An Investigation Into The Features And Causes Of College English Learners' Motivation Orientations: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective

College English, as an integral part of higher learning, is a required basic course for non-English-major undergraduates, especially freshmen and sophomores. Not a few College English teachers realize that many students show decreasing interest or motivation in learning English as each school calendar is outdated. Therefore, based on the theoretical framework of self-determination theory (SDT), the present study was designed to contrast the different motivational orientations between Chinese non-English major freshmen and sophomores, from which the causes for the subjects' decreasing interest or motivation are expected to be discovered and ways to improve College English education are to be explored.To have an understanding of self-determination theory, find out whether differences exist in motivational orientations between the subjects of two grades, and gain implications beneficial for future College English teaching and sustainable development, the author conducted a questionnaire on why to learn English to survey 200 non-English major freshmen and sophomores from a university in Xi'an. For avoiding multicollinearity, the author chose the same proportion of female and male subjects, and then tested whether the English proficiency of freshmen and sophomores chosen is normally distributed respectively, providing prerequisite for T-Test.With the help of SPSS 13.0, Reliability Analysis, T-Test and Frequencies were included to analyze the data obtained. The results of raw data analyses are as follows: 1) very significant difference between the two groups of subjects can be seen in "amotivation", "integrated regulation" and "intrinsic motivation". To be more exact, freshmen are more integratedly and intrinsically motivated than sophomores, and amotivation occur more to sophomores. 2) the two groups of subjects show no significant difference in "external regulation", "introjected regulation" and "identified regulation", that is, both freshmen and sophomores are more or less externally motivated no matter how internally motivated they are. 3) Another feature is the pluralistic quality of motivation types or orientations. On the one hand, the major factors contributing to non-English major freshmen's and sophomores' English learning behavior fall into six categories: amotivation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation and intrinsic motivation. On the other hand, there is not a single subject who has only one orientation of motivation, the students who are considered totally uninterested in learning English mostly incline to at least amotivatation and external regulation and some subjects are even motivated by five orientations of motivation with the exception of amotivation.From the data analyses, interviews with teachers and routine classroom observation, the subjects' decreasing interest in College English class is found to be mainly due to the following causes: 1) psychologically speaking, the pluralistic quality of motivation types makes it difficult for teachers to come to know the individual learner differences or at least the differences for the majority of learners in one class, causing many learners to feel unvalued or ignored; 2) pedagogically speaking, overemphasis is laid on how to teach while what to teach remains unexplored and unimproved, and thus the students who get tired of those superficially attractive yet functionally meaningless classes will definitely diminish their initial interest in learning; 3) administratively speaking, the separation of teaching and examinations makes many students feel at sea in English classes, and the spiral expansion of enrollment in China's institutions of higher learning worsens pedagogical environments; 4) students' bad learning habit, namely, regarding learning English solely as an experience of learning vocabulary by rote, is another factor not to be ignored, since ineffective learning process featuring this habit will definitely lead to degrading interest in learning.The above reasoning for the subjects' decreasing interest triggers the author' further reflections on possible solutions aimed at facilitating changes in both learners and teachers: 1) teachers are supposed to take special measures to enhance the learners' sense of satisfaction in competence, relatedness, and autonomy, providing ongoing nutriments for the learners' internalization or integration or extrinsic motivation; 2) teachers should put great faith in their own profession regardless of others' misunderstandings and difficulties in TEFL; 3) it is of great importance to undertake scientific, consistent and sustainable teachers' further education, which has yet to be given due recognition and emphasis.