The Influence Of Motivation And Anxiety On Non-English Majors' Achievements

With the development of humanistic psychology, people are paying more attention to affective factors in education. We can perceive the importance of affective factors from the research in psychology and linguistics. In traditional language teaching, teachers put too much emphasis on learners' cognitive competence and ignore their affective development. As a result, many students have poor language performance.This thesis intends to analyze the influence of motivation and anxiety on students' achievements by a quantitative method and interviews in response to the following questions:1 What types of motivation do non-English majors have?2 What influence do motivation and anxiety have on listening, reading, writing and total score?3 Is there any difference between high-score group and low-score group in motivation and anxiety?4 What is the relationship between anxiety and motivation?5 What is the relationship among motivation variables and learners' achievements?The instruments in the present study are a questionnaire and the scores of the subjects in CET-4 in June 2005. The subjects are 68 students from two intact classes in Qingdao University of Technology.The study shows that the subjects mainly have instrumental motivation. Motivation is positively and significantly related to listening, writing and total score of the subjects. It is positively and moderately related to reading. Anxiety is negatively and significantly related to listening, writing and total score of the subjects. It is negatively and moderately related to reading. High-score group and low-score group have a significant difference in motivation and anxiety. Motivation and anxiety are negatively and significantly related to each other and influence the subjects' achievement. The variables of motivation are positively and significantly related to one another and they are positively and significantly related to the subject's achievements.