An Empirical Study Of College EFL Learners' Learning Motivation In CALL Environment

With the wide employment of modern educational technology, college English teaching is going on a process of replacing traditional educational media with modern ones, which are closely connected with multimedia computers and internet technology to raise its efficiency and quality. Currently, campus networks have been set up in universities nationwide and CALL has become a buzzing word to most of the English teachers. Although a great number of researches have been devoted to the study of CALL both at home and aboard, few refer to the individual learners'motivational differences in this new technology environment. In this condition, the current research aims to investigate the College EFL learners'learning motivation in CALL context.Based on the literature review of CALL and motivation theories in the field of psychology and second language acquisition, the research is developed from the students'psychological motivational factors including English learning interest, learning purpose, learning goals, self-efficacy, valence, causal attribution and learning efforts. The research was carried out via questionnaire and interview, which were conducted with 180 sophomores from the experimental classes of Jiangnan University who received their college English courses in CALL environment from the very beginning. Factor analysis and multiple linear regression analysis are used in the research to gain insights of learning motivation components of college EFL learners and the predictive effect of these motivational factors on learners'motivational behavior. Results were analyzed by the statistic software SPSS 16.0 for windows.From 23 latent variables, eight motivational components are extracted, including the learners'learning interest, learning purpose, learning goals, self-efficacy, valence, causal attribution, attitude towards CALL and motivational behavior. Most of them have a predictive effect on the motivational behavior. The paper also analyzed the effect of the learners'computer experience on their attitude towards CALL, supporting the conclusion that the learners'computer skills can also predict the learners'interest, self-efficacy and valence in CALL-based English learning. This paper mainly investigated the components of college EFL learners'learning motivation in CALL environment and analyzed the predictive effect of the motivation factors on the motivational behavior, which enriched the application of traditional motivation theories and research findings in CALL environment. It also results in the researchers'further consideration over the future research to add more factors caused by individual differences such as sexes, personalities, cognitive styles and language levels. Due to the popularization of CALL in the foreign language teaching in China, the same study,if possible, can also be conducted in the primary school and junior or senior middle school, which may gain more insights than from a single aspect of research with the subjects of college students only.