A Case Study On High School Students’ EFL Motivation

Motivation is generally believed to be a key non-intelligence factor in language learning. EFL (English as a Foreign Language) motivation is of great importance for Chinese high school students to start and maintain their English learning process in a non-English environment. This study aims to review the general situation of high school students’EFL motivation in Chinese context and find out the factors that influence their EFL motivation, therefore providing some evidence and implications to high school English teaching and also the Basic Education Reform in China.This case study was conducted among240senior high school students in Shaanxi province. A motivational questionnaire consists of45items weighed by seven-class Likert scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree and an open-ended question was employed. In the questionnaire, the following motivational elements were investigated: Desire; Motivational Orientations including Interest, Instrumental Motivation, Social Responsibility Motivation, Integrative Motivation, Examination-oriented Motivation and Achievement Motivation; Effort; Factors that influence EFL motivation. Altogether232copies of motivational questionnaires were collected and finally224were effective. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test by SPSS17.0were employed in the data analysis to describe the general situation of high school students’EFL motivation, the correlation and discrepancies between different motivational elements and also other factors. The major findings are presented in the following parts.First, for the general situation of subjects’EFL motivation, in terms of desire,77.45%students have the desire to learn English, and their EFL motivation is relatively strong as the mean score of the desire is5.5193; for motivational orientations, through paired-samples t-test, Interest and Achievement Motivation are the two major motivation orientations and Examination-oriented Motivation is the least orientation among the students; for effort, the mean score of Effort is4.01and49.55%of the students spend less than5hours a week on English. Second, for correlation analysis, Desire in English learning is obviously correlated with the other motivational elements; most of the motivational orientations are obviously and mutually correlated with each other; all the motivational orientations are obviously positively correlated with Effort except that Examination-oriented Motivation are negatively correlated with Effort; all the five motivational orientations are positively correlated with Proficiency, and only Examination-oriented Motivation is negatively correlated with Proficiency.Third, for discrepancies between high-and low-proficiency groups, there are obvious distinctions between high-and low-proficiency groups in terms of Desire, Interest, Instrumental Motivation, Integrative Motivation, Examination-oriented Motivation, Achievement Motivation and Effort. Among them, the low-proficiency group is more examination-motivated than the high-group and the high-proficiency group demonstrates stronger level in the other above elements than the low-proficiency group.Fourth, for gender and motivation, male learners are less desired to learn English and in most of the motivational orientations they are weaker than female learners except for Examination-oriented Motivation. Male learners’spend less time and make fewer effort in English learning than female learners and their English proficiency is also lower than female learners; family background (county town or village) is not an influential factor to EFL motivation in this study.Fifth, some factors are influencing high school students’EFL motivation. Through the open-ended question in the questionnaire, factors that influence high school students’EFL motivation can be summarized as follows:too much academic burden and pressure; personal factors including self-confidence, learned helplessness, learning method and personality; learning environment; teaching methods; teaching contents, and examination.