The concept of motivation has been defined in various ways. Ramage (1990, p. 189)) pointed out that “identifying students‟ motivations for foreign language learning was a prerequisite to developing interventions that promote interest and continuation in foreign language study”. What‟s more, Williams and Burden (1997) proposed, Motivation involved sustaining interest and investing time and energy into putting in the necessary effort to achieve certain goals. To sum up, motivation is the process by which goal-directed behavior is stimulated in language learning. It drives and directs behavior.
Research shows that motivation directly and profoundly influences how often students use foreign language learning (FLL) strategies; how much input they receive in the language being learned; how high their general proficiency level becomes; and how long they persevere and maintain FLL skills after language study is over (Oxford, 1992).