A Study On English Learning Motivation Of Secondary Vocational School Students

Kunming has developed rapidly in recent years and has attracted more and more foreign companies or transnational enterprises to invest here. In the new period, it is very important to be able to speak English in order to meet the increasing demand of foreign-related tourism industry and self-need to communicate with foreigners. However, even though the vocational school students serve as one major part of Chinese labor force, their English ability is relatively poor.Generally speaking, learning motivation has positive effects on learning activities. However, the research related to students’ learning motivations in vocational schools is relatively poor. This research at Kunming No.2 Vocational School focuses on the students’ learning motivation in their English learning through a questionnaire survey which is trying to answer the following two questions:(1) Why do vocational school students perform so poorly in learning English?(2) How can vocational school students learn English better? One hundred students in Kunming No.2 Vocational School participated in this study. After the data analysis, the following conclusions are drawn:(1) In all kinds of motivation theories, the intensity of motivation has significant influence on student’s English learning and their learning outcome. But it is found that the motivation intensities of the students from Kunming No.2 Vocational School are medium or even low.(2) This study at Kunming No.2 Vocational School has proved that student’s attitudes have important effects on their learning motivation.(3) It has been proved in Kunming No.2 Vocational School that those students who attribute their success or failures to effort have a stronger motivation than those who attribute to other factors such as ability and luck.(4) Anxiety also has great influence on the level of motivation. It has been proved in Kunming No.2 Vocational School that moderate anxiety is helpful for English learning, and a completely lack of anxiety or excessive anxiety cannot bring positive learning effects.(5) It has been proved in Kunming No.2 Vocational School that students with higher self-efficacy are more likely to have a high-level motivation.(6) The research on valence at Kunming No.2 Vocational School shows that those students who believe that effort is worthy while compared with the learning result have a stronger learning motivation.(7) This study at Kunming No.2 Vocational School has proved that long-term goals are more beneficial for stimulating students’ learning motivation than short-term goals.(8) Integrative motivation is less common than instrumental motivation among the Secondary Vocational School students.Based on the analysis results and conclusions at Kunming No.2 Vocational School, three practical and useful strategies, including the Target Teaching Method, Stratified Teaching Method and English Classroom Management, are provided to stimulate students’ learning motivation. Also, it is found that teachers have very significant influence on students’ learning motivations and behaviors, and finally some suggestions are given in this paper.