Lexical Cohesion and Directed Motivational Currents: A Comparative Study of Highly Motivated and Less/Non Motivated ESL Learners

This research attempts to analyze the language proficiency of L2 ESL learners in the FATA region of KP, Pakistan. The main focus is on the differences in lexical cohesion between two groups of students; one group is highly motivated (DMCs) and the other group is not. A Directed Motivational Current (DMC) represents a new and novel kind of goal-directed motivation. The study adopted a longitudinal design. It involved collecting data from students' examination answer books to evaluate their linguistic competence. The data were midterm examination written responses from second-language students. These responses were analyzed at two distinct intervals in the examination year. The initial step in the evaluation involved identifying occurrences of various linguistic items and structures that are supposed to represent Lexical Cohesion. The next step required the researchers to identify and categorize the mistakes students made in the written response. This step was necessary because the researchers needed to find some basis for making a comparative analysis at the two intervals and across groups. The final step was a comparative analysis between the identified written items and mistakes from Interval 1 with those from Interval 2. Empirical findings show that motivated students do better than their less "highly" or "low" motivated peers. Motivational variables most assuredly influence L2 English learners' linguistic capabilities of the ESL learners.