The Role of Iranian EFL Learners’ Motivation and Beliefs in Their Reading Comprehension Scores

Learners owe their success to various factors that may lead to individual differences. Among those contributing factors, motivation and learners’ belief as two distinct features have been investigated in this research. To this end, 120 intermediate EFL learners in the 15-30 age range, studying in different English language institutes in Tehran participated in this study. They were asked to complete the Motivation Questionnaire (Dörnyei & Taguchi, 2009) as well as the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (Horwitz, 1988). The results of the regression analyses revealed that there was a significant relationship between learners' motivation, learners’ belief, and their reading comprehension scores. The results also indicated that 42% of variability in the Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension scores was predicted by their motivation, and 27% of variability in their scores was predicted by their beliefs toward EFL learning. In fact, both motivation and learners’ beliefs were significant predictors of the participants’ reading comprehension scores. These findings showed that motivation and learners’ beliefs can be used to predict students’ reading comprehension scores to some degree. The implications and suggestions for further studies were also highlighted.