Motivation : A study of the importance of motivation for upper secondary students in Sweden to learn the English language successfully

Sammanfattning: This study explores whether upper-secondary students in a Swedish school tend to have instrumental or integrative motivation towards their English studies. Several studies are looked into where a correlation between motivation and second language achievements has been found and a number of models are analysed that show how motivation plays a role in second language proficiency. The study also investigates the students’ overall motivation towards a specific assignment that they recently finished and the correlation between motivation and the grade that they got on the assignment is calculated and analysed. This study is conducted through a survey that is answered by 40 students at an upper-secondary school in Sweden. All of the students study English and they all answered a questionnaire regarding their motivation towards their English studies in general as well as their motivation towards the assignment that they recently finished.  The results show that students in upper-secondary schools in Sweden tend to have instrumental motivation towards their English studies as they answered that the majority of them wants to learn English for practical reasons. The study also showed that the correlation between students’ motivation and their second language achievements is moderate and positive where the students’ motivation as well as their grades tend to move in tandem, so when the motivation gets higher, the grade tends to follow and vice versa.