An Empirical Study On English Learning Motivation And Strategy Use Of Art Major College Students

Art major students are more likely to accept western culture and thinking patternswith their energetic and dynamic personality, which benefit classroom teaching to someextent. However, comparing with other majors, art major students often demonstrate a lackof fundamental knowledge, learning motives and capacity due to limited exposure toliteracy courses in middle school. Learning motivation and learning strategies areconsidered as key factors affecting foreign language acquisition. This research is to explorepragmatic teaching procedures according to art major characteristics in English teachingand help promote their learning motivation, improve learning strategy, increase learningefficiency and finally build language proficiency.The current research combines former studies on motivation and strategy withempirical studies including questionnaire investigation and achievement test, and analysesthe composition of learning motivation, strategy application, internal connection betweenmotivation and strategy use as well as gender differences. Furthermore, a teachingexperiment based on D rnyei’s classroom teaching suggestions has been conducted toexplore natural development and effects of motivational strategies in depth. Similarresearches are rarely seen in Chinese context.To conclude, professional factors in motivation patterns of art major students areclosely connected, which differs with former study on national scale; affection and socialstrategies are negatively correlated with learning achievement, intrinsic motivations areclosely connected with metacognitive strategy, there is no significant difference for moresuccessful and less successful learners in motivation and strategy application, girl studentsare more motivated by social and environmental factors. Further study focusing onlearning motivation shows that: within the first month after entering college, art majorstudents display an obvious drop in motivation, but motivational strategy teachinginterference can partly slow down such a trend.