A Research On English Learning Motivation Of Students In Higher Vocational College In Wuhan City

Learning motivation plays an important role among various factors influencing English learning. In recent years, learners'learning motivation has attracted more and more attention from scholars both at home and abroad. Many researchers have made a large number of theoretical research(Weiner,1979; Brown,1981; Gardner 1985; Trembley & Gardner,1995; Dornyei,1994,1998; Hua Huifang,1998; Qin Xiaoqing, 2002.etc.) and empirical research (Rogers. C.G.1998; Ma Xiaomei,1999; Brown, 2000; Wen Qiufang,2001; Dornyei 2001; Harmer,2001; Gao Yihong,2001,2004; Wen Qiufang, Qin Xiaoqing,2002, etc.) on learning motivation. However, to our disappointment, these researches are mainly limited to undergraduate or postgraduate while the researches on HVC students are rather limited. But with the rapid development of science and economy, HVC students have formed a large proportion of the students in the whole education system. Taking Wuhan City as an example, there are at least 15 HVCs in all. Therefore, people are increasingly concerned with how to increase HVC students'motivation to learn English.The author has made a quantitative research on 157 students from Wuhan Vocational College of Science and Technology and Wuhan Software Vocational College with the employment of SPSS 15.0 and EXCEL to analyze the relationship between learning motivation and such variables as gender and major. This paper aims to answer the following questions:1) What are the overall ELM and seven-category ELMs of students in HVC in Wuhan City?2) Are there any significant differences between ELM of females and that of males?3) Are there any significant differences in ELM of HVC students majoring in Real Estate Management and Evaluation, Financial Management, Accounting Computerization, Communication Technology, Machine Building and Automation, Mechanical and Electrical Integration?This paper adopts the questionnaire used by Gao Yihong(2004) to collect data and SPSS 15.0 to make frequency analysis, independent-sample t-test, one-way ANOVAs. The findings are as follows:1) Students in HVCs in Wuhan City are medium motivated to learn English, they learn English mainly for the reason of personal development, and then for test score, learning environment, social responsibility, information medium and inner interest, but lastly for the reason of going abroad.2) The female students in HVC in Wuhan City are more highly motivated to learn English than the male students in the overall ELM and there is a significant deference at the 0.005 level between the male and female students in HVC in Wuhan City in the overall ELM.3) Relatively speaking, students majoring in Accounting Computerization are the highest motivated to learn English in the six groups while students majoring in Machine and Electrical Integration are the lowest motivated to learn English. The sequence of other four groups from high to low is Machine Building and Automation group, Financial Management group, Communication Technology group and Real Estate Management and Evaluation. In addition, no significant difference was reported between each two groups in overall ELM. Furthermore, subjects with different majors are all motivated to learn English mainly for personal development and test score.Furthermore, this paper also analyzes and discusses the internal factors (such as the attitude towards learning English, learning need, learning interest, etc.) and external factors (such as learning environment, the difficulty of the learning task, teachers'appraisal, etc.) that influence English learning motivation. Finally, based on the findings, the paper gives some suggestions for teachers in HVC in Wuhan City: finding out students'main motivation to learn English and main factors that affect learning motivation; always taking into consideration the influence of some variables such as gender and major on learning motivation. In the meanwhile, the paper also puts forward its limitations and future research direction.