Crucial Factors that Affect Vietnamese Undergraduate Students' Motivation in Learning English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

The paper aims to address the significant factors that affect the motivation to acquire English language skills of Vietnamese undergraduate students. This descriptive research study is mainly based on the survey using both questionnaires and interviews, conducted with 288 students at the Department of English Language of Hong Bang International University in Ho Chi Minh City. The findings show that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors play obvious impacts on the student's learning motivation, behavior, and performance. The major extrinsic factors include the teacher's role, the course atmosphere, the learning environment, the expectations from students' parents, the rates of incomes revealed in the job market, and the socio-educational environment. The intrinsic factors mainly include student's language competency, student's type of personality, and personal interests. Based on the findings of the study, the paper also proposes necessary implications to enhance the students' motivation of learning, aiming for increasing their success in the study program. In theoretical aspects, the study highlights the role of culture in shaping the student's motivation of learning. The study also attempts to differentiate types of learning motivation in terms of their time span, such as short-term, long-term, and lifelong motivation.