The impact of extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, and social self-efficacy on English competition participation intentions of pre-college learners: Differences between high school and vocational students in Taiwan

Abstract Previous research on the English academic performance of students prior to entering college has shown that vocational school students have a lower mastery of the English language compared with their high school counterparts in Taiwan. The reason for this is a lack of and learning motivation. This study provided a community-based English reading contest for pre-college learners to improve their English learning motivations, and proposed a research model based on extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, and social self-efficacy to predict learners’ participation intention in future contests. A total of 461 pre-college learners participated in the study. This study found that even though pre-test scores of vocational students prior to entering the contest were significantly lower than those of high school students, there were no significant differences between the English learning results of vocational and high school students after the contest. The study also showed that high school students had higher intrinsic motivation compared to vocational students, whereas vocational students had stronger extrinsic motivation and participation intention. This implies that organizers could enhance future EFL learning and participation through adoption of varying motivational or social strategies based on the characteristic differences of pre-college learners. Finally, we provide some recommendations that can be used for instructor reference in future when planning educational settings and pedagogies in EFL contests.