The Relationship Between The Thinking Style, Learning Motive And Achievement Of College Students Majored In Less-popular Languages

With the advent of the era of knowledge economy, how to train and develop creative potential, and how to cultivate creative talents more and better has been concerned by more and more countries of the world. There have no research to taking thinking style into account and explaining the relationship between knowledge and creativity. This study expounded the idea that thinking style as a third variable can mediate the relationship between knowledge and creativity depending on previous theories, empirical research results partly proved this idea.Participants in this study were 258 students majored in less-popular languages. The participants responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory based on Sternberg's theory of mental self-government and learning motive questionnaire. In addition, we collected data of their academic performance. Thereby we examined the impact of thinking style on knowledge and creativity, and the relationship of thinking style, learning motive and academic performance. The following conclusion was obtained:1. Overall, most students preferred legislative style, hierarchic style, liberal style and external style, and less use of oligarchic style and monarchic style. Boys preferred legislative style, internal style and liberal style and girls had more external style.2. Boys scored significantly higher than girls in originality; girls scored significantly higher than boys. In appropriateness, the fluency, flexibility, originality and appropriateness of thinking are associated significantly with academic performance, and students of good performance had better scores in every thinking quality than performance of poor or middle students, and had significant differences.3. Thinking style, learning motive and academic performance are obviously correlated. Thinking style and learning motive can be an effective indicator of academic performance.