Motivation in Listening Classes of College English At Addis Ababa University
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Date
1997-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In this study attempts were made to investigate the degree of students'
intrinsic motivation for studying listening and the motivational roles of the listening
tasks, the listening texts and the instructors in the listening classes of College
English in relation to students' achievement in the listening tests at the Addis
Abeba University Freshman Programmer.
Seventy- seven students from College of Social Sciences and seventy-one
from Science Faculty completed a questionnaire and twenty of these students
were interviewed. These students' results on the two listening tests given by the
department during the first semester were collected. To cross check the
information given by the students, a questionnaire was administered to twenty
instructors.
Descriptive statistical analysis was first employed to analyse the responses
given to each item. The analysis showed that the students' intrinsic motivation is
accounted for by their perception of the relevance of the skill, the tasks and the
texts to their needs in the academic setting. Correlational analysis was then made
to see the interrelations among the variables. This analysis showed significant
relationship among each other. Then, multiple reg ression models of analysis
were employed to examine the contribution of the motivational variables to the
students' achievement. The analysis revealed that the motivational variables
together explained 46.2% of the variation in the students' achievement scores.
The stepwise regression model confirmed that the greatest of th is contribution
was accounted for by the students' intrinsic motivation . To see if the motivating
natures of the listening tasks, the tasks, and the instructors have significantly
different effects on social science and natural science students, a t-test was
employed for comparing the mean scores. Accordingly, the motivational roles of
the listening tasks and texts did not have significantly different effects on the two
groups of students, but the instructors' motivational role had significantly different
effect on the two groups. The mean scores of each motivational variable showed
that they had a varying degree of motivating power. The instructors' responses
to the qualitative data collected through the interview and the open-ended items
in the questionnaire also confirmed this finding.
Fin ally it has been recommended that students' awareness of the
relevance of the listening component in the course should be more developed and
the department should organize a workshop for the instructors to narrow the gap
between the instructors' practices to motivate students to study listening.
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Keywords
Motivation, Listening Classes