A Comparative Study Of Chinese Undergraduates’ L2 Motivational Self System

For second language learning,motivation is one of the defining factors which can affect second language learners’ learning achievement.Therefore,it’s not surprising that researchers and scholars take motivation into their consideration.From 1985 on,Gardner’s integrativeness/instrumentality model has been the best-known theory about L2 motivation.However,as time goes by,some researchers found that this model could not work efficiently in all situations.Therefore,in 2005,Dornyei put forward a new model called L2 Motivational Self System(L2MSS).Some Chinese scholars introduced this new model into China,but most of them merely repeated studies conducted abroad without considering the characteristics of Chinse L2 learners and the Chinese education system.Also,since the English proficiency of Chinese college students was always related to their majors,the author of this study wanted to test the motivational differences between three groups of students-the English major students,art students and other non-English major students.Considering the results of previous studies and the features of Chinese education system,the author paid her attention to the differences of L2MSS between three different groups of college students,namely,the English major students,art students and other non-English major students,and set four research questions:(1)What’s the relationship between the L2 Motivational Self System and the traditional instrumentality/integrativeness model?(2)What’s the overall condition of Chinese undergraduates’ L2 Motivational Self System?(3)Are there any differences of the L2MSS among English major students,art students and other non-English major students?(4)Among the three elements of L2MSS,which is the best predictor of L2 motivation for each group of students?In order to solve these questions,the author applied two methods,the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview.The participants of this study are sophomore students at Shaanxi Normal University.At first,the author conducted the questionnaire at Shaanxi Normal University.The questionnaire has two sections.The first part was about the basic information of these participants and the second part was a 64-question questionnaire testing the participants’ L2 motivation.The author totally distributed 350 questionnaires,and 315 of them were feasible.After analyzing the data collected from the questionnaire,the author interviewed 9 students out of the 3 different groups.By analyzing the data from the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview,the author got three major findings.First,as previous studies have proved,Dornyei’s L2MSS had a close relationship with the integrativeness/instrumentality model.The promotion-based instrumentality could be included into the Ideal L2 Self,and the prevention-based instrumentality was a part of the Ought-to L2 Self.Secondly,the L2MSS could be used to predict the motivation of the sophomores at Shaanxi Normal University.And its interpretability is better than the traditional instrumentality/integrativeness model.Thirdly,the strongest predictors of L2 motivation for the sophomores in Shaanxi Normal University was the learning experience.At last,there were differences between the L2MSS of these three groups of students.For English major,apart from the learning experience,the Ideal Self was also a predictor for intended efforts but only the Ought-to L2 Self showed weak positive correlation with the passing rate of CET6.For art students,all these three elements showed the significant correlation with intended efforts,and the Ought-to L2 Self had strongest relationship to the passing rate of CET4.What’s more,for other non-English major students,only the learning experience showed the significant correlation with intended efforts and there was no relation between the passing rate of CET4 or CET6 and any of the three elements of L2MSS.In conclusion,the L2MSS was an effective and feasible model,so it had pedagogical implications.Based on the previous studies of Dornyei,the author proposed three suggestions for educators and six suggestions for L2 learners about how to activate L2 learners’ second language motivation.These suggestions referred to how to motivate L2 learners by improving teachers’ qualities and professionalizing the textbooks,as well as six factors to inspire L2 learners’ motivation.