A Study On English Learning Motivation For Different Levels Of Non-english Majors

In recent years, with the increasing enrollment of students in colleges,individual differences become greater and greater. So the college English teaching hasfaced with a great challenge. In order to improve college English teaching andoptimize students’ English learning effect, in2007, the newly revised College EnglishCurriculum Requirements was published. It called on that modern college educationshould pay more attention to the learners. During the period of language learningprocess, students have been regarded as the center. College graded teaching inaccordance with the students’ levels so as to meet the needs of different levels,different requirements and objectives to study. Therefore, many colleges haveimplemented the grade education.Learning motivation is a crucial factor, which has significant impact on students’English learning. The strong learning motivation can facilitate students to learnEnglish well. Lambert (1955) put forward that the language learning interest camefrom the emotional input. Gardner and Lambert (1960) carried out firstly that theinterrelations which consist of the language learning attitude, achievement andmotivation. After that, Gardner proposed the socio-educational model, and hisresearch focuses on the foreign language classroom. The model contains four factors:the social and cultural milieu, individual differences, language learning setting orcontext and learning outcomes. Since the1990s, the validity of Gardner’s model waschallenged. In1994, a more general framework of L2motivation was broadened byD rnyei, his motivational model contains three levels: language level, learningsituation level and learner level. Tremblay and Gardner (1995) successfully extendedGardner’s model by integrating it into some new elements, which come from the expected value theory and the goal theories. The new model elements are goalsalience, valence and self-efficacy.Under the grade education, studying English learning motivation of the studentswho have various variables can help teachers teaching more effectively and stimulatestudents’ learning motivation to obtain best learning outcomes. Based on the previousstudies and theories of motivation, the present study makes an investigation onEnglish learning motivation of193non-English majors from Jilin University. Thequestionnaire is designed on the basis of Gao Yihong’s Motivation Type questionnaire.The statistical analysis employed are correlation analysis, factor analysis and t-test byStatistical Package for Social Science (SPSS.18.0), and find out the correlationbetween students’ English learning motivation and their English achievement.The present study attempts to deal with the following questions:1. What are the English learning motivations of the different level students underthe graded education? Are there any differences?2. What are the correlations between students’ learning motivation and theirEnglish achievement under graded education?The major findings of the study are summarized as follows:Firstly, according to the statistic from factor analysis, it is found that there existthree main types of English learning motivation among non-English majors in JilinUniversity: instrumental motivation, cultural motivation and situational motivation.Among these three motivations, instrumental motivation ranks the first and mostsubjects learn English with practical purposes, such as passing the examinations orapplying a better job. The three types of motivations are further divided into sevensubtypes, including internal interest, learning situation, achievement, socialresponsibility, information media, going abroad and personal development. What’smore, through t-test analysis, it is concluded that there is a remarkable differencebetween advanced class and general class in cultural motivation. The advanced classhas a little higher mean on instrumental motivation than the general class, while thegeneral class has stronger situational motivation.Secondly, based on the results of correlation analysis, it is shown that cultural motivation is positively correlated with students’ English achievement, whilesituational motivation has negative impact on students’ English achievement. Besides,instrumental motivation has no significant correlation with students’ Englishachievement. That is to say, cultural motivation refer to students’ internal interest toEnglish learning, generally speaking, the interest is the best teacher, students who aredeeply interested in English language itself. It shows that cultural motivation playvery important role in English learning, and also closely and directly relate with theirEnglish achievement. Concerning situational motivation, students have the strongersituational motivation, the lower scores they may get. The reasons may lie in thatstudents learning English affected external learning situation, such as teachers,textbooks or their classes. If they satisfy with the learning situation around them, theywill have interest to learning. However, when external learning environment cannotmeet their requirement, f they will lose interest to English learning. As forinstrumental motivation, its correlation coefficient is near0, so from the results ofdescriptive statistics, we can clearly see that instrumental motivation has no obviousinterrelation with students’ English achievement.At last, on the basis of above study, it presents some suggestions for teacherseffectively stimulate students’ English learning motivation in order to improve thecollege English grade education teaching.First of all, teachers should encourage the students to build up the sense ofself-confidence and pay more attention to the students who are discouraged then helpthem. In fact, many students are eager to learn well English, but they are lack ofself-confidence and they are afraid of making mistakes.If the students have enoughconfidence for themselves, they will possess higher interest in English learning andget better achievement.In addition, knowing about the target language culture and native speakers canalso stimulate learners’ internal learning interest. Teachers should introduce someinteresting English culture in class.Thirdly, various teaching methods can also make the class interesting. In class,teachers should give the students opportunities to communicate as much as possible. Different kinds of class activities, such as presentation, role play, group discussion,can arouse students’ curiosities and promote their learning interest.