Intrinsic Motivation And College English Classroom Teaching In China

How to arouse students' motivation in college English classroom teaching has been a haunting question to both teachers and researchers.The author discusses the important function of intrinsic motivation, and presents a proposal for the reform of college English teaching in China. It holds the idea that the college English teaching in China has so far failed to fulfill its responsibility because it cannot arouse students' intrinsic motivation. The traditional Grammar-Translation method emphasizes more on imparting factual knowledge than on promoting students' abilities, which has caused the result that many students find their English cannot meet the demands of future career and the developing social situation. The reform of college English teaching begins with the action of arousing students' intrinsic motivation.Intrinsic motivation means the kind of motivation caused by the interest or curiosity directed to the involved activity itself. In a learner-centered communicative language teaching (CLT), students would be given more chances to practice communicative abilities. With students at the center of the teaching program, teaching planning, implementation and evaluation should be set around students' needs. English classroom should be a place where students play a dominant role while the teacher acts as a facilitator.There are many factors affecting students' intrinsic motivation. The internal factors are student anxiety, self-confidence, need of achievement etc. while external factors includes method, teacher, material, activity, success etc. When students have not enough intrinsic motivation, teachers are advised to transfer their extrinsic motivation of English learning or then- interest on other objects to intrinsic motivation. Whenwe stress the importance of communicative ability, we would not do it at the expense of language knowledge. Teachers should strike a balance between the teaching of communicative ability and language knowledge. Through a questionnaire survey, and with the data processed by SPSS, the author finds out the college students' motivation of learning English, their favorite teaching style and classroom activities, and the factors that affect their motivation of learning English. And through a case study, the author finds out what problems a teacher may encounter in implementing the learner-centered CUT. The studies make us understand better about the college students' motivation and attitudes, which will guide our teaching to make it more interesting and relevant. The studies will be illuminating for the reform of college English classroom teaching in China.