Attitude and Motivation towards ESP Courses: The Case of the Bachelor Students in the English Department at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou

Abstract

The present research work is concerned with the investigation of the attitude and motivation of the English language learners within the context of English for Specific Purposes (ESP).It aims at exploring the aspects of motivation of the Bachelor students in the English department at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou.It is intended to determine their attitude and whether they are motivated towards specialized language courses provided at the English department, as well as the type of motivation they possess. This study relies on Gardner’s and Lambert’s (1972) theory of attitude and motivation and draws on Hutchinson and Water’s (1987). Different studies tackled the concept of attitude and motivation of the undergraduate students towards ESP in different departments, but little attention is paid to the motivation of English language learners who would be future teachers or workers in different fields using English language. A Mixed method for gathering data is used. It combines between the quantitative and the qualitative method. A questionnaire is distributed to (50) students and an interview is conducted with (03) ESP teachers from the English department. For the interpretation of the data, a statistical method is used to elicit numerical data, and a qualitative content analysis theory is adopted to interpret and explain the qualitative data. The results have revealed that the third year BMD students are motivated towards ESP courses and their attitude is found to be positive. Furthermore, high rate (37%) of the students is intrinsically rather than extrinsically motivated, and other (31%) are instrumentally rather than interactively motivated. However, some students are de-motivated due to the teaching methods and lack of materials. Thus, in order to raise students’ motivation, authentic materials should be implemented.