Investigating the motivation to learn Arabic among undergraduate students of Iranian universities based on the theory of self-motivation system

Motivation plays an essential role in every person’s life to persevere and do a job. It determines the quality of behavior and the result of one’s efforts at all stages of life. Accordingly, a man does not start an activity unless there is incentive, motivation, and purpose behind it. This applies to learning processes, especially second language learning. This article tries to study the effect of motivation in learning Arabic as a second language among undergraduate students at Iranian public universities based on the theory of ‘internal self-motivation system” and using two descriptive-analytical and survey approaches, also identify the various factors affecting this. To identify motivational factors, sixteen variables of this theory have been studied. The tool of this research is a questionnaire designed by Dorney and Taguchi (2010). The research sample includes 1107 male and female undergraduate students who entered the university during the years 2017-2020. SPSS software was used to analyze the data. Structural model design and relationship detection between variables was based on Amos software. Finally, this study points out that according to the coefficients obtained in the Pearson correlation matrix, the factors of attitude towards learning Arabic ideal second language self-instrumental incentives and “attitude to Arabic culture and society” have the highest positive correlation with the target effort variable, respectively. The target effort variable has received the most direct impact from its ideal language variable, and the rest of its direct effects are due to the attitude to learning Arabic variable.