An Empirical Study On Chinese English Majors' Motivation For English Reading

In second language acquisition, reading plays a very important role as one of the main channels to obtain information and language. It is generally believed that without good reading ability, high language proficiency is out of the question. However, in order to improve language learners' reading ability, it is yet not enough to emphasize the importance of reading and teach various reading skills. Much effort should still be made to motivate learners to read. Motivation is another important topic in second language acquisition. Ever since Gardner and his colleagues' initial work, the passion on researching learning motivation in second/foreign language learning has never subsided and motivation is now viewed as one of the main determinants of second/foreign language learning achievement. Despite the abundance of literature, the majority of research focuses on learning motivation in general while little has touched its specific areas such as reading motivation.In view of the significance of reading research and the scarcity of research on specific domains of learning motivation, this thesis tries to look into the English reading motivation of English majors in the Chinese setting. With a questionnaire adapted from Wigfield and Guthrie' (1997) MRQ as the main instrument, the research was carried out among a group of 320 English majors from three different universities (Zhejiang University, Hangzhou Normal University and Gongshang University). Some statistical means such as factor analysis and a One-way ANOVA were employed and interviews with some English majors were also carried out to supplement the findings.The results revealed that: 1) English majors in general held a positive attitude toward reading; 2) English majors generally enjoyed a broad range of reading interests and read various materials outside class; 3) English majors' reading motivation was indeed multifaceted with 12 factors identified including Reading Efficacy, Social Reasons, Reading Curiosity, Reading Recognition-Competition, Reading Involvement, Reading Work Avoidance, Integrativeness, Reading Material, Reading Compliance, Reading for Grades, Reading Challenge and Importance of Reading; 4) Wigfield and Guthrie's framework of reading motivation was applicable in EFL settings; 4) English majors were generally highly motivated and they read more for intrinsic motivations than extrinsic motivations; 5) Students from Zhejiang University were more highly motivated than students from the other two universities while little difference could be found between students from Hangzhou Normal University and students from Gongshang University.Based on the above findings, some pedagogical implications were drawn in the hope of improving and sustaining English majors' reading motivation: 1) Sustain students' positive attitude towards English reading; 2) Help raise students' self-efficacy; 3) Stimulate social motivation; 4) Boost healthy competition. Finally, some limitations of the research were pointed out and suggestions for future work were also given.