An Investigation Into Adult Learners' Motivation In English Learning And Its Implications For English Teaching

All human behaviors come from certain motivation. As an activity, English learning results from certain motivation. If we have a basic understanding of the strength and types of the English adult learners' motivation, it will be useful for English teachers to adjust the teaching behavior in order to foster and adjust the adult learners' motivation, and meanwhile to make sure that the process of learning is smooth and will achieve better pedagogical results. Gardner and Lambert introduced their classic constructs of "integrative" and " instrumental" motivation in the learning of a non-native language. Motivation can also be classified into "Intrinsic motivation" and "Extrinsic motivation" according to some educational psychologists. There are some other theories of motivation including bio-behavioral, cognitive and humanistic theories.Chinese adult learners, a special community, are not valued by the whole society. Generally speaking, these adult learners' English level is low and some of them dislike learning English. Based on the saying 'Motivation is the key to all learning', it is necessary to investigate English learning motivation of adult learners to better their English study.Because of the existing motivational problems in English teaching and learning, and of the present situation of motivation researches, this thesis intends to study and analyze the teachers' influence on adult learners' motivation intensity and seeks for the teaching strategies to motivate the adult learners. This thesis presents the motivation theories and their implications in language teaching, studies the motivational factors and puts forward some motivational strategies. A questionnaire survey was made by the writer with the aim of identifying the adult learners' motivation and motivational factors, especially the factors that are related to the teachers' behaviors and the learning environment. In this thesis, statistical methods are employed to analyze data from questionnaires on motivation factors that affect English study of adult learners. We find that adult learners have their particular characteristics of motivation. Adult learners' low level of English mainly results from their inadequate efforts and others factors which have resulted from their low motivation. With the consideration of the subjectivity of the subjects' self-report data, the interview is employed to obtain in-depth information on adult learners' motivationproblem. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used in the survey as both of them are complementary to each other.The analysis of the collected data shows that the teachers' behaviors have a close relationship with the adult learners' motivation to learn. Based on the analysis of motivation theories, the findings of my survey and my teaching practices, some motivational strategies are put forward to initiate, increase and sustain adult learners' motivation to learn in. Owing to the limitation in the relatively narrow sphere of the samples, further studies in the motivational factors and motivational strategies should be conducted.