A Study Of The Motivation Of Non-English Major Undergraduates In The North District Of Shaanxi Province

English learning is an important part of college students'education. And motivation is a factor that determines success or failure of foreign language learning. There is a lot of research on English learning motivation at home and abroad, but little is done in the north district of Shaanxi Province.A questionnaire is used to investigate college students'English learning motivation in Yan'an University. The aim is to know college students'learning and to advance suggestions for them to raise the effects of learning. Subjects are 400 non-English major Undergraduates---100 freshmen, 100 sophomores, 100 juniors, 100 seniors respectively. Based on the questionnaires of Schmidt, Qin xiaoqing and Gao yihong on English learning motivation, the present questionnaire is formed. The questionnaire contains fifty questions. They are about internal motivation, external motivation, social responsibility, environmental factors, attribution orientation, anxiety, self-efficacy, the degree of studying hard, the goals of learning. In order to know more about college students' learning motivation, an interview is carried out. Altogether 20 students are randomly chosen to be interviewees. The data are analyzed by SPSS.The questionnaire and the interview yield the following results and findings. First, the sequence of the averages of influencing college students'learning motivation from high to low is: the goals of learning, social responsibility, anxiety, internal motivation, attribution orientation, external motivation, environmental factors, self-efficacy and the degree of studying hard. Second, there exist remarkable differences among grades in the goals of learning, social responsibility, internal motivation, external motivation, self-efficacy and the degree of studying hard. Third, college students'achievements are related to motivational factors that are chosen to a certain extent. Fourth, there exist remarkable differences between boys and girls in social responsibility, environmental factors, the goals of learning and anxiety between introverted and extroverted college students. Fifth, there are differences in motivational factors of influencing learning because of college students'different family backgrounds. Last, there are influences in learning motivation because of different ages to start English.Some suggestions are put forward to raise the learning efficiency of college students and some ideas on future study are presented. Finally, a conclusion is arrived at.