An Empirical Study On The Influence Of Students' Motivation On Their Autonomous Learning In Universities Of Science And Technology

Considerable researches have been carried out to study the learner autonomy (LA) from different perspectives since Henri Holec introduced it into foreign language teaching in the 1980s. Studies abroad mainly focus on the concept, theoretical foundations, practical strategies and methods of promoting LA, whereas studies at home are generally concentrated on the introduction of the western findings, the necessity and feasibility of LA. However, learning motivation, one of the key factors that exert effects on LA has not been paid enough attention. The emphasis of the studies abroad lies in the correlation, that is"LA leads to motivation"or"motivation precedes LA". In China, researches on the correlation between motivation and LA are very limited and experience-oriented. So far empirical studies are very few, less alone regarding the non-English major undergraduates in universities of science and technology as the subjects. Based on the previous research materials at home and abroad, the chief aim of the present work is to exhibit the influence of motivation exerting on LA. Moreover, it intends to explore the extent, characteristics and reasons of the effects with 300 second-year non-English majors inTaiyuan Institute of Technology as the subjects. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted. Questionnaire is employed to undergo quantitative analysis and interview is selected to elicit qualitative data.Two statistical packages, SPSS 16.0 and LISREL 8.70 are employed for data analysis. First, reliability analysis and exploratory factor analysis are performed on the data by SPSS. Then LISREL is operated to carry out confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis to explore the correlation between exogenous latent variables and endogenous latent variables. Finally, the findings indicate that: 1) motivation of intrinsic interests, among all the sub-motivations, has the strongest positive correlation on LA; 2) motivation of immediate achievement ranks at the second place; 3) a negative relationship holds between motivation of learning situation and LA, as well as motivation of going abroad and LA; 4) though social responsibility motivation has a significantly positive relationship with identifying teaching objectives, formulating learning goals and monitoring learning process, it does have an insignificant effect on learning strategies; 5) both motivation of individual development and motivation of information medium have non-significant effects.Based on the data analysis and discussion, the author puts forward some tentative suggestions on promoting LA by strengthening motivations of intrinsic interests, immediate achievement and social responsibility. This study can provide English teachers with inspirations to stimulate and arouse students'motivation so that they can effectively carry out the autonomous learning. It is hoped that this study might be beneficial for the further empirical research concerning the effects of learning motivation on LA among Chinese students.