Exploring motivating factors among Iranian medical and nursing ESP language learners

Abstract

With respect to the prominence attached to motivation and its significant effect on learning in general and language learning in particular, the present study aimed at identifying the motivating factors affecting Iranian medical ESP learners using a checklist, interview, and questionnaire. To this end, ten students were interviewed from two different majors: nursing and medicine. A questionnaire with 30 items was developed using the responses from the interviews and distributed among one hundred and six ESP medical and nursing students. The results suggested that the students who studied medicinewere more motivated compared to those who studied nursing. Based on the results of the factor analysis, the medical school students found “Teacher characteristics & teaching material”; “Immigration & personal aspirations”; and “Instrumental motivation” motivating while “Intrinsic/integrative motivation” and “Learning environment” were motivating for the nursing school students. Further investigations using two-way-within-between subjects ANOVAs, and one way ANOVAs revealed that students of medicine had a higher level of motivation, but their opinion regarding the factors they found motivating did not differ much from those studying nursing.

Keywords

• esp
• students of medicine
• nursing students
• motivating factors