The study of motivation among learners is an interesting area of research. Everyone who decides to start learning a foreign language has some motivation to do so. In today’s world the most studied second language is English. This is probably the case because English has become the international language for business and commerce, science and technology, and international relations and diplomacy. It is present in almost all walks of life and most people assume that learning it would help them get better jobs and they could have a better way of life. This is, however, not the only reason of the popularity of English. There are several others which would be elaborated on later, with other areas of motivation research. These will include some approaches to understand motivation, the challenges linguists encounter when study it, and how age affects second language learning and motivation.