An Empirical Study On Correlation Between College English Learners' Motivation And Their Oral English Proficiency

This thesis is designed and implemented to explore the correlation between English learners'learning motivation and their oral English proficiency. It intends to investigate L2 learners'motivation types and analyze whether the motivation types have an influence on the learners'oral English improvement. Empirical evidence can be found in this paper and pedagogical implications for both English teaching and learning are also provided.The subjects are 91 non-English major freshmen in NUAA, from two paralleled classes in the bilingual experimental scheme. The data are collected from two oral English tests (both tape recorded) and a questionnaire. The design of the questionnaire is inspired by Gardner's ATMB. It is composed of two parts: individual background information and motivation types. The data obtained are computer coded with the help of Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) 11.0.After the quantitative analysis, fruitful outcomes are derived. First, the joint program students (JPS) have a better oral English proficiency than the Mechanical Engineering students (MES), both after learning English courses for a whole year.Second, both JPS and MES possess motivation types such as 1) extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation; 2) integrative motivation and instrumental motivation; 3) deep motivation and surface motivation. The overall motivation can again be divided into 9 types, namely, competition, going abroad, personal interest, self-determination, learning situation and atmosphere, professional study, self-efficacy, future job, and achievement in the examinations.Third, the differences in the motivation levels are discovered when JPS and MES are contrasted. JPS hold a much stronger overall motivation than MES and as to extrinsic motivation, integrative motivation, instrumental motivation, and surface motivation, significant disparity exists between JPS and MES. The former holds much stronger motivation levels. In the sub-divided types, JPS own significantly higher motivation levels in going abroad, future job, professional study, competition, and achievement in the examinations.Fourth, the correlation between motivation types and oral English proficiency is clearly shown in this research. A remarkably valuable finding is that JPS and MES possess evidently different motivation levels in overall motivation, extrinsic motivation, integrative motivation, and motivations of competition, professional study, and future job, and those above mentioned motivation types have significant promotion function in the better English speaking capacity of JPS. This can well explain why JPS perform better in the oral tests and have a better command of oral English.The thesis concludes that teachers are supposed to work on how to create the basic motivational conditions, and to generate, maintain and protect motivation both inside and outside the classroom, and lastly, to encourage students'positive self-evaluation. Students must have a good control of their goals including long-term and short-term goals. They should keep in mind favorable expectations of success and positive incentives or rewards, etc.