An Investigation Into Non-english Majors Of Intrinsic/extrinsic Motivation And Motivational Intensity

Motivation plays a very significant role in Individual Differences (IDs) of SLA research. Many of researchers have perceived it as the major learning factor for student's language learning performance. Definition, classification and model building of the motivation have been investigated in previous researches. Though satisfying results have been gained in identifying the relationship between motivation and other factors, only some researchers have put their energy and effort in exploring the effect of motivation intensity and English proficiency level on students'learning motivation. Therefore, this thesis is going to explore the correlation between intrinsic / extrinsic motivation and motivational intensity among non-English major students in language learning process and their relationships with achievements.The participants were 238 non-English majors from Nanchang Institute of Technology. The Motivation questionnaire is consisting of two parts: one is intrinsic and extrinsic motivation questionnaire designed by Dornyei, the second part is motivational intensity put forward by Gardner (1985) in the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery. The students'final examination score has been taken as the criterion to measure the students'language proficiency. This thesis includes the following procedures: Firstly, descriptive statistics was a general description of two different types of motivation and motivational intensity. Secondly, Pearson correlation analysis was conducted to examine the correlation between two different types of motivation and motivational intensity to language achievement among these participants. Thirdly, t-test was employed to find out the effects of gender differences and language proficiency levels on the learners'motivation types and motivational intensity. Finally, the high score and the low score groups were investigated in terms of intrinsic motivation/extrinsic motivation and motivational intensity. With regard to the results, the research has yielded the following findings:1) The results of this study show that these students hold stronger extrinsic motivation than intrinsic motivation towards English learning.2) In terms of the students'proficiency, the results reveal that there is a positive correlation between intrinsic motivation, motivational intensity and learners'achievement but extrinsic motivation is not related with learners'achievement.3) The results demonstrate that gender plays a very important role in motivation; females are more intrinsically motivated and more inclined to the English learning with more energy and attention than males.4) The independent paired t-test presents that there is difference in two different types of motivation between high achiever and low achiever groups, the high scorer group are more intrinsically motivated.With regard to the results, the findings provide useful information for teaching practice. The combination of intrinsic motivation and motivational intensity may affect students'language learning achievement. So, English teachers shall try all their efforts to help students'language learning, especially male students, to cultivate their intrinsic motivation and emphasize the role played by motivational intensity in learning process.