The role of motivation in foreign language teaching has been a debated issue for long years. One of the problematic issues is the motivation problem encountered in foreign language courses. Because, the most important factor affecting academic success is motivation. Most researchers argued that as the motivation level increases, the level of foreign language learning will increase and students will learn foreign languages more easily. In this research, motivation attitudes of state and private elementary school students in foreign language courses in Turkey were examined. At the same time, the relationship between foreign language and motivation attitude of state and private elementary school students was tried to be determined. The sample of the research is 747 students in 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades selected by random sampling from a Private Elementary School and a State Elementary School in Adana Province, Turkey, in 2018-2019 academic year. In the research, the participants were applied the Academic Motivation Scale-AMS and there was a significant effect on the motivation of different school type (state and private), gender, school and primary school was not examined. The difference between motivation levels of the students in state and private schools was tried to be determined. In the study, Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficiency and Independent Sample t-test Analysis were performed by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences—SPSS 22 Programme. According to the results, it was found that the motivation level differed according to the gender and school type.