Investigation into Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation of English Department High Grade Point Average (GPA) Students

A series of research undertaken have revealed some interesting aspects regarding the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation toward students’ achievement. Students with high achievement were typically believed as students who had high Grade Point Average (GPA). Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation level of English Department high GPA students. This study also aimed to find out how the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation levels of the ED High GPA students correspond with their GPA. Work Preference Inventory (WPI), proposed by Amabile, Hill, Hennessey and Tighe (1994) was used in measuring students’ level of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The questionnaire was administered to 30 fourth-year ED students who had high GPA. The interpretation of intrinsic and extrinsic mean score results suggested by Degang (2010) and descriptive narrative analysis were used to analyze the data. The result of this study revealed that the highest number of ED high GPA students were highly intrinsically motivated (73.33%) and highly extrinsically motivated (56.57%). It was also found that student who had the highest combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation level among all of students (High IM-Highest EM) gained the highest average GPA (3.97). The result of this study suggested that higher on both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation levels appeared to lead to higher academic achievement. It is important to note that not only high level of intrinsic motivation, but also extrinsic motivation, was found to be important in achieving academic success