A Study Of Non-English Majors' English Learning Motivation In A Chinese Private College

As one of the most important and complicated psychological factors and individual differences in second or foreign language learning, learning motivation provides the primary impetus to initiate learning and later the driving force to sustain the long and often tedious language learning process. It directly influences how active the student will get involved in the classroom activities, how autonomous and independent they will become in their study, and how hard they will work towards their goals, how long they will sustain the efforts and how high their L2 proficiency level will become. Over the years, a lot of work in this field has been done both abroad and at home by many researchers and educators. However, inadequate attention has been given to students of non-English major's English learning motivation in private colleges.Based on some classical motivation theories and models and some previous research, the present study intends to answer the following questions concerning motivation:1) What kind of motivation do students in the subject university hold? How about their motivational intensity? 2) Is there any difference between students of different major, gender and English proficiency and their motivation types and motivation intensity? Why or why not? 3) What are the factors affecting students' English learning motivation? 4) Is there any change about students'English learning motivation after two years of College study?To find the answers to these questions,115 non-English majors were chosen from grade 2 in Ningbo Da hongying College, which is a newly founded private university. Questionnaire and interview instruments were adopted to obtain the data.After the detailed analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaire and interview, we obtained the following results:1)seven potential English learning motivation types were found in the subject university, namely motivation of intrinsic interest, learning situation, immediate achievement, going abroad, personal development, social responsibility and information media. Among them, immediate achievement ranked the first, while intrinsic interest was the lowest. The overall motivation was medium and students showed relatively low motivational intensity; 2) significant difference was found between students' gender and their English learning motivation. Female students paid more attention to their personal development rather than the immediate achievement and they showed high social responsibility, but they tended to depend more on the learning situation; Significant difference was also found between high English achievers and low achievers in the motivation types and motivational intensity; No significant difference was found between students'major and their motivation types and motivational intensity; 3) Social needs, learning environment and students'interest and attitude of students were found the main factors influencing students'motivation;4) After two years of college study, more than half of students became demotivated due to many factors.Based on the result of the study, some implications for enhancing and sustaining student' English learning motivation were put forward. In addition, limitations of the present study and suggestions for further study were pointed out in the conclusion.