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ov's classical conditioning model and Skinner's operant conditioning model. Lepper et al.,(1996) noted the following:

…in the present context, both paradigms involved the study of the learning of essentially capricious relationships between arbitrarily selected responses of the organism, arbitrary environmental stimuli, and arbitrary external rewards and punishments. A person might, thus, be asked to press a button/move a lever/state a preference, in the presence of a bell/light/tone/colour, in order to obtain food/ money/social approval. Motivational theories of the time, in short, were focussed deliberately and almost exclusively on extrinsic forms of motivation.

However, due the limitations that these dominant models posited, theorists from different fields started to probe into the forms of motivation that did not fit the conventional extrinsic motivation model which arose and persisted in the absence of external rewards or punishments (Lepper et al., 1996) but come from the organism itself which was then identified by Bruner (1966) and Hunt (1965) as intrinsic motivation.

Apart from that, Ames (1992) mentioned that there have been many theoretical approaches applied in order to understand why individuals behave in a certain way in a particular situation and motivations are believed to exist as part of an individual's goal structures and they are said to guide a person on whether or not they should be involved in a given pursuit. Deci and Ryan (1985) posited a theory called self-determination theory to investigate the roles of such self-motivated behaviour in academic performance. According to the theory proposed, the self-determination continuum consists of behaviours which are either intrinsically motivated, extrinsically motivated or amotivated and this paper will focus on the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and explore what motivates most undergraduates who are undertaking the English Language course. Cokley (2003) found that when self-determination theory is applied in academic motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations are the two main types of motivated academic conduct.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

English is a widely used language in this multi-racial country (Ministry of Higher Education, n.d.). English is also a prominently growing as the world's lingua franca. According to Gill (2002), English is positioned as a second language in Malaysia. Therefore, it is taught as a second language in schools. Graddol (1997) has said that 'within a decade or so, the number of people who speak English as a second language will exceed the number of native speakers'. This shows how important it is to master the English language in order to cope with this fast moving world. This is supported by Aminuddin (2012) when he mentioned in his article that the ability to master English is an important criterion looked for by employers in Malaysia.

Seeing how important it is for graduates to be well-versed in English, there is a demand to conduct more research in this field especially researches that are related to the motivations of Malaysian undergraduates in acquiring English as a second language because by knowing what drives students to acquire a second language, educators and institutions will be able to know what to include when structuring a c±¾ÂÛÎÄÓÉÓ¢ÓïÂÛÎÄÍøÌṩÕûÀí£¬ÌṩÂÛÎÄ´úд£¬Ó¢ÓïÂÛÎÄ´úд£¬´úдÂÛÎÄ£¬´úдӢÓïÂÛÎÄ£¬´úдÁôѧÉúÂÛÎÄ£¬´úдӢÎÄÂÛÎÄ£¬ÁôѧÉúÂÛÎÄ´úдÏà¹ØºËÐĹؼü´ÊËÑË÷¡£