The Influence Of Ideal-self, Motivation And Learning Effort On Students' English Learning Achievements

English learning and teaching is a complex process which involves not only students' but also teachers' toil. English Learning motivation has a great influence on students' final English achievements, which arouses Chinese university students' and their teachers' desire to understand English learning motivation fully as a precondition of stimulating and keeping motivation, ideal self and motivated learning behavior.On the basis of an extensive review of related literature, the study attempts to look into the interrelations between Chinese university students' ideal selves as English learners, English learning motivation and learning effort and also to delve into the influences those three factors have on English learning achievements. An empirical study is conducted in the hope that the findings of the study will yield fresh enlightenment for poor and good learners to attain the ultimate goal of enhancing English proficiency effectively on the whole, and offer insightful implications for teachers in teaching practices.The subjects are 280 non- English major sophomores from two universities in Nanjing. The instruments of quantitative study are tests including college entrance exam and achievement exam and a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire consisting of 65 items designed on the basis of Gao Yihong's research. The qualitative data are collected by the longitudinal interviews which last for a term and students' compositions on the topic of ideal language self. One statistical package employed for data analysis is SPSS. First, reliability analysis is performed and then a detailed descriptive analysis for a general view of the subjects is made. The interrelationship between the variables is computed by correlation analysis and the comparison between different genders and different university students is done with independent sample T-tests.The results show that Chinese university students have strong motivation in English learning as a whole, and their motivation change over time. Altogether there are six motivation types, with instrumental and exam motivations rank as the top two stimuli of their English learning. The students acknowledge that they put effort in English learning, especially in vocabulary rote learning. Most of the students have ideal language selves, though different English proficiency causes variances in the level of ideal-selves. Motivation has no direct effect on learning results but exerts its effect on their learning effort as an indirect factor, together with ideal self, causing different English learning achievements. Intrinsic motivation has positive effect on learning effort, ideal self and learning achievements, and the interrelationship between them form an encouraging benign circle for successful language acquisition. Most students have strong instrumental motivation but statistics show it has weaker connection with effort, ideal self as well as learning results than intrinsic motivation, out of people's common expectation. The appalling fact that exam motivation has negative effect on ideal self, learning effort and learning achievements questions our long held belief—more exam pressure makes greater contribution to language learning.Many female students admit taking English learning as a useful tool and treasuring inlayed interest in language at the same time. Students from two universities exhibit differences in learning effort and motivation types. The students from University of Medicine have more confidence in their English learning achievements in the long run.On the basis of data analysis and discussions, a motivation model is proposed to reveal the considerable contribution of motivation, ideal self and learning effort to language achievements. It highlights the idea that language achievements are the results of the joint effects of all the three variables.