Vietnamese non-English-major students’ motivation to learn English: from activity theory perspective

The purpose of this study was to investigate Vietnamese non-English majors' motivation to learn English as a foreign language (EFL) based on the activity theory perspective. The participants included 1,565 students with at least one semester of university-level English, of whom 13 participated in the semi-structured interviews. The data was collected using the five-point Likert scale motivation and desire surveys with 16 items and individual face-to-face interviews. The results from the quantitative and qualitative strands indicated that the participants were highly motivated to learn English. The sources of such motivation included obtaining a good job in the future, achieving success in academic studies, maintaining effective communications with foreigners, having personal enjoyment, and being influenced by other people. In addition, they were not only more internally (rather than externally) motivated, but they also demonstrated strong motivational intensity to learn English and enhance their language competence. Moreover, there was a strong positive relationship between internal motivation and motivational intensity, whereas there was a weak positive correlation between external motivation and motivational intensity. Activity theory was used as a lens to elaborate on the discussion of learners’ motivation in this study. The findings of the current study can be used by stakeholders, such as EFL educators, decision-makers and curriculum developers, to understand more about their students in terms of psychological issues and to design appropriate programs that can increase their learning motivation.