Motivation plays an important role in improving students interest in reading English text. Having the motivation to read, students in the English Language Education Department (ELED) find it easier to read academic English text. This study aims to investigate factors and strategies the motivation of students in reading academic English text. In addition, the study is conducted to find out what motivated ELED students’ to read academic English texts. Descriptive qualitative design was applied in this study where data was collected from four participants. The participants students of English Language Education batch 2016 at an Islamic private university in Yogyakarta. Based on the interview, the findings showed that there were four students motivation to reading academic revealed by the participants. The motivation of participants is intrinsic and ekstrinsic motivation. As in extrinsic motivation, there were also six motivational factors found in the interview. This motivational factor include the wanted to gain knowledge, desire to obtain good grades, demand from lecturers to read, appropriate level book, social sharing, and academic reading demand to do theses. In addition, data collected from interviews also revealed that all participants acknowledged that they had several strategies used by students to increase their motivation to read academic English text. These include reading frequently, discussing materials with friends, building self-confidence and sharing with lecturers.