An Analysis Of Correlations Among Professional Commitment, Achievement Motivation And English Learning Burnout Of English Majors

English learning is a challenge for Chinese students, especially for English majors for the lack of a desirable foreign language learning environment. English majors, confronting the competition from non-English major students, are more likely to fall victim to English learning burnout. Learning burnout seriously affects student learning interest and confidence which leads to an unsatisfactory learning effect. Professional commitment and achievement motivation, being the important driving force for learning, are theoretically considered closely related to learning burnout.Although there is already research about professional commitment, achievement motivation and learning burnout and their correlations, there is still controversy among the findings; moreover, the research about English leaning burnout for English majors is almost blank. What’s the status quo of English learning burnout, professional commitment and achievement motivation of English majors? What are the personal variables that can significantly influence these three psychological mechanisms? What kind of internal relationships among the three?In order to answer the above questions, quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted in this study.90sophomore English majors in Southwest Petroleum University did the questionnaires and five of them participated in the semi-structure interview. Statistic Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS19.0) is adopted to analyze the quantitative data. To be specific, the mean of descriptive statistics, Independent T-test, One-Way ANOVA, Pearson Correlation Analysis and Multiple Linear Regression are used in this study. Major findings are as follows:1. Most students suffer language learning burnout, but the situation is not very serious. The level of professional commitment is at a high level. And students’ motive to achieve success is higher than the motive to avoid failure.2. The results of demographic analysis reveal that gender has a significant impact on the exhaustion dimension of foreign language learning burnout; the level of continuance commitment is strongly related to type of student (art or science student).3. There are correlations among foreign language learning burnout, professional commitment and achievement motivation. Foreign language learning burnout is negatively correlated to professional commitment to a large degree and negatively related to achievement motivation. And professional commitment is positively correlated to achievement motivation.4. By means of Multiple Linear Regression, the result shows that professional commitment and achievement motivation exert influence on foreign language learning burnout, and it is mainly manifested on the dimension of affective commitment, ideal commitment and the motive to-achieve success. Professional commitment accounts for50.5%of foreign language learning burnout, and achievement motivation8.2%. To be specific, there is0.711degree increased foreign language learning burnout for every reduced professional commitment by one degree, and there is0.286degree increased foreign language learning burnout for every reduced achievement motivation by one degree. On the basis of theoretical analysis, this research tries to construct a conceptual model of the three; however, in the final model construction, achievement motivation is excluded, professional commitment is the only predictor, and it accounts for50.5%. of foreign language learning burnout. It can be concluded that compared to achievement motivation, professional commitment is a more important determinant of foreign language learning burnout.Based on the findings with the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis of semi-structure interview, some implications for English teaching and learning are presented:enhancing English majors’professional commitment and achievement motivation, especially affective commitment, ideal commitment and the motive to achieve success is an effective way of reducing English majors’English learning burnout.