An Experimental Study On English Learning Motivation And Self-identities Of Higher Vocational College Students

Motivation and self-identity construction are two interactive aspects insocial psychology of L2 learning, the former being the "driving force" oflearning, and the latter the "effect". Research on English as a foreign languagehas paid a great deal of attention to motivation since 1980s, mostly followingGardner's paradigm. But the Gardner's paradigm has not been closely examinedin the Chinese context, and the motivation types of Chinese students remained tobe discovered from substantial empirical studies. Learner's identity constructionhas been a less studied field. Under this circumstance, Professor Gao Yihongfrom Peking University together with her colleagues and students carried out aquantitative study investigating English learning motivation types, motivationalintensity and self-identity changes after learning English among Chineseuniversity undergraduates and graduate students. This empirical study gave theauthor some insight into the situation of Chinese university students' motivationand identity, meanwhile it guided the author to investigate Chinese vocationalcollege students' motivation types, motivational intensity and self-identitychanges after English learning. The purpose of this thesis is to conduct a study on this group of studentsabout their motivation types of learning English and self-identity changes afterlearning English, with a view to giving some pedagogical implications forvocational English instruction.The sample in the quantitative study consisted of 644 vocational collegestudents from 7 vocational colleges in Shanxi province. The instrument in thequantitative study was the questionnaire employed in Gao Yihong's quantitativestudy on motivation types and self-identity among university students, in which65 questions were included to cover motivation types, motivational intensity andself-identity changes. SPSS 12.0 was employed to process data; One-WayANOVA was used to examine the effect of demographic features on motivationtypes, motivational intensity and self-identity changes.Based on the findings of the quantitative study, the author carried out athree-semester-long experimental study on motivational strategy training inclassroom. In the experimental study, altogether 12 motivational strategies weretrained at three stages. The first stage was to create a basic motivating condition,which included eight strategies. The main purpose of the second stage was togenerate learners' motivation, during which three strategies were trained. Thethird stage was meant to sustain and protect motivation. At this stage, the majorstrategy being trained was: Promoting "integrative" values by including asociocultural component in language curriculum. Quantitative and qualitativestudies were performed in the experimental study. In quantitative study,independent samples t-tests were done to test the differences between the experimental group and control group in pre-questionnaire andpost-questionnaire. Paired samples t-tests were conducted to testthe differencesbetween the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire in each of the twointra-groups. Interviews and journals were used as instruments of qualitativestudy for the purpose of reflecting the students' reaction to the experimentalinstruction.The experimental results indicated that after three semesters' motivationalstrategy training, the students in the experimental group became more interestedin English learning; they made more efforts and spent more time in Englishlearning and thus made greater progress in English proficiency. It is hoped thatthe findings and pedagogical implications in the experimental study could beuseful to Chinese higher vocational college English instruction as well as tolearners of English in general.