Motivation Orientations And Their Relationships With Metacognitive Strategies And L2 Listening Proficiency

This study investigated motivation orientations and their relationships with metacognitive strategies and L2 listening proficiency within the framework of self-determination theory. The study used a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches.One hundred and ninety-nine second-year non-English majors from a tertiary university in Yantai participated in the study. The instruments used in the study are: two questionnaires (a motivation questionnaire and a metacognitive awareness questionnaire), a listening proficiency test, SPSS11.0 for liability and correlation analysis.The present study yielded the following important findings:(1) AM and listening proficiency is negatively and significantly correlated. In contrast, the relationships between EM, IM and listening proficiency are positive but insignificant, which can be justified from several factors such as the differences between listening test and classroom listening practice, the difficulty of CET-4 for these students etc. And it is likely that these more extrinsically motivated learners do not bear the motivation strong enough to sustain their study and ensure a good performance in listening.(2) As to the relationships between motivation orientations and metacognitive strategies, though the results that AM is negatively correlated with metacognitive strategies, and most of EM and IM orientations are positively correlated with metacognitive strategies respectively fit in the hypothesis, the most self-determined students do not appear to be the most frequent users of metacognitive strategies possibly due to the lack of metacognitive knowledge of listening process or of their desire to satisfy the external requirement either from the teacher or from the course.(3) The self-determination framework can be applied to the study of Chinese EFL learners in general, but when it comes to the specific learning process (listening in this study), the continuum in the present study appears to be different in some aspects. The self-determination framework states that there is an increasing significant relationship moving from AM to EM and to the most self-determined IM. However, the findings of this study reveal that there is an increasing strong relationship between students reported use of metacognitive listening strategies and AM and EM, AM and IM respectively, but there does not appear such an increasing significant relationship moving from EM to the most self-determined IM though there exists relationship between them . This might be resulted from the different subjects and the listening test beyond the subjects'ability.The findings in this study suggest that it is necessary to arouse the learners'motivation, especially the more self-determined forms of motivation, and systematic and effective strategy training should be conducted to help learners control over the effective use of strategies and even the learning process.