A Study On The Correlation Between Students’ Learning Motivation And English Reading In High School

In second language acquisition, reading acts as one channel of input in the process of L2acquisition. Much effort should be made to motivate learners to read. Motivation is another important topic in second language acquisition and it is viewed as one of the main determinates of second language learning achievement. This paper hypothesizes that the differences of learners’reading results are closely related to the learning motivation. Based on Gardner’s instrumental and integrative motivation theory, the paper intends to investigate whether the types of learning motivation held by high school students with different reading abilities is consistent and the correlation between learners’motivation and reading proficiency.The paper chose114students from Baoding No.1high school in Hebei province as researching subjects. A questionnaire and a reading comprehension test were employed for the investigation. The main findings are as follows:(1) Most of the students have a strong motivation in English reading.(2) Students who have higher reading proficiency possess higher integrative motivation, while students who have lower reading proficiency possess stronger instrumental motivation.(3) The correlation between the students’motivation and their reading proficiency is intermediate and significant.Based on the results of the study, some suggestions on strengthening students’ integrative motivation in English reading teaching are put forward.