My case study

Non-English student’s motivation in learning English

 (A case study of three non-English department students)

Nia Zahara, Nenden Dwi Puspita Sari, and Syarifah Rahmah

2016

Islamic State University of Ar-Raniry

a.      Background of study

English is an international language used as a tool for communication in daily life and school. Learning English is a necessity and a must for all the people in the world, especially for the country that use English as a second or foreign language. In Indonesia, English is a foreign language. Every people need to learn English basically, because there are four skills to be mastered in English, there are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

To achieve all of these skills, students need some motivation to learn English hardly. According to Uguroglu & Walberg (1979) motivation is essential for learning and achievement in all fields of human endeavor. Motivation and educational achievement as reflected in grade point average are positively correlated at all levels of schooling, elementary through college. The aim of this research is to know the motivation of non-English students in learning English.

b.      Research question

1.      How does non-English department students motivation in learning English?

c.       The Aim of Study

The aim of this research is to measure how does non-English students motivation in learning English.

d.      Terminology

According to Hornby’s dictionary motivation is something that makes people to do something.  Suhib Munir (2009) pointed out that motivation is one of factor which influences the successful of any activity, for instance language learning. This statement showed that learning English without motivation cannot be successful easily.

Based on Gardner and Lambert (1959) as stated in Hernandez (2008) instrumental motivation is the willingness of the learners to learn a new language and get some benefit by practicing it. Meanwhile, integrative motivation is the willingness of the learners to learn the culture of target language and engage in target language community.

e.       Research Methodology

This research was conducted in Islamic state university of Ar-Ranirry in Darussalam, Banda Aceh. This research was focus on small group of three social science learners as the participants. This research used qualitative approach. The researchers did an interview to collect the data and type of question is open-ended question that related to the topic.

f.       Finding and discussion

The first participant is Dessy Arinda, she is studying at PGMI in 7^th semester. She likes English, but she cannot speak English, because she does not studying well and the lack of vocabulary. The effort to increase her English, she tries to watching English movie frequently to improve her level in understand English. Then, her English ability has increase little by little. Her motivation in learning English is to pass the TOEFL test as the one of the requirement to graduate.

The second participant is Novia Athika, she is studying at Architecture Department in 3^rd semester. She likes English; she can speak English but not really well. She has two reasons why her English is not really well. The first is the factor of environment and the second is seldom to speak in English with who can speak in English too. The effort to increase her English, she tries to speak in English, although the grammatically is wrong. She said that she really want to be able speak in English fluently, because she want to go abroad someday.

Based on the result of interview with Indri Nadia as the third participants, she said that she likes English; even English is not her major. She said that English is very important in this globalization era; however she cannot speak in English. She said that speak in English is very hard for her. What has been written and how to pronounce is very different and it is confusing her very much. She wanted to learn English; however, whenever she tried to learn it, she felt down and say to herself that she never can understand English. One day, she realized that she needs to pass the TOEFL test as the requirement to graduate. As a student in last semester, she learns English very hard.

To sum up, based on the result by interview them, most of the motivation to learn English is to pass the TOEFL test and to be able go abroad. Because of this motivations, they learn English very hard than before they have the motivation. Learning with motivation will give best result for the learner.

Conclusion

This study aimed to describe the factor of lack motivation in learning English. This case study was conducted at Islamic states university of Ar-raniry which three learners in random sampling. They are from PGMI, Architecture, and Ilmu pustaka learner. The data was collected by interview method and the result show that the different factors, suggest like of vocabulary, environment and the last is hard to read and pronoun the word in English. Moreover, the main factors is English is very hard for them.

References

Gardner, R.C and Lambert. WE. (1959). Motivational variables in second language acquisition. Canadian Journal of Psychology: 13, 26-72.

Shuib. Munir (2009). Motivation and attitudes toward learning English: a study of petroleum engineering undergraduates at Hadhramout University of sciences and technology. GEMA online Journal of Language studies 9 (2). 2009.

Uguroglu, M.E and Walberg, H. (1979), Motivation and achievement: a quantitative synthesis, American             Educational Research Journal, 16. 375-390.