| Motivation is a very important factor in second/foreign language learning. It has been widely accepted by language teachers and researchers as one of the key factors influencing the rate and success of second/foreign language learning. Learners with strong motivation are able to learn second/foreign language initiatively and involve actively themselves in the learning process and they can achieve greater success. The concept of motivation has passed through a number of different interpretations and has been studied by many researchers from various perspectives as in education, psychology, sociology. Motivation is one of the most important aspects of language learner's psychological factors and individual differences in learning a foreign language. Previous studies have shown that it has significant influence on the whole process and outcome of the foreign language learning.Writing error is a major kind of production errors which language teachers are inevitably confronted with in the course of language teaching. The development of Applied Linguistics and Psychology greatly changes people's attitudes toward errors. Based on Cognitive Psychology, Error Analysis (EA) emerged at the end of 1960s and the beginning of 1970s. As a branch of Applied Linguistics, EA examines the actual errors produced by the learners and views errors as a natural phenomenon occurring inevitably in second language learning process. EA has been closely associated with language teaching and learning from the very beginning of its appearance and has become a major focal point of researchers. Although there have been many studies conducted concerning motivation and errors in writing individually, few of them drew much attention to the relation between them. In the current study, the author did the analysis of motivation and errors and the correlation analysis between them in a new perspective that all the data of participants (undergraduate and postgraduate students) are analyzed to find out their group characteristics. At the same time, based on the theory"Errors are invariably the sign of a motivated student."concluded by Tom Scovel (2004), the author expects to provide some evidence of the theory among the surveyed students through the correlation analysis.The subjects of this study consist of first-year undergraduate and postgraduate students from two departments (Architecture Department and Information and Correspondence Department). The data are collected from the participants'response to the questionnaire based on motivation theories on relevant literature consisting of two parts: personal information part and a motivation questionnaire. The errors are obtained from students'writings. All data were analyzed with the system of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 17.0). The results of the current study show:1) More than half of the undergraduates and most of the postgraduates are intrinsically motivated language learners. That is to say, in the present study, there is a dominance of intrinsic motivation in motivation types.2) Undergraduate students are moderately motivated language learners, and postgraduates possess stronger motivation and they are highly motivated to acquire a foreign language.3) The results indicate that among undergraduates, in accordance with the traditional view, girls'learning motivation is significantly stronger than that of boys. Conversely, in postgraduates group, boys possess stronger learning motivation.4) From the results of statistical analysis, it can be concluded that there is no significant relation between motivation and writing errors. Superficially, there is statistical meaninglessness in the relation for the surveyed learners.Some helpful findings obtained from the study have been demonstrated. Based on these tentative results some suggestions have been put forward simultaneously. It is hoped that the current study concerning motivation and errors could bring more researches in this field in the future.
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