Orientations and motivation in the acquisition of English as a second language among high school students in Quebec City

We investigated the emergence of orientations and their relation to motivation in a predominantly monolingual context. In this context (Quebec City), a previous study (Kruidenier & Clement, 1986) revealed that students' orientations toward learning English as a second language (ESL) were: friendship, travel, prestige, and knowledge/respect. The present study's participants consisted of 93 francophone Grade 11 high school students learning ESL. We used an adapted form of Kruidenier and Clement's Likert-type scale questionnaire. We ran factor analyses and a multiple regression analysis on the data. Results indicated that students' orientations were: travel, understanding/school (instrumental), friendship, understanding, and career (instrumental); they also demonstrated that orientations were predictors of their motivation. However, the absence of an integrative orientation here does not justify its exclusion in the assessment of motivation, because it could emerge in other contexts.