Investigating Reading Motivation in Indonesian and English among EFL Students

Abstract

Closely looking at reading motivation in L1 and L2 can lighten English teacher and educator to
reformulate their approaches and strategies in giving reading instruction. In response to this, the study
intends to adapt and validate an eight reading motivational dimensions (Lin et al 2012) and one added
dimension; self-confidence for both Indonesian as an L1 and EFL as an L2 using confirmatory factor
analyses, and compare motivations for reading Indonesian and reading English across all nine categories
using descriptive statistics and correlation. Attempting to reach the objectives, eighty three second year
non-English major complete a questionnaire on nine separate motivational subscales related to reading
Indonesian and English behavior. Motivation in this study covers self-efficacy, curiosity, involvement,
recreation, social-peer attitudes, school grades, instrumentalism, self-confidence and social-family
attitudes. The result concerning with the Instrument validation are all factor loadings in the adapted
MRQ` are significantly different from 0 at p \ .001, reliabilities were greater than .70 indicated
reasonably good internal consistency, and all motivational dimensions for English and most motivational
dimensions for Indonesian were above or closely approaching .70.The results show that students’ Self
efficacy, curiosity, involvement, recreation, and social peer are significantly higher in Indonesian than in
English. Grade motivation variable does not differ for the two languages. Whereas, instrumentalism,
social family, and self-confidence are significantly higher in English than in Indonesian. The
implications of these findings are discussed in respect to the approaches and strategies of reading
instructional program.