Motivational Stimulation Strategies For Business English Majors In Interculture Business Communication

In second language acquisition, learning motivation is considered as one of the key factors to improve language achievements. Researches on learning motivation have been conducted for almost 60 years both abroad and at home. However, only a few researches set Business English(BE) majors as their target population. And most of these researches investigate the influence of learning motivation on students’ general English competence or on many basic English courses, such as reading, writing, and speaking. Whereas, few empirical studies are only on the intercultural business communication(IBC) study. But IBC competence is essential to the senior English majors’ English competence. Thus, this paper tries to investigate the stimulating strategies by examining BE majors’ learning motivation on IBC and give some hints to the teaching method.The theoretical framework of present study is based on the main L2 learning motivational theories and some related IBC theories. With a detailed research on these theories, this study is conducted by questionnaires with a few interviews. The subjects are 97 BE majors from Xi’an International Studies University who are studying the IBC. After data collection, it is analyzed by SPSS 18.0.The result shows that BE majors are mostly instrumental motivation oriented with a little integrative motivation in the IBC course. Some main motivational factors include achievement, responsibility and personal development. Learning motivation has a significant correlation with intensity while it negatively correlates anxiety; male’s learning motivation is much higher than male’s. The main motivational affecting factors in the IBC course are personal interest, teachers’ style and activities.Based on the main findings and results, the author also provides corresponding motivational stimulating strategies for both students and teachers. From students’ perspectives, they can stimulate their inner-interests to IBC study, create more communicative opportunities and set specific goals. For teachers, they need to adopt appropriate and effective teaching methods, and develop required personal characteristics.