Effects of the Lecturer’s Transactional Presence towards Learners’ Intrinsic Motivation in Learning English as a Second Language through Distance Education

Learning English as a second language through distance education requires the learners to be highly motivated to learn and to carry out self-practice in order to improve and be competent users of the learned language. This article reports on the study undertaken to explore the relationship between distance learners’ perceptions towards the transactional presence of the course lecturer and their intrinsic motivation to learn English via distance education. A total of 512 students who enrolled in the JUE 300 English course responded to the quantitative questionnaire. The results indicated that a high level of transactional presence of the course lecturer is associated with a high level of intrinsic motivation in the distance learner. Based on the findings, this article concludes by making the following recommendations to providers, designers and instructors of English language learning courses in distance education: (1) be aware of the needs and expectations of distance learners in terms of the perceived transactional presence, i.e., the perceived availability and connectedness of the students to the lecturers and (2) enhance the students’ perception about the transactional presence of the lecturer. This can be achieved if the lecturer responds promptly to students’ emails and queries, participates actively in students’ blogs, chat rooms and discussions to increase learners’ intrinsic motivation to learn English via distance education.