A Study Of Correlation Between Teacher-student Relationship And English Learning Motivation In Chinese Universities

Human beings have a long history of second language learning.Since 1960s,the Second Language Acquisition(SLA)has developed into a relatively independent and stable interdisciplinary research.The targets of SLA are three basic questions,i.e."what exactly does the L2 learner come to know","how does the learner acquire this knowledge"and "why are some learners more successful than others".Because learning motivation is one of the important factors to explain why some learners are more successful than others,more and more researchers and teachers focus on it.As we know,the teaching is a process of bilateral interaction.Teachers and students are two basic elements of university education and teaching.An interpersonal relationship,i.e.teacher-student relationship,is formed in the process of interaction.The teacher-student relationship embodies the most basic and important aspects in the process of university education and teaching.Many researchers at home and abroad have paid more and more attention to the influence of interpersonal relationship,especially teacher-student relationship on learning and they also stress the significance to create good teacher-student relationships.With the continuous expansion of university admissions,the number of university students is in the sharp increase and as a result,the teacher-student relationship is also changing all the time.Along with the development of China's economy and influence all over the world,the contact of every country in the world is frequent day by day.So learning English plays an important role in many aspects of university students,such as study,communication and self-development.Compared with other specialized courses in Chinese universities,university English covers more students as a basic required course,so the university students learning motivation and teacher-student relationship in the English class are more representative than other courses.By contrast,teaching models of university and high school are quite different.High school students will regard English as the main test subject and they would spend much time on learning English.With the frequent contact between high school students and English teachers,so the teacher-student relationship is more closely.Conversely,the university students have strong autonomy and they regard English as a tool subject.They lack of communications with teachers,so the teacher-student relationship may be neglected.The purpose of this study is to understand the current situation of English learning motivation and teacher-student relationship of university students,examine the difference between gender,grade and achievement and further explore the correlation between English learning motivation and teacher-student relationship.This study will contribute to improve the English learning motivation of university students,ameliorate the teacher-student relationship and provide some inspirations for university English teaching so as to improve the teaching effect of English.According to the research requirements,the author has put forward questions as:1.What is the present situation of students' English learning motivation in university?2.What is the present situation of teacher-student relationship in university English classroom?3.Is there the correlation between teacher-student relationship and students' English learning motivation?This study investigated the English learning motivation and teacher-student relationship of Chinese university students in the way of inventory,with Wen Qiufang'classification of English learning motivation and Qu Zhiyong's classification of teacher-student relationship as theoretical framework.The instruments include Learning Motivation Questionnaire,Teacher-student relationship Scale and score of CET-4.203 questionnaires were put out and 185 valid questionnaires return,therefore the rate of validation is 91.13%.From the analysis of SPSS 17.0 which includes descriptive statistics,t-test,One-way ANOVA and correlation,the major findings are:1.The surface motivation is the main English learning motivation of university students.Achievement has significant effect on deep motivation and gender has significant effect on surface motivation.2.For four dimensions of teacher-student relationship,the score of closeness is highest and that of satisfaction is lowest.Gender has significant effect on closeness and grade has significant effect on satisfaction.3.The three positive dimensions(closeness,satisfaction and support)of teacher-student relationship are positively correlated with deep motivation and the negative dimension(conflict)is negatively correlated with deep motivation.There is no significant correlation between university students' surface learning motivation and teacher-student relationship.This study is composed of five chapters.Chapter I is a brief introduction,in which the background,purpose and significance of the current study are included.Chapter II offers a literature of research in the field abroad and at home.The definition,classification,measurement and the status quo in the previous studies of learning motivation,teacher-student relationship and the correlation between them are reviewed.The third chapter is research methodology including research questions,design and procedures,data collection and data analysis.The fourth chapter is the main part of this thesis that contains results and discussions of the present study.The results collected from this study are analyzed statistically and the possible reasons for the results are discussed.The last chapter presents the conclusion,in which the major findings,practical implications and the limitations of the present study are concluded and some suggestions on the future research are provided.