On Duty Report Enhancing Study Motivation Of College Students

With the emphasis of research converting to language learners, research on students' individual differences has become one of the key issues. Study motivation is the most active factor in the individual factors of language study. This issue is therefore the key one in language teaching.The writer has a knowledge of the situation of students' English study because of her engaging in higher vocational teaching for many years. Many vocational college students don't have enough confidence in English study, thus causing negative feelings such as anxiety and fear. These feelings hinder their initiative in their English study. This is the prevailing situation among higher vocational college students. As to how to stimulate students' motivation, many English teachers combine motivation research results with the concrete teaching context, applying many measures to different teaching contexts. However, how to instruct students to establish a right motivation and sustain their motivation through some activity was rarely stated .The writer attempts to apply relevant foreign language study motivation to "duty report" activity, using questionnaire and class observation to test whether this activity can promote and maintain students' motivation. The writer hopes to probe one of the solutions to students' motive.First of all, this dissertation analyzes the present situation of high vocational students' motivation, based on the questionnaire conducted among the first-year students from a class of a vocational college in Wuhan. The questionnaire contains such study motivation factors as interests, goals, methods and attitudes. The results reveal that many students don't have right attitudes and definite goals for English study, which directly affect the achievements of English study. The writer reflects on several causes for this and then put forward a hypothesis—duty report can improve students' study motivation for English.The second chapter deals with the summary of the literature of motivation theories. The psychological and pedagogical aspects of motivation research are first presented with the motivation research in foreign language study followed. The theoretical framework of foreign language study is clearly defined.How to apply study motivation theory to duty report and strengthen students' study motivation through duty report needs theoretical support. The writer illustrates the theoretical basis for duty report in three aspects. The first aspect concerns psychological features of vocational students, including cognitive and affective characteristics, which decide the feasibility of duty report. The principles and characteristics of duty report are stated as the second aspect, in which the theoretical basis of duty report—the input and output theory as well as classroom interaction theory is offered. The third aspect is about the application of motivation theory to duty report. The core is to promote students' interest and maintain strong motivation by implementing interactive activities in classroom contexts.In Chapter Four, the writer puts forward the mode for duty report which includes report model analysis, report questioning and report inter-evaluating and teacher's appraisal. Report model is a process, going through several steps—topic selection, before-class preparation and performance in class and involving report information collection, information combination and techniques training. Report questioning and appraising is the continuation and interaction procedures of duty report.The writer has conducted a one-year longitudinal experiment among one class of students from Wuhan Railway Vocational College of Technology so as to certify the hypothesis of duty report strengthening students' motivation. The result has revealed that students' interest in English study has been strengthened after duty report has been adopted as warm-up activity in class. The obvious improvement in students' oral ability via duty report enhances students' motivation in a certain degree.In the last chapter, the writer discusses the limitation of this duty report activity and meanwhile puts forward some other suggestions in promoting students' motivation.