Motivation Strategies Of English Learning For Three-year Medical College Students

Motivation provides learners with the impetus to create and sustain intentions and goal-seeking acts. There is no doubt that it is one of the most important factors influencing the learners' success or failure in language learning. A Language learning strategy is the method and the procedure taken by learners to promote their learning efficiently. Learning strategies are helpful for a learner to facilitate the acquisition, storage, or retrieval of language information. Previous studies indicate motivation directly affects the learners' enthusiasm, consciousness, endurance, and the frequency of their using learning strategies. The difference in the use of learning strategies has the decisive effect on the learners' grade. Learning strategies play an important role in helping a learner to take the initiative in learning and improving the efficiency of the learning process.With the development of research on linguistics, Psychology and foreign language teaching, more and more researchers of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) focus on learners themselves. The traditional teaching model, which is teaching-centered and language-centered, is being replaced by the student-centered model. The motivation for SLA is dependent on both the internal causes and the external causes. The motivation of the students in a professional college, especially those in a three-year medical college, is not as strong as that of university students due to the following reasons: (1) Poor foundation in English as most of students in a three-year medical college are from rural areas with low score of College Entrance Examination; (2) Pressure from heavy workload for their medical subjects; (3) Unawareness of the importance of English; and (4) Low confidence in their career development. All of these affect their enthusiasm in learning, especially in English learning, and make their learning process inefficient.To investigate the motivation and the learning strategies employed by three-year medical college students in their English learning as well as the factors influencing their use of language learning strategy, the author designed a questionnaire based on previous researches. The study was conducted with two classes, one in medical major and the other in nursing major, from the Medical College of NanChang University at FuZhou. The author hopes the findings and recommendations can be helpful for English teachers to stimulate students' motivation, to assist students in making intelligent choice of learning strategies, and to improve the English teaching by making use of the students'...