A Study On The Relationship Between College Non-English Majors' English Learning Motivation And Vocabulary Learning Strategies

With the development of research into linguistics and foreign language teaching, more and more attention has been paid to the learners' individual differences.Learning motivation and learning strategies are two important factors of individual differences. Researchers have carried out lots of researches into the two factors.However,not much work has been done concerning the relationship between learning motivation and learning strategies,especially the relationship between English learning motivation and learning strategies of an individual language skill.Two instruments—a questionnaire and an interview—were employed in the thesis. The thesis investigates the Chinese non-English majors' English learning motivation (ELM) and the use of English vocabulary learning strategies(EVLS).It also explores the relationship between ELM and EVLS.127 non-English major sophomores from Liaoning Technical University took a questionnaire survey on ELM and EVLS.The data analyses were conducted with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences 11.5 (SPSS 11.5).Six subjects were interviewed after the questionnaire survey to add some insights into the research questions.The present study has yielded the following important findings.(1) The college non-English majors were most strongly motivated by individual development motivation.The rank order of the seven English learning motivations is individual development,immediate achievement,learning situation,information medium,intrinsic interest,social responsibility,going abroad.(2) The college non-English majors employed a variety of vocabulary learning strategies,but the mean and frequencies were not at a high level.Cognitive strategies were used more frequently than metcognitive and social/affective strategies.Repetition was used most frequently.Imagery strategy was the least frequently used.(3) There were some relationships between ELM and EVLS.The intrinsic interest motivation was positively correlated with all kinds of EVLS except repetition strategy. However,the immediate achievement motivation correlated negatively with most of the strategies.The intrinsic interest motivation had the most positive influence on the vocabulary learning strategies use.On the contrary,immediate achievement motivation had negative influence on the use of vocabulary learning strategies.The thesis is significant both practically and theoretically for developing the Non-English majors' intrinsic interest and guiding Non-English majors in the use of vocabulary learning strategies.