The Role of Motivation in ESP Reading

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of motivation in ESP reading comprehension tests at the university level in Iran. For the study, 245 students from different majors ( literature, economics, medicine, electronics and chemical engineering) participated in the project. In addition to the motivation questionnaire, the participants in each major took a battery of reading comprehension tests related to their own content area knowledge, namely, major-specific technical English (EST) tests. The obtained data were subjected to different statistical analyses. The findings revealed , First, that motivation is significantly related to the test performance of the participants, and second, the English literature major students had a higher motivation in test performance than those in other majors. The results have some implications for TEFL at the university level.