A Study Of Art College Students’ English Learning Motivation

Motivation is not only the source of the power to inspire students to learn, but also theinherent drive to promote students’ continuous learning. It is a vital factor for English learning,the key and prerequisite for English teaching as well.In recent years, with the popularization of higher education and enrollment expansion ofUniversities, the proportion of art college students has been increasing rapidly. And the Englishteaching of art college students has become an important component of College Englishteaching. However, as a special student group of college students, most of them pay moreattention to their major courses and few of them have a good command of English, whichmakes the art college students’ English teaching in an awkward situation and has always beenignored by researchers. Meanwhile, in teaching practice the author finds that compared withother major students, there is a collective demotivation in art college students’ Englishlearning since the first year. Through questionnaires and interviews, it is proved that thecollective demotivation does exist. Inevitably the collective demotivation will influenceindividual learning badly. So a vicious circle is. Therefore, the collective demotivation ofEnglish learning has become a serious obstacle for art college students’ English teaching. It isalso a big problem we need to solve in the art college students’ English teaching reform.This study tries to investigate135first-year art college students in Xihua University bymeans of questionnaires and interviews to know more about their English learning motivationlevel and type. It also tries to analyze the main reasons and influencing factors of thedemotivation of art college students. Based on the research findings and art college students’learning characteristics, the study puts forward some strategies for prompting art collegestudents’ English learning motivation, such as setting proper objectives, analyzing learningneeds, friendly classroom atmosphere, learning strategy training, timely positive feedback andgroup dynamics. Meanwhile, this study tries to test the validity of these prompting strategies byexperiments whose results show that these strategies are somewhat effective in remotivatingart college students’ English learning and preventing the collective demotivation and alsohave played a certain role in improving art college students’ English learning interest andlearning efficiency. As the requirement of high social expectation and rapid development of society, it isessential for art college students to have a good mastery of the international language——English. And the author hereby hopes that through this study, we can remotivate art collegestudents, improve their English learning efficiency and provide some suggestions andimplications for improving art college students’ English teaching.