Motivation of Russian Students Towards the Learning of English

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the attitudes and motivation for learning English of students in the city of Surgut, in the Russian Federation. The investigation was carried out in November 2013 by means of self-completion questionnaires distributed to 30 students aged between 13 and 17 who had studied English for at least two years in private language schools although all of them had studied at least one foreign language within the Russian national education system. The students were divided into two main categories: students who are citizens of the Russian Federation who come from bilingual families (BF), such as Tatar, Bashkir, Ukrainian or others, and students from Russian monolingual families (MF). The results were analyzed from different motivational views, namely achievement, instrumental, integrative, extrinsic, and intrinsic motivations. This methodology allowed the researcher to acquire a multi-perspective vision of what impelled Russian students to learn English, what they expected of that knowledge, and whether there were differences between both groups. The results showed a high level of motivation among both genders of bilingual students and among girls from Russian monolingual families, while non-bilingual boys’ results were much more discreet. Although this research was
carried out in according to concrete standards of age and education, the results can increase the scientific understanding of motivation for second-language learning in contexts where that second language is not necessary, used or even known by the community in its daily life, as well as the perception of language learning by monolingual and by bilingual individuals.