the relationship between iranian efl learners' reading motivations and their fields of study

The declines in reading motivation that are typically observed in most iranian universities are thus a cause for serious concern for iranian efl learners. therefore, a total number of 285 participants from six different fields of study, social sciences, maths, primary education, chemistry, biology and persian literature took part in this study. the researchers gave the instruments over a 2-day period; the language proficiency test was given on day one, the motivation for reading questionnaire (mrq) and the reading comprehension test on day two with one week interval. participants’ responses to the reading motivation statements, reading comprehension questions and english language proficiency questions were analyzed through a kruskal-wallis test, t-test, anova and correlation. the findings indicated that learners with higher motivation in reading comprehension performed much better in reading comprehension than other learners with lower motivation. it was also demonstrated that the participants' discipline was a significant contributing factor to the relationship between reading motivation and reading comprehension ability. the findings further proved that the higher the students' proficiency level, the higher their reading motivation level. in sum, the present study demonstrated conclusively that there are different dimensions of reading motivation and that these dimensions relate differentially to the participants' reading comprehension ability. the findings of this study are fruitful for both teachers and students