The Relationship Between Moroccan EFL University Students’ Motivation Orientation and Their Classroom Participation: Exploring the Variables of Gender and Proficiency Level

This paper explores the relationship that may exist between the students’ motivational orientation and their participation in the classroom. The designed questionnaire was concerned with two main points. A motivation section that tapped the students responses to two orientations related to motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic also known as integrative and instrumental. The first one is characterised by the learner's positive attitudes towards the target language group and the desire to integrate into the target language community. The second one underlies the goal to gain some social, academic or economic reward through L2 achievement which suggests a functional purpose of the target language learning. The second questionnaire section targeted the willingness and actual participation of students inside the classroom. Two variables were taken into account, the gender and the proficiency level of the subjects. Results show that almost all the respondents have an intrinsic/integrative motivation orientation, a fact that has a noticeable positive effect on their classroom participation. Other results show that while gender proved to be an influencing factor on classroom participation, the degree of students’ proficiency appeared not to have any significant effect on any of the research variables. Keywords: Motivation orientation, classroom participation, gender, proficiency level