An Investigation On The Relationship Between Academic Motivation And Academic Performance On American College Students' Mandarin Learning

Owing to rising of the status of China, the number of people starting to learn Chinese as a second language is increasing. The subject that Chinese as a second language is highly valued by all the people. Among the studies of second language learning, motivation is a key influential factor with students'academic performance. It is limited studies on Chinese learning motivation and academic performance.This research is based on the theory of Self-determination theory proposed by Deci and Ryan. The questionnaire, Academic Motivation Scale, is designed by Vallerand et al. The participants are the native speakers in the United States. The results on students'Mandarin learning will be analyzed by the software SPSS.Chapter one will introduce the purpose, background, theory support and theme of this study. The purpose of this study is to exam the relationship between motivation and academic performance on Mandarin learning.Chapter two is literature review that introduces the previous studies of motivation and second language teaching and learning and the previous studies of the motivation on Mandarin learning. On the base of the literature review, this study is focusing on the new theory to make some contributions in this field.The third chapter introduces the questions, hypotheses and methods used in this study.The forth chapter mainly show the results that there is a relationship between intrinsic motivation and academic performance on college student's Mandarin learning.1.The intrinsic motivation to learn and accomplishments parts has relationship with their Mandarin Chinese learning grades. The results show that there is relationship between amotivation and academic performance.2.The analysis outcome reveals that the gender is factor on influencing the second language learning. The females'motivation is stronger than males. So did the academic performance.3.There is no relationship between extrinsic motivation and academic performance on Mandarin Chinese learning.The results of an open question (why are you study Chinese as a second language?) show that the goals of the students are interesting, tools and credit hours.The outcome of this research fosters the improvement of Mandarin Chinese education that the teachers pay attention to trigger and enhance student's intrinsic motivation to get a better result on Mandarin Chinese learning.