A Study On Higher Vocational College Students' Learning Motivation

Motivation is considered to be one of the main determining factors in developing English successfully. Motivation, one of the most important non-intellectual factors, influences students'performance. It is the inner impetus and source of strength which stimulates people's behaviors. To achieve the ideal effect on English teaching, teachers should focus on how to inspire students'deep motivation. Many researches of motivation have been made from different perspectives. The previous researches are quite fruitful. However, few of these researches have been made on motivation concerning higher vocational college students.A lot of researchers have always focused their researches on language learning motivation and language learning strategy. However, there has not been so much related studies on the relationship between English learning motivation and performance of English proficiency, especially selecting students in higher vocational college as the research subjects.This study is to investigate motivation of students in the writer's vocational college.292 subjects from this college are chosen at random to answer the questionnaire, which is designed to examine the motivational types and the correlation between motivation and learning achievement. One interview is also conducted after the quantitative study.In this thesis, the writer intends to solve the following questions:1) What are the main types of motivation among vocational college students?2) What is the relation between motivation and achievement?3) What are the teaching strategies to motivate English learners?The study shows that college students own all the three types of motivation:extrinsic, intrinsic and situational, but they are much more strongly motivated toward an extrinsic motivation. It indicates that motivation has a positive correlation with achievement. The stronger learning motivation is, the higher achievement is. Achievement can reversely influence learners'motivation. It presents that significant other people and the learning environment also affect students'motivation.