinct factors (see Table 13). With the exception of item mot33, all other items loaded onto one factor.
Table 13
Factor Analysis of Items Measuring Ought-to Self/Own and Ought-to Self/Other Item Ought-to
self/own
Ought-to self/other
mot10 .368
mot18 .598
mot28 .827
mot48 .787
mot33 .300 .360
mot43 .732
mot57n .303
mot61 .262
mot38n .599
mot25 .810
mot35 .786
mot45 .773
mot55 .765
Note: Extraction Method: Maximum Likelihood. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
After the item number, the letter ‘n’ refers to a key reversed item.
Based on these components, two scales were established: the first measuring learners’
ought-to self/other and the second measuring ought-to self/own (leaving out the problematic item mot33) expectations pertaining to learning English as a foreign language. Both scales proved to be reliable as indicated by the Cronbach's alpha values of .84 and .76 respectively (see Table 14).
Table 14
Descriptive Statistics of the Ought-to Self/Other and Ought-to Self/Own Scales Name of component Reliability
(α)
Item M
Variance SD Item
N
Ought-to self/other .84 3.98 .30 .54 8
Ought-to self/own .75 3.79 .14 .37 4
In summary, in the present study on foreign language anxiety, the components which served as aggregate variables from this instrument are the ought-to self/own, ought-to self/other, ideal self, motivated learning behavior, language use anxiety, language class anxiety, language learning attitude. It must be noted here that the language learning attitude component from this questionnaire was used in later analyses as opposed to the attitude component derived from the FLCAS due to psychometric considerations: the attitude component of the motivation questionnaire had a higher reliability coefficient associated with it (α = .88). The aggregate scores were calculated from the mean of each scale for each respondent. These were used in later analyses as observed variables.