A Survey Of English Learning Motivation Of College Non-English Majors

Foreign language has become more and more important in the world, and as a result, studies of foreign language learning and teaching have become an important field of researcher. Besides the learning process , researchers also focus on learners' individual differences which cover these cognitive, affective and biological characteristics, especially on the role of the affective factors such as motivation and attitude in foreign language learning. And motivation has been considered a key factor to successful language learning. Students with strong motivation can always achieve greater success. But, what is motivation? What are the different factors that contribute to motivation? How do these factors influence motivation? To answer these questions, a survey was conducted to better identify the motivation types of Chinese college students and find out the effective ways to arouse their interest.The data was collected using a questionnaire. The participants were 130 non-English major freshmen from Shandong Jiaotong University. The participants were asked to complete the 'Motivation Questionnaire' designed by Gao Yhhong (2003).The Questionnaire is composed to two parts--personal information and Gao Yihong's (2003) Motivation Type Scale. There are altogether 30 items in this questionnaire. Results show that among the participants' motivation types, instrumental motivation stands at the top place. The followings are cultural motivation and situational motivation. These three types of motivation can be further divided into seven subtypes: internal interest, social responsibility, going abroad, personal development, achievement, information media and learning situation. Students' achievement is collected according to their score of National Band Four Test in June, 2006. The statistical analyses employed are descriptive statistics, Mest and correlation by SPSS. The study reveals the following three major findings:First, there is a close relationship between motivation and learners' English achievement. Among the three kinds of motivation, there is a significant positive correlation between cultural motivation and learners' English achievement(r=. 180*). Second, the different type of motivation has a clear impact on learners' achievement. The participants are divided into high-score and low-score groups. Through t-test analysis, it is found that there is a significant difference between high-score and low- score groups in cultural motivation (t=2.46, p<.05). The high-score group has a higher mean in instrumental motivation than the low-score group while the low score group gets a higher mean in situational motivation.Third, there is no clear difference between gender factor and motivation choice. The result of t-test shows that there is no significant difference between male and female in motivation type.On the whole, the study of motivation is very important in foreign language teaching. It is necessary for teachers to observe and study students' behavior during the learning process and gain insight into students' psychology, to understand their internal and external needs so as to find and solve problems on time. In this way, teachers can effectively arouse students' motivation and achieve a better teaching effect.