Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2016 in the subject
Psychology - Learning Psychology, Intelligence Research, grade: Magna
Cum Laude, University of Leipzig, course: Psycholinguistik, language:
English, abstract: Motivation and attitudes are considered as
hypothetical psychological constructs in explaining both the process and
outcome of second/foreign language learning. The taxonomy and
categorization of second/foreign language motivation into integrative
and instrumental motivation has long been established and dominated L2
motivation research in different educational contexts. According to
Lambert (1972), Integrative motivation reflects an interest in learning
another language because of a sincere and personal interest in the
people and culture represented by the other language group. Instrumental
motivation on the other hand, refers to the pragmatic and functional
orientations in learning a foreign language. Gardner (1985) claimed that
integrative motivation is the most important and predictable factor of
excelling in a second language than the instrumental motivation.
Nevertheless, this assumption that stresses the importance of
integrative motivation over the instrumental one in predicting the level
of success in learning a second language, has rather been challenged,
and a set of controversial findings have been reported. This study
sought to compare and investigate the motivational and attitudinal
orientations of Sudanese undergraduate students towards learning English
and German; in relation to the target language in question and gender
differences. In addition, it intended to examine if there would be any
correlation between students' level of motivation and attitudes, and
their self-assessed achievement in the target language. The sample of
this study composed of 221 students from the Faculty of Arts, University
of Khartoum, Sudan. 148 students from the department of English
language, and 73 students from the department of German language have
