Research On The Factors Affecting Art Major Students’ English Learning Motivation

English learning motivation is one of the most important factors affecting learners’ English learning. English learning motivation can not only help students establish ambitious aims, overcome the difficulty of learning and improve their English proficiency, but also stimulate students’ learning enthusiasm and enable them to take an active part in learning activities. In recent decades, many researchers have studied on the types of foreign language or English learning motivation, the relevance between English learning scores and English learning motivation, which have obtained great achievements. However, the factors affecting art major students’ English learning motivation have been ignored. Therefore, the present study which is based on the Humanism and Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis as the theoretical foundation makes an analysis of the factors affecting their English learning motivation in Guangxi Normal University. At the same time, the author also has researched much on types of art major students’ English learning motivation, hoping to offer English teaching in universities some effective and feasible suggestions.In this study, the primary means of data collecting is questionnaire. The participants are 147 art major students from Guangxi Normal University. The Types of Art Major Students’ English Motivation Questionnaire is based on Gao Yihong’s Questionnaire (2003), which includes seven dimensions:intrinsic interest, immediate achievement, learning situation, going abroad, social responsibility, individual development and information medium. The Factors Affecting Art Major Students’ English Learning Motivation Questionnaire is developed from Long Shaoyun’s (2003) questionnaire, which contains five components:cognitive factor, affective factor, social environmental factor, real controlling factor and strategic factor.The present study addresses the following two questions:(1) What is the overall situation of art major students’ English learning motivation?(2) What factors will affect art major students’ English learning motivation?The study results show that:(1) Among the seven categories of English learning motivation, students’ preference from the strongest to the weakest are as follows: individual development, immediate achievement, information medium, intrinsic interest, learning situation, social responsibility and going abroad. (2) The overall situation of factors affecting art major students’ English learning motivation stays at a high level. Specifically speaking, strategic factors rank the top, followed by affective factors, social environmental factors, cognitive factors and real controlling factors. To be more specific, about 80% candidates need to learn English and their major type of English learning motivation is individual development, which is not in good accordance with Shi Yongzhen’s findings in 2000. He has carried out an empirical study about college English learning motivation, finding that most of them are certificate motives. In the second place, 45% participants may learn hard if teachers can give them more chance to decide the learning process autonomously. In the third place, nearly a half of the subjects believe that they can not make use of their spare time fully and 54.6% attribute their failure of learning English to lack of persistence and perseverance, and still 53.2% can not carry out their English learning plans. Finally, nearly a half of the subjects want to learn English, but they believe that they have no advantages to learn it and can not learn it wellBased on these findings, some suggestions are put forward for teachers, art major students and universities themselves to stimulate and maintain students’ English learning motivation.For English teachers, the author proposes four suggestions, which are:(1) investigating and satisfying art major students’ English learning needs; (2) cultivating art majors’ English intrinsic interest; (3) enhancing art majors’self-efficacy; and (4) training art majors’ autonomous learning ability in English.For learners, they are supposed to do the following things. Firstly, they should have correct attitudes towards their English learning. Secondly, they should form a favorable English learning habit.For universities, the suggestion is that more diversified and solid curriculum evaluation system should be built up.