A Study Of English Learning Motivation In Vocational Colleges

Motivation is one of the most important non-intellectual factors influencing students' performance. It is the inner impetus and source of strength stimulating people's behaviors. To achieve ideal effect in English classroom teaching, teachers should focus on how to inspire students' deep motivation.Firstly, based on the researches about vocational college students' motivation of learning English, the thesis analyses the domestic and foreign studies on motivation research and the relationship between motivation and study behavior and its effect. Secondly, in the light of the theories of English learning motivation, the paper conducts a survey on the selected 30 successful learners and 30 unsuccessful learners from nursing and English nursing classes of a vocational college. Using both qualitative research and quantitative research approaches, this thesis collects data through questionnaires, and the students' scores in PRETCO (B) Test. After that, the data are processed by correlation analysis and t-test. The result of the research shows some obvious regularities and disparities of the student's motivation in English learning, as well as the diversities between different groups. For instance, the deep motivation of successful learners is obviously superior to that of unsuccessful ones, while their surface motivation is inferior to theirs. The thesis has also made clear that there are differences in self-efficacy and attribution (or imputation) between two different groups. Some suggestions have been made at the end of the thesis, aiming to enforce the motivation cultivation in English classroom in the hope of improving students' English proficiency in vocational colleges.