The Analysis Of Freshmen’s English Learning During The Transitional Period Based On D Rnyei’s Framework Of L2Motivation

Because of the different educational objectives and patterns, there are many differencesin English learning between high schools and universities. Hence, the first semester inuniversities for the freshmen is considered as their transition to university. Compared with thetest-oriented education in senior high schools, college English learning seems to be muchmore difficult, because it requires high demands for students’ comprehensive ability.Therefore, the phenomenon of demotivation prevails among the freshmen’s English learning.Thus, the study intends to provide some effective measures to help the freshmen successfullypass through the special period by taking motivation as the breakthrough point.D rnyei’s “Three-level Framework of L2Motivation” is regarded as the relativelycomprehensive motivational model, as it covers the language level, learner level and learningsituation level. Meanwhile, this study also adopts D rnyei’s “Framework of MotivationalTeaching Strategies in L2Classroom”, which is based on his “Three-level Framework of L2Motivation”. This framework makes the “Three-level Framework of L2Motivation” runthrough the whole process of motivational strategies. Considering the advantages of these twoframeworks, the present study intends to discuss the following three questions:First, what are the major problems among the freshmen’s English learning during thetransitional period?Second, what influences will learning situation exerts on freshmen’s English learningmotivation during this transitional period?Third, how to stimulate and enhance the English learning motivation of freshmen byadopting motivational teaching strategies, so as to help freshmen overcome the problems and pass through the transitional period successfully?This study is carried out by the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Thequantitative research intends to found out the variables that have remarkable influences onmotivation and the interactions among these variables in the three levels. Based on the resultsfound in the quantitative research, the qualitative study makes a13-week’s longitudinalresearch on the freshmen’s motivational training under the guidance of the two frameworks.Through the classroom observation and diary studies of the experiment study and theMediating Effect Analysis and Stepwise Regression Analysis of the questionnaires, this thesisproposes the following conclusions:First, there exist some common problems among the freshmen, which are lowerautonomous learning ability, inappropriate causal attribution, lower self-efficacy, and failureof setting learning goals and adopting suitable learning strategies.Second, the freshmen overall could successfully pass through the transitional period withteacher’s guidance and their own efforts. However, the class with strong cohesiveness, strictnorms and proper goal orientations would perform much better in the stimulation andenhancement of English learning motivation during the transitional period.Third, there are some variables at the three levels that could have particular influences onthe freshmen’s English learning motivation. At the language level, the InstrumentalMotivation could have more influences on students’ motivation than the IntegrativeMotivation. At the learner level, the Meta-cognitive Strategies, Practical Strategies, MasterySelf-talk, Self-efficacy Enhancement, Self-reward, Negative-based Incentive and PerformanceSelf-talk, Need for Achievement, Self-efficacy and Attribution could have particularinfluences on the freshmen’s learning motivation. At the learning situation level, teacher andlearning environment have close correlation with the students’learning motivation.Forth, the motivational changing paths of different students are different, but the overallmotivational changing tendency of the freshmen is that: rises at the very beginning; decreasesat the mid-term; rises again at the end of the term. Moreover, advanced students have highermotivation and their motivational changes are easier to be observed while the students withlower proficiency levels have lower motivation and their motivational changes are difficult to be observed.Finally, the thesis puts forward some pedagogical implications from the language level,learner level and learning situation level for future studies.