The Study Of Proficiency, Achievement Motivation, Goal-setting And Their Influence On EFL Learning Strategy Use

With rapid technological and social changes, modern language teaching has moved from traditional approaches to various versions of communicative methodology. However, although an abundance of attractive and authentic language-teaching materials have appeared as a result of this trend, there has been an ever-growing concern that learners have not made as much progress as might have anticipated. In response to the methodological issues, applied linguistics aims to explore what is inside the 'black box' of the human brain so that teaching methods might be designed to facilitate rather than hinder the learning process. From the 1960s with the advances in the areas of general linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology the research emphasis of second language acquisition began to shift from teaching to learning. Part of this research has focused on 'the good language learners' and what strategies they adopt to be successful. Nowadays, quality-oriented education in china also aims at producing autonomous learners who not only increase their knowledge and skills but also know how to manage their own learning.A great many of constructive researches have been conducted on the description, classification and function of learning strategies employed by learners in the learning process. Some researchers have tried to prove that training in strategies is the facilitator of learner autonomy. However, learning strategies are not absolutely good for all learners in all contexts; factors affecting strategy use have more or less beenneglected. Although there has been an increasing amount of interest in the interrelationship between motivation and strategy use in L2 (Oxford & Nyikos, 1989; Schmid et al. 1996; Okada et al. 1996. Wen, 2001), little has been known about the relationship between strategy use and achievement motivation in FLL context. According to Atkinson (1966), there are two types of motivation-the positive motivation to strive for success and the negative inhibitory tendency to avoid failure.Another variable examined in the study is goal-setting. In Locke and Latham's (1994) goal setting theory, a goal is seen as the 'engine' to fire the action and provide the direction in which to act. Dornyei and Otto (2001) take an intermediary position and see goals as the first concrete mental representations of a desired end state; goals, in their theory, do not directly determine action but are an indispensable step in the motivated behavioural sequence. Researchers have identified different types of goal orientations. These orientations have been contrasted as mastery goal and performance goal. Goal-setting is a very important cognitive mediator between motivational antecedents and motivational behaviour and there is a causal relationship between goal-setting and motivational behaviour. Anyhow, there exists a shortage of empirical studies on how students' perceptions of goal setting are related to their selection and use of effective learning strategies in L2 learning.For these reasons mentioned above, the current study has explored the influence of achievement motivation and goal setting on learners' strategy use. The specific purpose is to provide empirical evidence that these two factors may have an effect on the choice of learning strategies and simultaneously, shed some light on the study of learning strategies, strategy training and pedagogy. The subjects will involve non-English majors of colleges and universities in China. In this study, an English Learning Questionnaire, which is composed of four parts ?Personal Information, Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), Achievement Motivation Scale (AMS) of T.Gjesme & R.Nygaard (1970) and a Goal Setting Questionnaire will be administered to collect information on language learners' individual background, learning strategies, achievement motivation and goal setting. The statistical analyses employed will be descriptive statistics, t-test, product-momentcorrelation, multivariate analysis of variance and multiple regression. Th...