An Empirical Study Of Correlation Between College Non-English Majors' Motivation And Their English Achievement

This study is designed to explore the correlation between motivation and learners' English achievement The aim of the study is to make an investigation of non-English majors' motivation types and analyze whether the motivation choice has an impact on the learners' English achievement The study also provides empirical evidence in this area, and to present some implications for College English teaching and learning in Chinese contextThe data was collected from two major sources: literature and questionnaires. The participants were 120 non-English major sophomores from Shandong University of Technology. The participants were asked to complete the 'Motivation Questionnaire' designed by Gao Yihong(2003).The Questionnaire is composed to two parts—personal information and Gao Yihong's(2003) Motivation Type Scale. There are altogether 30 items in this questionnaire. Results show that among the participants' motivation types, instrumental motivation stands at the top place. The followings are cultural motivation and situational motivation. These three types of motivation can be further divided into seven subtypes: internal interest, social responsibility, going abroad, personal development, achievement, information media and learning situation. Students' achievement is collected according to their score of National Band Four Test in June, 2004. The statistical analyses employed are descriptive statistics, t-test and product-moment correlation by SPSS. The study reveals the following three major findings:First, there is a close relationship between motivation and learners' English achievement Among the three kinds of motivation, there is a significant positive correlation between cultural motivation and learners' English achievement(r=.180*).Second, the different choice of motivation has a clear impact on learners' achievement The participants are divided into high score and low score groups. Through t-test analysis, it is found that there is a significant difference between high score and low score groups in cultural motivation (t=2.57, p<.05). The high score group has a higher mean in instrumental motivation than the low score group while the low score group gets a higher mean in situational motivation.Third, there is no clear difference between gender factor and motivation choice. The result of t-test shows that there is no significant difference between male andfemale in motivation type.The application of the study is that teachers can help their students develop their cultural motivation so that they can really create an individual language learning environment and arouse student's interest in language learning. Some tentative suggestions for College English teaching and learning are provided. First, teachers should take flexible measures to arouse learners' interest of studying English. Second, teachers should find out the students' aim of learning English and enhance their cultural motivation and improve their English performances. Third, learners, as the subject of learning, take responsibility for their own learning and performance. They might be strategically, metacognitively, and motivationally active participants in their learning. However, it is unlikely that this capability emerges only from teacher's efforts. Learners themselves should strive to be self-directed.However, it is insufficient to study the correlation between motivation and learners' performance only through "questionnaire and correlation analysis". Perhaps with the help of some interviews and classroom observations, the results in this study can be more convincing. However, the results of this study show that motivation and learners' achievement are to some extent correlated. It is hoped that this study can benefit language teachers, learners and researchers to a certain degree and can spark more research in this area in the future.