On Three-year-program Medical College Students’English Learning Motivation

In recent years, the focus of foreign language teaching has been changed fromteachers’ teaching to students’ learning. More and more people have recognized thatmotivation plays an important role in foreign language learning. Motivation, as animportant non-intellectual factor, influences students’ performance. A lot of researchesof motivation have been made from different perspectives and many researchers haspaid more attention to language learning motivation and strategy of the middle schoolstudents and undergraduate students, and the researches are fruitful. However, few ofthese researchers have been made on motivation concerning three-year-programmedical college students.With the rapid development of the higher vocational education (includingthree-year-program medical college) in China, the number of students is becominglarger and larger. There are obvious differences in personality and psychology existbetween students in three-year-program medical colleges and those in universities.English is one of the compulsory courses for students in vocational colleges, but manystudents lack interest in English learning and they get lower academic achievements.Teachers should try to find out the causes and then to solve them to help studentsachieve the ideal result.Based on some motivation types and some previous research, this research aims tosolve the following questions through the study on three-year-program medicalstudents’ English learning motivation at Qujing Medical College:(1) to identify themain motivation types of three-year-program medical college students and theirmotivation changes at the beginning of the first semester and the second semester;(2)to find out motivational differences between students from different majors anddifferent family backgrounds, of different genders;(3) to find out the factors affectingthree-year-program medical college students’ motivation.To find out the answers to these questions,235students from the clinical medicinedepartment, the nursing department and the pharmacy department in Qujing MedicalCollege have been selected as the research subjects and the focus is on their Englishlearning motivation. The research involves several factors such as their major, genderand family background. Questionnaire and interview instruments have been adoptedto collect the data. The questionnaire contains20questions about the students’English learning motivation. After the questionnaire, the11students (6clinicalmedicine students,3nursing students and2pharmacy students) were randomlyselected from235students under investigation to get some information on theirEnglish learning motivation. This research at Qujing Medical College reveals thefollowing findings:(1) Extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation are the mainmotivation types which are found in three-year-program medical college students.There is no significant difference on motivation types. However, the intrinsicmotivation of students’ English learning is much higher than their extrinsic motivationin the first semester. After one-semester English learning, the students’ extrinsicmotivation has increased while their intrinsic motivation has decreased.(2) There isno significant difference on English motivations among clinical medicine students, nursing-majoring students and pharmacy-majoring students.(3) Male students are lessinterested in English learning than the female students. There is no significantdifference between male and female students. The students from the rural area aremore interested in English learning and have stronger motivation in English learningthan the students from the urban area. The students from the rural area are eager tochange their identities through learning well.(4) The factors affect the students’English learning motivation are social needs, learning environment and the students’interest, attitude and self-confidence.This thesis is organized as follows: Chapter one is the introduction that gives abrief introduction to the study. Chapter two is the relevant literature review that givesa brief review of the different theories of learning motivation, and then introducessome previous researches in this field and the research work developed in recent yearsat home and from abroad. Chapter three is the methodology for the study. Chapterfour is the data analysis and discussion of English learning motivation of three-yearmedical college students. Chapter five is the conclusion which describes theconclusion of the study, implications, limitations and suggestions.