A Study Of Chinese EFL Learners' Intrinsic Motivation In Project-Based Learning

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a student-centered method for creating flexible learning environments, allowing students to learn by doing projects,which is greatly different from the traditional teacher-centered teaching methods and challenges traditional practices and structures of schools. Enhancing students'motivation for learning is an on-going challenge and demand for educational systems. Therefore, the specific issue the author focuses on is student intrinsic motivation for learning in PBL. The author tries to examine:1) Do learners report different levels of intrinsic motivation after they are exposed to PBL environment? 2) If so, what are the possible benefits of PBL for stimulating student intrinsic motivation? If not, why?The present study lasted for 11 weeks, with the participation of all English majors of Class One, Two, Three and Four in Grade 2010 from the College of Foreign Languages at Chongqing University. Participants from Class One and Class Two, who were exposed to a more teacher-centered and textbook-based teaching method, form the control group; while Class Three and Class Four, who were exposed to the PBL environment, consist of the experimental group. Both qualitative and quantitative tools are used to explore students'progress in the motivational levels. The research tools include: a questionnaire: Scale of Student Intrinsic Motivation for Learning, class observations, students'reflective diaries and final reflections, and interviews with some students.The study finds that:1) Participants in the experimental group demonstrate a significantly higher intrinsic motivation after the study; 2) Participants in the experimental group present a higher intrinsic motivation than the control group after the study; 3) No significant difference in intrinsic motivation has been found in the control group before and after the study; 4) Some benefits of PBL, such as challenge, flexible learning environment and so on, may be effective in stimulating student intrinsic motivation.