| Since the implementation of the policy of reform and opening to the outside world, college English teaching in China has made great achievements. However, the result of the College English teaching is not satisfactory. Chinese college students' abilities to use English are still poor. What has caused this unsatisfactory situation? What can we do to improve it? How to teach college English effectively? These questions always haunt college English teachers in China. Undoubtedly, there are many factors resulting in the inefficiency of college English learning. Most English teachers will agree that motivation of the students is one of the most important factors influencing their success or failure in learning English. According to Corder (1989: 49), "Given motivation, anyone can learn a language". This brings out the importance of motivation in language learning.There have been considerable investigations and research related to motivation in SLA. However, the research on what types of motivation non-English major college students commonly have and what types of motivation are closely related to students' performances are far from adequate. This thesis is to make some investigations in this area, hoping that the results of my research will be helpful to college English teachers in motivating their students.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter 1 is a brief introduction to the concept of motivation. There have been considerable investigations andnresearch related to motivation in psychology, SLA and educational psychology. However, there is no straightforward and unanimously accepted concept of motivation. Gardner's definition of motivation in SLA is best known and frequently-quoted. He defined motivation as "the extent to which an individual works or strives to learn the language because of a desire to do so and the satisfaction experienced in this activity". However, Gardner's definition was based on social psychology, and his research was conducted among typically bilingual setting - Canada, therefore it inevitably has limitations. In spite of this, it is acknowledged that Gardner and his colleagues have made great contributions to the motivation research in the field of SLA. Other theorists like Dornyei began to challenge his theory especially on his overemphasis on the social aspect and the omission of the educational dimension. These theorists tried to re-conceptualize the construct of motivation and propose a new one.Although these models are still not satisfying, they have contributed to the belief that motivation is a complex, multi-faceted construct, and they put emphasis on how to motivate learners so as to have practical instructional implications, thus making motivation more relevant to classroom language teaching.In Chapter 1, three major classifications of motivation are reviewed: integrative/ instrumental, intrinsic /extrinsic, and state/trait motivation.Integrative motivation refers to the desire to learn a language to integrate successfully into the target language community. Instrumental motivation is the learner's desire to learn a language for utilitarian purposes such as meeting the requirements for school or university graduation, getting a good job, requesting higher pay based on language ability, reading technical material, translation work or achieving higher social status, thus referring to a more functional reasonmfor language learning.Motivation, in educational psychologists' view, is divided into two types: extrinsic and intrinsic. Intrinsically motivated learners learn a second/foreign language for no apparent reward except the learning activity itself. In contrast, extrinsically motivated learners perform in order to obtain some reward not because they are really interested in the activity for its own sake.In psychology, motivation (needs) is also seen as the psychological force that gives rise to personality. When a learner is said to be motivated, the teacher may attribute the motivation to the learner's characteristics. In thi...
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