Relationships Between Chinese English Majors' Ideal L2 Self,Perceptual Learning Styles And Motivated L2 Behavior

When proposing L2 Motivational Self System(L2MSS)in 2005,D?rnyei highlighted the great importance of the ideal L2 self,the core component of this theory,in language learning,especially in the EFL context.Images and sense as two integral part of this self also garner enormous attention,leading to a hypothesis that a possible link bears among imagination,perceptual styles(including visual,auditory,kinesthetic,tactile styles,with the last kind can be integrated into kinesthetic styles)and it.To corroborate this statement,Al-Shehri(2009)explored the relation among visual learning styles,imagination,the ideal L2 self and motivated behavior.It was found that visual learners were most likely to possess a powerful imagination,and thus could create a potent ideal L2 self and enhance their motivated learning behavior.Since then,L2 researchers have extended this finding,taking up the survey of auditory and kinesthetic learning styles(tactile styles are included)as part of their studies and diversifying the participants to involve elementary,middle and high school students of various countries.However,their findings differ in the functions of perceptual learning styles,and overlook an analysis of differences among different grades and of English majors,a group of students specializing in English learning.Accordingly,the current quantitative study attempts to investigate the relationships between Chinese English majors' perceptual learning styles(except tactile styles),the ideal L2 self and motivated behavior in different grades.Three research questions are put forward as follows:1)What are the differences between freshmen and juniors in perceptual learning styles,the ideal L2 self and motivated behavior?2)How do English majors' perceptual learning styles relate to the ideal L2 self and motivated behavior? Does the length of English learning have any relation with these three variables?3)Which one is the strongest predictor for English majors' motivated behavior? Perceptual learning styles or the ideal L2 self?In order to give a response to these questions,In total the current study collected 210 questionnaires,of which 197 were available,embodying 104 of freshmen from a university of science and engineering in a centrally-administered municipality and 93 of juniors from a commercial university of the same city.The dataset was processed by SPSS 19.0 and analyzed by Descriptive statistic,Independent-Samples T-test,Pearson moment-product correlation and Sequential regression.Following are key findings:1)Significant differences between freshmen and juniors are shown in visual,kinesthetic learning styles and motivated behavior,whereas no significant differences are found in auditory learning styles and the ideal L2 self.The finding reveals that freshmen are more visually and kinesthetically oriented,and make more efforts in English learning.2)All of three perceptual learning styles(ie,visual learning styles,auditory learning styles and kinesthetic learning styles)are positively correlated to imagination,the ideal L2 self and motivated behavior,and the highest correlation exists between visual styles and motivated behavior.However,when observing these relations at different grade levels,it can be found that freshmen who prefer visual learning styles spend more efforts on English learning than those who prefer the other two styles,while juniors who prefer auditory learning styles are most motivated to learn English.The length of English learning has no bearing on perceptual learning styles and motivational variables.3)Visual learning styles,the ideal L2 self,imagination and auditory learning styles are all meaningful predictors for motivated behavior.Visual learning styles can be the strongest one while the ideal L2 self is the most stable predictor.This study corroborates the crucial role of visual and auditory learning styles in creating the ideal L2 self and heightening motivated behavior,and meanwhile gives a new insight of the role of kinesthetic learning styles.It also provides some suggestions for English majors and teachers as well as future research by highlighting the approaches to prompting motivated behavior.