A Study On L2 Learning Motivation Of Chinese College Students From The Perspective Of L2MSS

With the rapid development of the researches in the field of second language acquisition,the focus of foreign language teaching research has shifted from teachers to students.Students’ second language learning has already been the focus of research for a long time.Therefore,the second language learning motivation,as one of the most important factors affecting the second language learning and one of the crucial terms in the field of second language acquisition,has attracted the attention of scholars since the 1950 s.The second language learning motivation serves significant functions both in the second language learning and second language teaching.This study attempts to explore the L2 learning motivation of college students from the perspective of the latest theory in the field of L2 acquisition---the second language motivational self system theory(L2MSS).The current study also attempts to fill the gap by integrating the concept of the present self in the self-discrepancy theory into the framework of this research,and systematically explores the L2 motivation of college freshmen by quantitative and qualitative analysis.The freshmen in college have just completed the task of learning the second language in senior high school and entered a new second language learning stage.For freshmen,this is an important transitional stage in the process of the L2 learning.Fully understanding freshmen’s learning motivation counts a great deal for their second language learning as well as for teachers’ second language teaching.Due to the particularity of the freshmen group,the research subjects are selected among the freshmen of two colleges in Changchun.The author tries to find out the features of college students’ L2 learning motivation through quantitative and qualitative analysis.The author conducts a teaching experiment as well.Through the teaching experiment,the author puts forward effective teaching strategies,aiming to help students improve their second language learning achievements by enhancing their L2 learning motivation.This thesis mainly answered the following questions:1.What are the features of Chinese college students’ L2 learning motivation?IV2.What are the relationships between L2 learning motivation and college students’ achievements?3.What strategies can be employed to motivate students to gain better learning achievements?In order to answer the above questions,the author collects the questionnaires of71 non-English majors and 82 English majors,with the intention to know the features of college students’ motivation and figure out the correlations between different self-motivations and L2 achievements.A controlled experiment is carried out for one semester in two classes of non-English majors in order to explore the effective teaching strategies.One class is chosen as the experimental group with 36 students and the other the control group with 35 students.The author assists the English teacher to conduct self-based teaching activities for 10 to 15 minutes per class in the experimental class.The teaching strategies are designed by the author according to the L2 MSS theory and are conducted in negotiation with the teacher.Meanwhile the traditional college English teaching with multimedia is adopted in the control group.After one semester,the author compares the students’ learning motivation and grades in the experimental group with those in the control group to verify the effectiveness of teaching strategies.With the aid of SPSS 25.0,a social statistics software,the study employs descriptive analysis,Pearson correlation analysis,independent sample T test to process the data.The results of data analysis and interview content are discussed to draw conclusions.The main findings are as following:(1)The college students have different intensities of self-motivations.The intensity of the ideal self-motivation is the strongest motivation for college students.For non-English majors,the intensity of motivation gradually decreased with the order of ideal self-motivation,ought-to self-motivation,present self-motivation,and the learning experience motivation.For English majors,the motivation intensity from strong to weak is ideal self-motivation,present self-motivation,ought-to self-motivation and learning experience motivation.(2)There is a positive correlation between college students’ L2 learningachievements and their ideal self-motivation.And students’ achievements are positively correlated with the present self-motivation as well.That is,college students with stronger present self and ideal self tend to achieve better L2 learning achievements.However,the achievements have nothing to do with ought-to self-motivation and learning experience motivation.(3)The self-based teaching strategies can effectively enhance students’ ideal self-motivation,with improving students’ L2 learning achievements.Teachers can promote the students’ self-motivation,especially ideal self-motivation,by building,activating,enhancing the self-motivations,and making self-regulatory plans.These strategies can be used to design class activities.In the teaching process,teachers need to pay attention to controlling the difficulty and interests of classroom activities,and giving timely feedback to enhance students’ self-confidence,thus promoting college students’ present self-motivation.However,these strategies still need to be improved to gain better teaching effects.The significance of this thesis is threefold.First of all,this paper integrates the current self-concept of the self-discrepancy theory into the framework based on the second language motivational self system,which is of reference to the future researches on motivation.Secondly,the study of freshmen’s L2 motivation from the perspective of L2 MSS can arouse teachers’ attention to construct and enhance students’ self-motivation,and provide teachers with some effective teaching strategies.Finally,this study can offer insights into investigating the L2 learning motivation of Chinese learners for future researchers.