Motivation and its Relationship with Reading Comprehension Ability among Iranian Undergraduate Students across Different Disciplines

The purpose of this study was to promote Iranian EFL learners' reading literacy which is a worldwide concern. The decline in reading motivation that is typically observed in most Iranian universities is thus a cause for serious concern for Iranian EFL learners. Therefore, a total number of 285 participants from six different fields of study: social sciences, math, primary education, chemistry, biology and Persian literature took part in this study. Participants’ responses to the reading motivation statements, reading comprehension questions, and English language proficiency questions were analyzed through a Kruskal-Wallis test, T-test, ANOVA, and correlation. The findings indicated that learners with higher motivation in reading comprehension performed much better in reading comprehension than other learners with lower motivation. It was also demonstrated that the participants' discipline was a significant contributing factor to the relationship between reading motivation and reading comprehension ability. The findings further proved that the higher the students' proficiency level, the higher their reading motivation level. In sum, the present study indicated conclusively that there are different dimensions of reading motivation which relate differentially to the participants' reading comprehension ability.