Language Teaching Research Quarterly

Most social scientists view values as deeply rooted, abstract motivations that guide, justify or explain attitudes, norms, opinions and actions. Values are basic orientations presumed to underlie and influence individual variation on many of the constructs that researchers from different disciplines wish to study. Since 1950s the main features of the conception of basic values implicit in the related literature are: 1. Values are beliefs, cognitive structures that are closely linked to affect. 2. Values refer to desirable goals. For example, social equality, fairness and helpfulness are all values. 3. Values transcend specific actions and situations. Obedience and honesty, for example, are values that may be relevant at work or in school, in sports, business and politics, with family, friends or strangers. 4. Values serve as standards or criteria. 5. Values are ordered by importance relative to one another.  Cultures and individuals can be characterized by their systems of value priorities. Among all the scales, The Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) (1992) is currently the most widely used by social and cross-cultural psychologists for studying the individual differences in values. Schwartz derived ten, motivationally distinct, broad and basic values from three universal requirements of the human condition: needs of individuals as biological organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and survival and welfare needs of groups. The ten basic values are intended to include all the core values recognized in cultures around the world (power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, security). To primarily showcase whether there is a correlation between the success levels of the language learners and their motivational type of values, and secondly to explore whether this is culture specific or not, 56 language learners participated  in the study and The Schwartz Values  Questionnaire  was  administered.  The study is expected to yield insight into the pursuit of the correlation between the proficiency levels of the language learners and their motivational types of values.