A Study Of English Learning Motivation Of Less Successful Students

Learning motivation has long been regarded as one of the essential factors in the acquisition of foreign language learning, and considerable empirical studies have been conducted on the role of motivation both at home and abroad. According to the motivation theory of Gardner and Tremblay, a lot of empirical researches have proven that motivation plays a driving force to enhance the foreign language learning. Motivations are usually classified as instrumental motivation,integrated motivation, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Behaviorism and cognitive theory illustrate the meaning of motivation from the field of expectancy-value, attribution, self-efficacy and self-determination perspective. In recent years, there are some influential theory models in the field of foreign language learning model: Lambert and Gardner Social-educational model, Gardner and Tremblay's Extended L2 motivation construct and Dornyei's Three-level motivation Theory, etc.Although there are a lot of empirical investigations about Chinese undergraduates'English learning motivation at present, the study of English learning motivation of less successful students is hardly highlighted. Yet, it is these students who need the help from teachers badly. English teachers should identify their learning motivation and help them understand the necessity of English learning.Based on the theories on learning motivation and the actual situation of the subjects, the author intends to explore the types of motivation and the correlation between the types of motivation and their performance by quantitative and qualitative analyses. The study investigates the types of motivation among 207 unsuccessful students in English retake classes enrolled in 2009 in Jiangsu University of Science and Technology through questionnaire and 20 of them are selected randomly to be interviewed.With the help of the soft SPSS, the data was computed and employed by the statistical analyses of factor analysis (principal component analysis with varimax rotation), descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The results suggest there are nine types of motivation: self-evaluation, personality, language value, learning situation, instrumental motivation, teaching and curriculum value, cultural influence, personal development and interest (intrinsic) motivation. Instrumental motivation affects the students mostly and the intrinsic motivation is the minimum variable to affect the students. There is a significant correlation between language value and achievement; there is a slight correlation between interest (intrinsic) motivation, personality and achievement; there is no correlation between achievement and other types of motivation. Interview, as the instrument of qualitative research, complements and explains the results of quantitative in detail.Finally, the author proposes some effective methods and measures on how to stimulate the learning motivation. Teachers are supposed to improve teaching methods, to establish good relationship between teachers and students, to choose novel and suitable materials for students to meet the students'needs. Meanwhile, teachers should take the responsibility to enhance students'self-confidence, to promote students'learning autonomy, which will stimulate students to improve academic performance in English and achieve the best result in teaching.