If you are planning to acquire a foreign language you must be aware of the fact that there are several influencing factors which affect the process of language learning, such as age, intelligence, learning strategies but the most significant of all is motivation. You have to be motivated enough in order to achieve your aim. Although I know motivation is not the only factor that helps students acquire a second language, I will demonstrate with my research that it plays an outstanding role in the procedure. My goal is to show the importance of motivation in foreign language acquisition with my study which deals with the following question: Why did a number of English majors at the University of Debrecen begin to learn English? What was their motivation at the beginning of their process of learning English?