The Role Of Motivation In Productive Vocabulary Development

Nowadays, more and more educators and teachers pay much attention to the function of motivation in English learning. Motivation is a vital affective factor for L2learners to maintain their enthusiasm for language learning and it determines the success or failure of learning. It is influenced by social and personal factors around learners. Productive vocabulary is the significant indicator of learner’s English proficiency. Whether a learner’s productive vocabulary can develop or not has close relation with their motivation in language learning.This longitudinal study is conducted on the relationship between motivation and productive vocabulary development by taking four non-English majors as the participants.52compositions and12interview data in total have been collected over10months. VocabProfile software is utilized to deal with learners’compositions and interview data. The role of motivation in a learner’s productive vocabulary development is analyzed by means of the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.The finding indicates that four participants’productive vocabulary was mediated by pedagogical and socio-cultural context surrounding them. After three semesters’ studying in university, four participants have different characteristics on their productive vocabulary. The external factors, such as classroom interaction and instruction, teacher’s assessment criteria, parents’expectation and examination requirements, have different influence on the four learners’ought-to selves. Such factors as using vocabulary in real life, wanting to speak like native-speakers and gaining a sense of accomplishment are the internal ones which direct their ideal L2self to improve English.Finally, based on the results of study, some pedagogical implications are provided to English teachers for their teaching in and out of class.