Non-English Major Postgraduate Students’ Learning Motivation And Learning Proficiency

As an important component of affective variables, motivation has been generallyregarded as a very powerful factor in L2learning. Some scholars even claim that it is the mostimportant factor in determining the success in L2learning. However, the author finds that theatmosphere in the English learning classroom of postgraduates is stressful and dull, and thepostgraduate students lack interest in English learning. What’s more, most of the studies onEnglish learning motivation in China have been carried out among college undergraduates,few of them focus on the English learning motivation of postgraduates.The aims of this thesis is to do an overall study on the English learning motivation ofChinese non-English major postgraduates so as to help English teachers to have a betterunderstanding of the English learning motivation of Chinese non-English major postgraduatesand make full use of the facilitating role of motivation in their teaching. The researchquestions are as follows:(1) What are the types of motivation of Non-English MajorPostgraduate students and their motivation intensity?(2) Does language learning motivationcorrelate with students’ achievement?(3) Is there any significant difference betweenmotivation type and high-and low-score students?(4) Is there any significant differencebetween motivation type and male and female students?(5) What are the main factorsinfluence students’ learning motivation?There are four major steps in this research: First of all, descriptive statistics, includingmeans and standard deviation, is computed to summarize the students’ responses tomotivation. Secondly, correlation analysis is conducted to examine how motivation is relatedto learning achievement. Thirdly, t-test is employed to identify whether there is anysignificant differences in terms of motivation type between the high score and low scoregroup and the male and female in motivation. Finally, according to the interview, the authorsummarizes the main factors that influence students’ motivation.After the study, the author made the following conclusions:(1) The Non-English MajorPostgraduate students mainly had three types of motivation: instrumental, cultural andsituational. Most of them showed weak motivational intensity in English learning.(2) Motivation had a correlation with learner’s achievement. Among the three types of motivation,achievement had a significant correlation with cultural motivation, but there was no clearcorrelation with instrumental and situational motivations.(3) The high score group got ahigher mean in cultural motivation, while the low score group got a higher mean in situationalmotivation. There was a significant difference between high score and low score groups incultural motivation.(4) There were no significant differences in instrumental and situationalmotivations between male and female students. But, there were significant differences incultural motivation between male and female students.(5) There were two main factorsaffecting students’ English learning motivation, the first one was the external factors such associal needs and the learning environment; the second one was internal factors such as interest,attitude and self-confidence.Based on the results of the study, some implications for enhancing Non-English MajorPostgraduate students’ learning interest were put forward. In addition the limitations of thepresent study and the suggestions for the future study were put forward in the conclusion part.