Study Of The Correlations Of Promotion And Prevention Instrumentality With Ideal And Ought-to L2 Self

Motivation is an important factor of the individual differences in L2 or foreign language learning, and thus has been one of the most important research topics in second language acquisition. Gardner, D?rnyei and many other researchers have researched L2 motivation from various perspectives, and have made constructive suggestions about the classification, application and so on of their motivational theories. Recently a new theory of L2 motivation: L2 Motivational Self System proposed by D?rnyei(2009a, hereafter L2MSS) has received wide attention. Based on this new theory, this paper will explore the characteristics of Chinese English learners’ L2 MSS.Based on the internal complexity of this theory found by previous researches, the author carried out the study to research the correlation between instrumentality prevention(IPRE) and ideal L2 self(IL2S), between instrumentality promotion(IPRO) and ought-to L2 self(OL2S) among Chinese undergraduate students and explore the difference of above correlations among four different majors(engineering, science, arts and English). Specifically, taking 798 undergraduate students in Chongqing as participants, present study is to explore the following research questions:1. Are there significant correlations between instrumentality-promotion and ought-to L2 self, between instrumentality-prevention and ideal L2 self among Chinese undergraduate students?2. Are there significant correlations between instrumentality-promotion and ought-to L2 self, between instrumentality-prevention and ideal L2 self among undergraduate students separately of engineering, science, art(except English) and English major and is there any difference of these correlations among them?The study adopted both quantitative and qualitative methods. The questionnaire used in this study are based on the one used by Taguchi et al.(2009) in China and Liu(2013). It was administered among 798 undergraduate students in Chongqing. All data collected were analyzed by SPSS 19.0. Pearson correlation analysis was adopted to explore the correlation between IPRE and IL2 S, between IPRO and OL2 S among undergraduate students; and explore the difference of these correlations among four majors. 2 to 3 students from each major participated in the semi-structure interview, and the content of the interview served as the supplement for the quantitative research.Major findings of the present study are as the followings: 1) the correlation between instrumentality motives(IPRO & IPRE) and L2 possible selves(IL2S & OL2S) among undergraduate students are all significant, but the correlation between IPRO and IL2 S, and that between IPRE and OL2 S are higher than the other two correlations; 2) among all four majors, the correlation between IPRO and IL2 S, and that between IPRE and OL2 S are higher than the other two correlations, but for arts majors, the correlation between IPRE and IL2 S is also significant which is negative, while for both engineering and English majors, the correlation between IPRO and OL2 S is significant as well. The possible reason of above results is the influence from their learning environment including teachers, parents, the expectation and requirements of their majors etc. The current study made a detailed discussion about the above results and gave some implications for English teaching in university.