The Transformation From Instrumental Motivation To Interest

With more and more frequent international communication, English, the most popular language in the world, plays a more and more important role in our country after China joined WTO. English teaching becomes the focus in the society, and there are irresistible trends of English learning around the country. However, many problems appeared: Many university students who try their best to memorize new words and do exercises in order to pass Band 4 or 6 of the College English Test will not continue to learn English any more once they pass them. At the time of using English again, they can't speak English or write in English correctly and freely and have to learn English from the beginning. Thus, they just spend a lot more time and energy, but get less effect.With the research of behaviorism, constructivism and humanism, English language pedagogy becomes more mature. The traditional teacher-centered concept is being replaced by the learner-centered one. Developing students'ability of autonomous and cooperative learning and enhancing their English learning interest are the focal points of English teaching research. All of them provide us the basis of the theories and methods. In line with constructivism and humanism, this thesis explores the transformation from instrumental motivation to interest via the teaching of cognitive and metacognitive strategies.Motivation is an internal process of cognitive and emotional arousal, which activates, guides, and maintains behavior over time. It can be classified into two groups: instrumental and integrative motivation. Instrumental motivation refers to motivation to acquire a language as means for attaining instrumental goals: furthering a career, seeking good jobs, reading technical materials, getting certificates, passing exams, translation, and so forth. And an integrative motivation is the interest in the culture of the target language or language itself, or the learners'desire to enhance their humanistic cultivation, to integrate themselves within the culture of the target language group, and to identify themselves with and become a part of that society. Most Chinese students use English as a tool and their integrative motivation of English learning is mainly the interest in English literature or enhancing their humanistic cultivation, and few of them want to integrate themselves within the culture of English group and identify themselves with and become a part of English society. So this thesis discusses the transformation from the instrumental motivation to interest but not to integrative motivation. In some circumstances, instrumental motivation can be transformed to interest, while interest may disappear without the strong will and correct methods.Students should not be judged by one standard because each student has his own interest and English learning level. Thus, very student is demanded to make a plan of English learning based on his interest and learning level. During the process of our experiment, the teacher spends about five minutes in teaching metacognitive and cognitive strategies at the beginning of each class. After class, the teacher has informal discussions with the students in order to learn how they monitor the time and the process of study and help them overcome the difficulties they meet in time. Moreover, different kinds of teaching methods are flexibly used in class to promote students'interest in English learning.This thesis consists of two questionnaires. One is about the English learning motivation of Chinese college students; the other is the investigation of the transformation from instrumental motivation to interest. The result of the first investigation shows that most Chinese students have both English learning interest and instrumental motivation. 39.5% of the subjects are fond of English and 28.2% of the subjects learn English in order to go abroad and learn English culture through practice, while 91.85% of the students agree that they learn English because it is a useful tool for communication in the society today. Hence, we can conclude Chinese College Students'English learning instrumental motivation is a lot stronger than their integrative motivation. The result of the second investigation reveals that 81.5% of the subjects think that their English learning interest has been promoted after one term of English learning. The teacher's involvement and the teaching of cognitive and metacognitive strategies have produced good results, and the teacher's involvement is the most effective of all. However, the teaching of writing and speaking strategies is still the central task for us to improve. All these are valuable for us to refer to in our teaching later.