A Comparative Survey Of College Students' English Learning Motivation Based On Multimedia Teaching Approach

With the advances in general linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology, the study of motivation in second language acquisition (SLA) has aroused both teachers' and students'great concern. And motivation has been considered a key factor to successful language learning. While in the teaching practice many teachers complain about students' lack of motivation, lack of enthusiasm for learning. As to learners, many motivational factors affect their language learning such as goals, interest, attitudes, expectancy-value, self-efficacy, attributions, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in foreign language learning. With wide application of multimedia teaching in language learning, it is essential and significant to probe the changes brought about by the new teaching approach and enhance the learners'motivations accordingly. Therefore, based on the previous research done by some researchers both at home and abroad, the author makes the research to investigate the changes of Chinese college students'learning motivation.The participants are 170 second-year non-English majors studying in Shandong Jianzhu University. Two research designs were employed in the present study:a quantitative research design and a qualitative design; the former was a questionnaire and the latter, an interview. The quantitative part was conducted by a semi self-made questionnaire and the data was then computed and analyzed statistically by Excel. In the qualitative research, by means of classroom observations and interviews, both students and teachers were investigated on the reasons why these changes emerged. The major findings are summarized as follows:1. Before the application of multimedia-based teaching approach, the majority of the students learned English basically out of instrumental and extrinsic motivation. A semester after the new teaching approach, they are beginning to enjoy the new teaching methods and gradually feel interested in English learning. As a result, their self-efficacy, expectancy-value and intrinsic motivation of English learning is enhanced. Meanwhile, because of their achievement or progress in English learning, they also attribute these to rich resources of English learning and the new teaching approach. 2. The changes brought about by the new teaching approach makes students become more self-confident in English learning. What's more, the benefit of the new teaching approach helps students solve their problems and consolidate what they have learned in class. Such changes also improve the relationship between teachers and students, and reduce students'English learning anxiety and further arouse their interest in English learning.3.The new teaching methods benefit students to different degrees or in different ways. Because of the vivid and active teaching approach, students of the same class do not differ much from each other in terms of their English proficiency, which makes it easier for teachers to present lectures and to create a more relaxed learning atmosphere. And students also feel less anxious and more confident in class. All this in turn has a positive effect on the development of those students'intrinsic motivation.In the light of the study, the thesis also provides some suggestions for enhancing students'motivation, such as creating good learning environments, taking effective measures to foster students'integrative motivation, taking effective measures to enhance students'intrinsic motivationBriefly, this study analyzes systematically the changes and causes brought about by the multimedia-based teaching approach. Though there are many limitations and deficiency, the author hopes to provide some insights in this research and therefore help college students enhance their motivation through the effective teaching approach.