A Study On Motivation And Autonomy Of Students From A Vocational College And College-Level Night Schools

The purpose of the study is to investigate motivation and autonomy in learning English and the relationships between these two variables of college students both from vocational colleges (VCs) and from college-level night schools (CLNSs) in Shanghai. The rationale of the study is based on Gardner's motivation theory (1975, 1985), Deci and Ryne's self-determination theory (1985, 2002), Weiner's attribution theory (1986, 2000) and Phil Benson's model of autonomy and culture (2005).A total of 276 students, 141 of whom are from a VC and 135 of whom are from three different CLNSs, participated in the research. The instrument for assessing learners'motivation and autonomy is original or adopted with reference to Gardner/Lambert's AMTB (1972), Deci and Ryan (1989) and Pang Weiguo (2000). Factor Analysis and Pearson Correlation Analysis were used to compute the results.The results reveal that students from VCs and form CLNSs are not highly motivated and autonomous in learning English. The main type of their motivation is instrumental motivation. There is a significant linear correlation between motivation and autonomy. The more intense students'motivation is, the higher autonomy they possess. Motivation and autonomy are varied in terms of gender, age and test scores.Based on the results, the study suggests that both teacher-based and student-based approaches to motivate students to learn English and foster their autonomous learning.