Students' sources of motivation for selecting English, German and French foreign language classes as their elective courses at a Turkish state university

The aim of this study is to examine college students' sources of motivation as to their preferences of elective foreign language classes. This study was designed as a qualitative collective case study and the participants of this study were 87 language learners of English, German and French who study at a university in Kahramanmaraş. As data collection instruments, a qualitative questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were utilised. In order to analyze the collected data, a coding technique both for the qualitative questionnaire and interviews was used. The findings of the study indicate that students prefer different language classes heavily by their intrinsic motivation reasons. The findings also show that students conceptualise their previous, current and future language learning experiences to invoke and sustain their motivation towards learning a foreign language willingly. In addition, the findings show that students majoring in International Relations tend to have a particular interest towards foreign language learning, which is linked both their intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation. As a conclusion of the study, it was found out that language learners developed different sources of motivation day by day and found a way to use them in their learning process.