A Study On Medical Students' Efl Learning Motivation On Basis Of Gender Differences

Motivation is considered by many researchers to be one of the most important aspects of learners'psychological factors and individual differences (IDs) in learning a second language (L2) or foreign language (FL). Although satisfactory results have been obtained in identifying the relationship between motivation and other factors in IDs such as learning styles and strategies, yet only a few studies have explored the relation between students'gender differences and the variables of motivation (i.e. MT & MI). Nearly no empirical research has specially studied Chinese medical college students'EFL learning motivation on basis of gender differences, because most of Chinese scholars and researchers only have done researches on the motivation of college students as a whole or with their divisions of either the overall non-English major students or English majors—or either science students or arts students—in a number of Chinese universities. It is known that the contribution of motivation to learners'language proficiency (LP) varies with gender as well as language learning settings. Therefore, it's still uncertain what kind of relationships among medical students'motivation type, motivational intensity and language proficiency on basis of gender differences in Chinese context.This study was conducted among 270 medical sophomores in Wenzhou Medical College. A language learning motivation questionnaire was carried out partly based on Gardner (1985) and Gao (2003b) to test medical students'response on 20 items related to motivation type (MT) and motivational intensity (MI). Their CET-4 result was taken as the main criterion to measure their language proficiency. In addition, a follow-up semi-structured interview and classroom observation were used to explain reasons for their EFL learning motivations and behaviors. Descriptive statistics analysis, paired-sample T test, independent-sample T test and multivariate Pearson correlation analysis in SPSS 13.0 for Windows were applied to analyze the data obtained from the questionnaire.Major findings of this study are listed as follows:1) Medical major students hold stronger instrumental motivation in their EFL learning process, which is similar with the traditional view that instrumental motivation is more characteristic of EFL learners. However, medical students expend not very much effort on English course after class, which is different from the findings of some previous studies.2) When gender differences are taken into consideration, female medical students hold a much stronger tendency to both instrumental orientation and integrative motivation and demonstrate more favorable attitudes, but they expend nearly the same effort as their male counterparts in EFL learning process.3) Although medical students' instrumental motivation was stronger than their integrative motivation, it correlates loosely with their motivational intensity and language proficiency. Medical students' language proficiency has a significantly positive correlation with their integrative motivation and motivational intensity. Male medical students' integrative motivation has a closer correlation with their motivational intensity and language proficiency than that of their female counterparts.The major findings give some inspirations to the teaching practice. The most significant point is that the combination of strengthening integrative motivation and motivational intensity may cause a stronger influence on language achievements, so English teachers should value medical students' learning efforts, assist them in developing integrative motivation towards EFL learning and put students' instrumental motivation in a proper position. Besides, in view of gender differences, more attention should be paid to those male medical students to help them foster favorable attitudes toward English.