Although 'motivation' is a term frequently used in both educational and research contexts, it is rather surprising how little agreement there is in the literature with regard to the exact meaning of this concept. Researchers seem to agree that motivation is responsible for determining human behaviour by energising it and giving it direction, but the great variety of accounts put forward in the literature of how this happens may surprise even the seasoned
researcher.This diversity is, of course,no accident; as Dornyei (1996a) points out, motivation theories in general seek to explain no less than the fundamental question of why humans behave as they do, and
therefore it would be naive to assume any simple and