The Relationship Between Motivation, Interest And Students' English Achievement In High School

Motivation is one of the most important psychological factors in learning a foreign language. It significantly influences the process and outcome of the foreign language learning. And interest is also significant to foreign language learning. Jean Piaget once pointed out, "Interest is the most common and powerful example of affect at work influencing our selection of intellectual activities" (quoted in Wadsworth, 1989). However, most of the previous studies only pay attention to the influence of either motivation or interest on the foreign Language Learning, with few concerning about the collective function of motivation and interest on it.As we know, vocabulary plays a crucial part in foreign language learning. Therefore, in this paper, we use interesting vocabulary teaching in high school as a window to probe the influence of both interest and motivation on English academic achievement. Our research question is: which will play a more important part in L2 learning, especially in vocabulary teaching, motivation or interest?A total of 110 students, from Nanping Senior High School participated in the experiment. The results were analyzed by SPSS. And the correlation and step wise regression analyses were conducted. The findings are summarized as follows:(1) Obviously, there is positive correlation between vocabulary learning and motivation and interest.(2) When motivation and interest affecting language learning, interest plays a more important part in L2 learning.