An Empirical Study Of Application Of Motivation In College English Vocabulary Teaching

Motivation appeared in Saussure's(1983/,2001)exposition as the opposite of arbitrariness.Throughout Course in General Linguistics,Saussure argues that there is no significant and internal relationship between language and word form,which is known as arbitrariness.A long time after this was proposed,the arbitrariness of language had been the most important principle,and was widely accepted and overstated.However,the study of motivation continued.Since the 1980 s,with the development of cognitive linguistics,the study of motivation has rich achievements and basically reached a consensus that both arbitrariness and motivation are characteristics of language.Arbitrariness and motivation of language are inseparable,and they supplement to each other.As defined by Lu Guoqiang(1983)in Modern English Lexicology,the motivation of words refers to the reason of objects and phenomena obtaining names.Furthermore,motivation explains the relationship between meanings and names.The current study aims to investigate the impact of motivation as a study strategy to learners in college English classrooms in China by applying motivation to English vocabulary teaching.The reasons as to why this study focuses on this topic are listed in the following.E.H.Lennebery(1967)proposes the conception of the “critical period,” which indicates that the key period of language learning is before lateralization.Neurophysiologists Penfield and Roberts(1959)argue that before the age of ten is the best age for language learning.Additionally,Lennebery also argues that the brains of human beings may finish the process of lateralization between the age of eleven and nineteen.Generally,students are older than eighteen years old when they are matriculated by universities and colleges in China.Thus,most English learners throughout colleges in China have passed the so called “critical period,” so their learning effects have been reduced.College English teaching is different in comparison with English teaching in junior and senior high schools.English coursesX within most colleges in China are usually set as public requirement and only given to freshmen and sophomores.Meanwhile,teaching hours of English courses in most colleges are four periods per week,which is far less than that in junior and senior schools.The aim of learning English in college,other than to pass the College English Test Band Four(CET-4)and the College English Test Band Six(CET-6),is to cultivate ability of literature reading that is related to the student's own majors.This is also in addition to improving English communicative competence in further study and work.The present situation is that most universities and colleges do not pay enough attention to English teaching,as they only focus on the pass rates of CET-4 and CET-6.However,the effects of CET-4 and CET-6 on finding jobs have become weak.Most college students also regard passing the exams as the only goal of learning English.Most of them do not try to further their study of English.Under these circumstances,they lack a firm foundation and consolidated application abilities.D.A.Wilkins(1972)argues that,“Without grammar very little can be conveyed,without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” Vocabulary is the main bearer of meanings and the basic material of language.There is no language without vocabulary.Thus,it can be seen that vocabulary teaching plays a significant role in foreign language teaching.The learners have mastered basic grammar knowledge in their junior and senior school studies.Additionally,the key point of English in college is to expand the vocabulary of the learners and to improve their actual linguistic competence.When learning vocabulary,what learners are concerned most with is how to effectively expand their vocabulary in a short period of time.Practice indicates that mechanical learning by rote is useful to master basic vocabulary,but for complex words,this method is time-consuming and has poor efficiency.Although studies on vocabulary have rich achievements,at the same time,however,scholars have noted the importance of further study and the necessity in enriching the diversity of study.Previous studies do not provide enough empirical support for the effect of applying motivation to English learners in Chinese college classrooms.Theoretical study of motivation began at home since the 1980 s and has gained rich achievements.For the application of motivation,there are numerous suppositional suggestions andidealized assumptions.Few related empirical study provides support under the background of college English teaching.Considering the fact that Chinese college students learn English vocabulary with poor efficiency and lack related empirical study,the current study provides an inspiration of improving the learning efficiency of English vocabulary in non-English majors.This is also while providing a new method of college English vocabulary teaching.To investigate the effect of motivation application on college English vocabulary teaching,the thesis aims to answer the following questions:(1)What are the effects of the application of motivation on college English vocabulary teaching?(2)What are the difficulties that students encounter in applying motivation?What are the reasons for these difficulties? How can they overcome these difficulties?In order to answer the above research questions,the researcher of this study designed an experimental study that lasts for a period of six weeks,consisting of a pretest questionnaire,two pretests,different teaching schemes,three post-tests,a post-test questionnaire and an interview.60 students of two intact classes from a university in Changchun,Jilin province are chosen as research subjects.They are randomly labeled as the experimental group and the control group.All participants are sophomore majors in Optoelectronic Information Science and Engineering and have been enrolled in a required course called College English.Throughout the process of the experiment,all of the students utilize the same teaching materials,entitled New Century College English,2nd Edition published by Shanghai Education Press.Participants of this study also share similar background information and English proficiency,the same amount of experimental time,and the same study environment within the classroom.The only difference is that they receive different teaching treatments.The experimental group is taught by applying motivation,and the control group is taught by applying the traditional method.In order to ensure that the participants would take the pretests and post-tests seriously,they are informed that their performance of the tests will be taken as part of the final score on the course.Pretest 1 requires all subjects to complete an English vocabulary test which consists of words from the textbook and from the vocabulary syllabus of CET-4.Pretest 2 consists of a cloze and 15 sentence translation.Post-test 1 is given after the2 nd week of teaching activities,and requires subjects to complete a test consisting of totally different content from the pretest.The origin of words in post-test 1 is the same with pretest.Post-test 2 is given after the 4th week of teaching activities and this paper is completely the same as post-test 1.However,this information is not disclosed to the students.Post-test 3 is given at the same week as post-test 2,and it is also consists of a cloze and 15 sentence translation.However,the contents of post-test 3 are totally different from those of pretest2.The current study analyzes the collected data from following aspects: 1)to determine whether there is significant difference between the experimental group and the control group through the analysis of the pretest questionnaire and pretest;2)to analyze the effect of applying motivation on subjects and whether there is a significant difference between the two groups by analyzing the results of the two post-tests;3)to understand the subject's cognitive situation and the application of motivation through the analysis of the post-test questionnaire and the interview.In fact,due to the problem of attendance,not all participants were able to attend the entirety of the teaching activities.As a result,only 22 participants of each group are chosen as the valid original data.IBM SPSS Statistics 19.0 is utilized in the study to analyze the quantitative data.By analyzing the collected data,the conclusions are as follows: 1)being informed before,both of the two groups achieved ideal scores on post-test 1(mean80.0000 and 77.1364).However,the experimental group achieved a higher mean value,there is no significant difference between the two groups;2)not being informed,the average scores of two group are 74.0909 and 68.6364,there is a significant difference between the two groups,and the experimental group obviously performed better;3)comparing the post-test 2 of the two groups,both their scores decreased(declined 7.39% and 11.02%;4)the average scores of two group are20.8182 and 20.4545,which have no significant difference and have no significantdifferent with pretest2.Thus,this study agrees that the application of motivation in college English vocabulary has positive effects on: 1)long-term memory of vocabulary;2)distinguishing words which have similar form.By comparison with applications of semantic motivation and etymological motivation,the application of morphological motivation gets the better effect.The findings of this current study suggest the following two pedagogical implications.Firstly,it is necessary to pay greater attention to cultivating the study interests of students while also mobilizing their subjective initiative.The result of this study provides strong support for applying motivation in college English vocabulary teaching,.Thus,it is feasible and effective to utilize various theories and methods in teaching activities,and unearth student's inner desire for knowledge.Secondly,it is necessary to combine knowledge of English language with teaching.Considering that the college students have learned English for approximately ten years,it is feasible to guide them to sort out English knowledge and to make the knowledge more systematic.The current study has some limitations due to time constraints and the lack of research subjects.Thus,the experiment should be improved and enhanced in further study,such as extending the experimental time,in addition to reasonably expanding the number of experimental subjects.