Investigating the core motivation for LG240 students to study in ODL environment / Munirah Asary and Wan Asrie Wan Ayub

The implementation of Online Distance Learning (ODL) has caused students to surmount different challenges ranging from a poor Internet connection, financial problems, family problems, and much more. Students generally struggle with motivation, whether external or internal motivation to study. This research aims to investigate the motivation of language students from the English for Professional Communication course (LG240) of UiTM Shah Alam during the Covid-19 pandemic. This research also adopts a quantitative research method using a survey design. The theoretical framework for this research was adapted from Hong and Ganapathy (2017) on the related topic that supports the idea that instrumental and integrative motivation is integral to language students’ performance. The participants had to answer two sets of questionnaires from both motivation types. The data collected from the online survey form indicates that LG240 students are leaning more towards integrative motivation than instrumental motivation despite the small margin of difference. The findings of this study show that motivation has no direct correlation with students’ academic performance. One notable implication from the research is an inference that aside from instrumental and integrative motives, there may be other reasons that can explain the students’ performance during the ODL.