Factors that Motivate High-School Students’ Decisions to Study French
Dr. Comfort Pratt

Abstract
This article reports on an investigation of what motivates high-school students to study French. An online Likert scale questionnaire was administered to 220 students. The most influential factors were determined and a principal axis factor analysis with Varimax rotation was performed on the responses. Findings revealed that the most influential reasons for starting to study French was the fact that it seemed interesting; and the strongest influence for continuing to study the language was grades. The factor analysis results indicated that integrative, instrumental, and intrinsic factors accounted for 57.48% of the total item variance for the decision to begin studying French; and intrinsic, integrative, and instrumental factors accounted for 56.12% of the total item variance for the decision to continue studying French.

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