Chapter One Literature Review
1.1Related Studies Abroad
Motivation, a psychological term, was first and mostly explored by foreigners due to theiradvanced theories and ideas in linguistics and applied linguistics. Motivation has always beenrecognized as being of great importance to successful language acquisition (Gardner andLambert, 1972). Early psychologists believed that the mind was comprised of knowing(cognition), feeling (emotion), and willing (motivation); other early researchers viewedmotivation as the role of instincts, drives and energy (Taylor, 2001). In the 1950s, motivationalresearchers began to investigate why inpiduals whose basic needs were satisfied were stillmotivated to perform goal-oriented activities (Pittman & Boggiano, 1992). When it wasascertained that motivation was not only involved in a satisfaction of human needs but also had adirect influence on learning and achievement, then the study of motivation applied frompsychology to education. Along with this shift, Gardner and Lambert (1959) first cast light on therole of attitudes and motivation in second language acquisition. Ever since then, a large quantityof researches have been carried out in the field of second/foreign language acquisition in order toinvestigate the construction of motivation and the functions of motivation in the process ofsecond/foreign language acquisition.
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1.2Related Studies in China
After the policy of reform and opening was introduced and carried out in China, more andmore Chinese people began to learn foreign language, especially English. Not only as collegeEnglish majors, English proficiency has also become a primary requirement for non-Englishmajors for their future success. Owing to the importance and the requirement of English ascollege major, English teaching has become increasingly important. Nonetheless, because oftraditional educational concept and conventional teaching methods, college English teaching hasnot been successful. Fortunately, much progress has been made in the study of motivation inChina in recent years. Based on the prior theoretical and empirical researches abroad, a lot ofempirical studies were conducted in which college students were taken as subjects.There are two periods of language learning motivation’s researches. From 1980s to early1990s, a lot of researches were conducted, mainly introducing motivational theories of foreigncountries. The researchers at home introduced foreign motivational theories and translated themand later on, studied on motivational factors. Most of these researches and studies regardedlearning motivation as an important social factor. They studied the influence of learningmotivation on second/foreign language’s learning. From 1990s up to now, researchers are nolonger refined to simple social psychology. They research on second language learning fromphysiology, behaviorism, cognition and sociology. The present researches on learning motivationare mainly classified into two mainstreams: one is to deal with the components theoretically andthe other is to explore empirical researches on second language learning motivation. With theshift of teaching and learning focus, teachers and schools are no longer the center of teaching andstudents and learning have taken the place. Due to that reasons, researchers and teachers at homebegin to concern more about learners’ emotional factors and focus on the inpidual differences.During the time, a large numbers of researches and studies spring up. Most of the empiricalresearches are focused on the influence of learning motivation and the relationship betweenlearning motivation and other factors.
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Chapter Two Theoretical Framework
2.1 The Definition of Motivation
Motivation is considered as one of the most influential factors in language learning. It isalso viewed as a key effective factor in second language learning. Teachers and researchers areconcerned about students’ language learning motivation and the degree of their motivation.When it comes to the definition of motivation, researchers have reached less agreement uponwhat consists of motivation, although they have placed great importance on motivation the fieldsof second language acquisition and language learning. In the last decades, a lot of researcheshave been done to search for the answer to this question. However, there is still a lot needed to beimproved.Motivation is a vast and complicated subject with many theories. Motivation has a numberof different interpretations. Differences exist in the ways in which teachers and researchers havetypically conceptualized “motivation” (Crookes and Schmidt, 1991). Researchers disagreestrongly on virtually everything concerning the concept. However, it is commonly viewed as aninner desire, impulse, or desire that moves one to a particular action (Brown, 1987:114).Maslow(1970) put forward a famous drive theory named “hierarchy of needs”, which starts withbiological needs and progressing upward to his or her psychological needs. He set up a hierarchyof basic needs which includes: needs of physiology, safety, belongingness and love, needs andself-actualization. According to Maslow, “motivation is constant, never ending, fluctuating andcomplex and that it is an almost universal characteristic of particularly every organic state ofaffairs” (Maslow, 1970:106).
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2.2 The Classification of Motivation
The above classifications are strikingly similar whether it is termed intrinsic motivation orintrinsically motivated action. Intrinsic motivation is also called self-motivation. Whenintrinsically motivated, the learners actively take part in and have fun in certain activity. Theresult of the activity can strengthen the inpidual’s motivation. What it means is that if thesubjects feel they will succeed in their task before they attempt it, then will be highly motivatedbecause they want to do well and have confidence in their success. And the higher theirmotivation is high, the better their performance will be.Extrinsic motivation comes from environmental manipulation external to the learner.These manipulations can be seen as either the acquisition of positives or the avoidance ofaversive. According to Pintrich and Schunk (2002), extrinsic motivation refers to motivation toengage in an activity as a means to an end. Inpiduals who are extrinsically motivated work ontasks because they believe that participation will result in desirable outcomes such as a reward,teacher’s praise, or avoidance of punishment. Reeve (1996) summarizes three reasons whyteachers prefer to use outer motivational resources: first, some teachers actually do not want atheory of motivation; rather they want a theory of performance… Second, many teachers preferto take short-term, moment-to-moment approach to motivation instead of a longer-termdevelopmental approach… Third, teachers find motivation via inner motivational resources to besuspicious because it does not correspond to how others motivate them.
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Chapter Three Research Design ....27
3.1 Introduction ......27
3.2 Objectives .... 28
3.3 Subjects .... 28
3.4 Instruments....... 29
3.5 Data Collection .... 31
3.6 Data Analysis ....... 31
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ....... 32
4.1 Results of Motivation Types .... 32
4.2 The Relationship between Motivational Type and Learners...... 34
4.3 The Comparison between High-achievers and Low-achievers.... 35
4.4 The Comparison between Female and Male Learners..... 37
4.5 Summary ...... 38
Chapter Five Implications for English Teaching in Private Colleges ....... 41
5.1 Stimulating Students’ Intrinsic Motivation ....... 41
5.2 Generating and Maintaining Students’ Extrinsic Motivation....... 45
5.3 Creating Favorable Learning Environment...... 46
5.4 Optimizing the Teaching Staff ..... 50
Chapter Five Implications for English Teaching in Private Colleges
Literature reviews and discussions are made about the role of motivation in the process ofsecond language acquisition in the previous chapters. An investigation of motivational types hasbeen carried out. How the motivational factors influence achievements is discussed andcomparison has been made about the motivation between private college students’ motivationand public college students. Moreover, those main factors which affect the English learningmotivation of students in private colleges have been found out and discussed. In learning English,motivation plays a vital and determining role. The findings of the survey can give collegeEnglish teachers valuable guidance. Therefore, how to inspire students’ motivation in Englishlearning has become an important part, especially for private college English students. D rnyei(1998) attached much importance to the teaching in the process of foreign language teaching. Heclaims that “teacher’s skills in motivating learners should be seen as central to teachingeffectiveness” and suggests “Ten Commandments for Motivating Language Learners” (D rnyei,1998:131). Based on the findings of the survey, some useful techniques and strategies have beenput forward in this chapter for college English teachers to motivate students in private colleges tomake the students more competent and willing to study English.
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Conclusion
Motivation has long been considered as both language teachers and researchers as a keyfactor in successful language learning. Highly motivated students always outperform those withlow motivation. However, most of the students in private colleges seem to have poor motivationto learn English and thus make no efforts to get good performance. Therefore, teachers shouldhave a better understanding of motivation and know better of students’ specialty of privatecolleges in order to enhance the students’ motivation. It is based on this belief that the currentstudy is conducted to find out some useful implications for private college students’ Englishlearning.
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Reference (omitted)