FL Teachers' Influence On Learners' Motivation For Different Types Of College Students

Motivation is one of the key influences on language learning success which influences learners'autonomy, attention, efforts, persistence and the final learning achievements, etc. Despite the awareness of the importance of motivation on learning, the research about foreign language (FL) teachers'influence on students'learning motivation has yet been far from enough. Of the limited attempts to study motivation in the filed, the contributions of Gardner and his associates have been unprecedented in influence with social psychological perspective such as the relationship between learners'attitudes and their achievements, which are still deficient in the exploration of FL teachers'influence on learners'motivation. In the mid of 1990s, a few researchers shed light on the consideration of FL teachers'influence on learners'motivation, such researches being represented by Tremblay and Gardner'Expanded Motivation Construct, Dornyei'Three-level Motivation Framework and the Motivation Framework proposed by Williams and Burden. On the basis of the literature review of the researches in motivation, such as behavioral approach, cognitive approach and humanistic approach, the writer of this thesis provides a tentative mode to reveal the influence the language learners have been exerted in classroom settings and an empirical study to confirm the FL teachers'influence on the learning motivation of different types of college students.By means of questionnaire and data collection, and under the blessing of professional analysis through software SPSS 14.0 version, the thesis study serves to demonstrate that FL teachers do have influence on students'learning motivation, despite of different types of college students'classification. Of the empirical results, FL teachers are reported to have most influence on non-English majors in their English learning motivation, followed by the less influential degree on English majors and the adult education students are least to be influenced by their teachers to stimulate English learning motivation. Additionally, more detailed analysis is conducted to specify in which aspect FL teachers influence learners' motivation most in the classroom setting. The findings of the research show that FL teachers'personal characteristics exert the most influence on learner'motivation and their interpersonal behaviors have the second most influence and their instructional behaviors do the least. The significance of the thesis research lies in the effective findings of FL teachers'influence on different types of college students, from which aspects and the degrees of influence on learners'motivation respectively, thus functioning to better enhance English leaning motivation among college students. Some relevant suggestions for FL teachers are also provided in the thesis to for the purpose of positively impacting students'English learning motivation in the language classroom setting.