A Study On Senior High School Students' English Learning Motivation

Motivation plays an important role in English learning in the senior high school. In the past decades, researchers home and abroad have conducted relevant theoretical and empirical researches on motivation and have achieved abundant findings. However, the existing studies have paid little attention to the English learning motivation of the senior high school students. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the characteristics of the senior high school students'English learning motivation.This study adopts the questionnaire to investigate the characteristics of the senior high school students'motivational beliefs, including the use of integrative and instrumental motivations, and the attribution of learning motivation, as well as how they regulate their motivation. Besides, the research also focuses on the comparison of the English learning motivational beliefs and self-regulation of motivation between students from different grades and between the high-achievers and the low-achievers. Then this study combines the results with the features of the English teaching and learning in China and summarizes some means and strategies to improve the students'English learning motivation.In this study, 186 students of three grades from a senior high school in MeiHe'kou City in Jilin province engaged in the questionnaire surveys, which were specifically designed based on the relevant studies home and abroad and the reality of the English learning in senior high schools. Data collected were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, and then discussed. The quantitative analysis depends on the software PASW statistics 18.The significance of the research is that it can deepen the teachers'understanding of the senior high school students'English learning motivation. The results will help the teachers to better understand their students'motivational beliefs and the teachers will be able to help the students to attribute and regulate their English learning motivation correctly and help them improve their English learning.