Abstract:
The present thesis purports to scrutinize the long-term impact of a literacy-related reward, as a type of extrinsic rewards, in intensive reading activities on learners’ intrinsic motivation,
reading motivation, and performance. This work, thereupon, is built upon three exploratory
hypotheses. If an extrinsic reward (short stories) is delivered for meeting a standard of
excellence in the reading comprehension activities, then learners’ intrinsic motivation would
be increased; if an extrinsic reward (short stories) is offered for successful reading
comprehension performance, then learners’ reading motivation would be boosted; and if an
extrinsic reward is administered for learners’ successful performance in the reading
comprehension activities, then learners’ performance would be improved. To validate the
preceding hypotheses, a sample of 91 second year students, drawn from a population size of
671 LMD students of English as a foreign language, at the Department of Letters and English
Language-Mentouri University-Constantine, was assigned to two experimental conditions. In
the no-reward condition, the subjects were involved in reading and performing intensive
reading activities, whereby the reward was the enjoyment inherent in the experimental
activities. In the reward condition, the subjects performed intensive reading activities; their
successful performance was rewarded tangibly by a short story. The intrinsic motivation
inventory was administered at the end of the two experimental conditions to quantify their
situational levels of intrinsic motivation with regard to the target tasks. In like manner, the
motivation to read profile was correspondingly administered to statistically determine their
pre- and post-reward reading motivation, and, by the same token, the pre-post-tests to
compare between their pre-and post-reward reading comprehension performance.The major
findings show that there is a statistically significant difference between the two experimental
conditions, indicating that short stories can be good incentives to enhance undergraduate EFL
students’ intrinsic motivation(t(5.69)=1.65,p>0.05) and performance(t(11.27)=1.65,p>0.05);
however, there was no room for short stories to heighten their reading motivation(t(0.77)=1.65,p<0.05).
