Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Learning motivation is a type of motivation considered to be one of the mostimportant factors and variables among the emotional factors that affect learners, and itis the foundation of learning. If learners cannot build a motivation to learn, thelearning goals will hardly be well achieved by individuals. It is because the learningmotivation is the driving force for learners to carry out learning activities. Thelearning motivation can determine learners’ learning direction, and provide learnerswith clear learning goals. With the learning motivation, learners can take the initiativeand persevere in searching information to learn. In the field of second languageacquisition and second language teaching, L2 learning motivation has always been ahot topic which is of great significance.
College students have always been a large group of the L2 learners in the field ofsecond language acquisition. Although the reform of college English teaching hasbeen in full swing in recent years, many English teachers still noticed thephenomenon that students were inactive in participation in the classroom. He (2003)pointed out that no matter what one person learned, the personal interest wasexcessively important. If the learner only has a practical purpose but no interest, theprocess of learning must be passive or even distressing. Once the goal has beenachieved, the learner would not have the incentive to move forward. In fact, theinterest and learning motivation of the learners will directly affect their learningbehavior, learning effect and learning autonomy.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of this Research
This study mainly explores the L2 learning motivation of Chinese collegestudents from the perspective of L2MSS. The previous researches often focused onthe classification of the L2 motivation or the relationship between motivation and oneof the personal learning factors without considering the complexity and dynamicnature of motivation. Different from previous studies on motivation, the present studyattempts to use the controlled experiment to test the validity and maneuverability ofL2MSS and to find the correlation between L2 learning motivations and theachievements. The perspective of L2MSS can help us get a deep understanding of themotivation of Chinese college students. Meanwhile, the result of the study can givesome suggestions for teachers about how to use the teaching method to stimulate thelearning motivation, thus improving the teaching effect. What matters most is that thisresearch can also check the feasibility and validity of L2MSS in the context of China.It is of theoretical and practical significance to conduct the current study.
Theoretically, the current study investigates the characteristics of the L2motivation among the second language learners under the main guidance of L2MSS.The self-discrepancy theory is integrated into the framework to meet the demands ofthis study. The new framework is more rational than the L2MSS theory. The findingshave the potential to enrich the theoretical achievements of L2MSS.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definition of Motivation
Motivation originated from the Latin word “movere”, which implied to move.Keller (1983: 6) defined motivation as “the choices people make as to what goals orexperience they will approach or avoid, and the degree of effort they will exert in thisrespect”. Therefore, motivation can always be regarded as one of the important factorsto determine the individual’s behavior. And it can play an important role in decidingthe result of task-obtaining. The concept of motivation contains various elements,which gives rise to the complexity of motivation and diversity of its definition. Itseems difficult for researchers to agree on the exact definition of motivation.Covington (1998: 1) stated: “Motivation is easy to describe but difficult to define.”
Houston (1985: 9) believed that motivation was the element that “initiates andguides behavior” and “defines the intensity and persistence of the behavior”.McMeniman (1989: 215) defined motivation as “the driving force that can motivateand guide behavior to move towards the goal”. Although many researchers havedifferent understandings of motivation, we can still see that the consensus of thesedefinitions lies in that motivation determines the direction and intensity of individualbehavior. Motivation will decide why people want to do something, how long they will do it and how hard they will do it (D?rynei, 2005).
To sum up, individuals attempt to make efforts to achieve their goals with strongdetermination and persistence, thus producing motivation. In educational psychology,motivation is the internal driving force which provides orientation and energy forpersonal learning activities. The learning motivation is the motive power of learnersto achieve the goal of mastering a second language. Driven by it, learners take actions,make efforts and persevere in order to reach the goal.
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2.2 Previous Studies on L2 Learning Motivation
Since 1950s, scholars have made a lot of motivation researches from differentperspectives. These studies can be divided into four aspects: social-psychology,cognitive-situation, process-orientation, and L2 motivational self system.
2.2.1 Studies from Social-psychology Perspective
The study of L2 learning motivation began in 1950s. Since Gardner and Lambert(1959) proposed the theoretical model of social psychology for the first time, moreand more scholars have begun to devote themselves to the theoretical and empiricalresearches of L2 learning motivation. They put forward and used different models andtheories in succession. But the purpose is the same, improving the proficiency of thelanguage.
The study of Gardner and Lambert (1959) in Montreal and Canada was the firstto study the L2 learning motivation from social-psychology perspective. Theyintroduced attitudes towards the other language community into the model of the L2learning motivation and established a new social psychological model, called the SE(social-educational) model. This model put emphasis on language aptitude, affect,language community relationships and motives (MacIntype et al, 2009). And in theSLA field, the social-educational model mainly includes three dimensions:integrativeness, attitudes toward the learning situation and motivation. The modelclaimed that individual’s L2 motivation was dependent on the support of theintegrativeness and attitudes toward the learning situation. In addition, Masgoret &Gardner (2004) stated that motivation was closely related to the achievement so thatthe integrativeness and attitudes toward the learning situation would have an indirectinfluence on the L2 achievement, acting through motivation. Gardner and Lambert(1959) also came up with the notions of integrative and instrumental motivationwhich were accepted by most western scholars and used in a lot of empirical studies.Gardner and MacIntyre (1991) studied the influence of integrative motivation andinstrumental motivation on the English or French vocabulary acquisition. The resultsshowed that both of these two motivations can enhance the learning effect.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework...........................23
3.1 L2 Motivational Self System Theory............................ 23
3.1.1 Background of the L2 Motivational Self System Theory..................... 23
3.1.2 Main Contents of the L2 Motivational Self System Theory................. 24
Chapter Four Research Methodology........................ 31
4.1 Research Questions.............................. 31
4.2 Research Participants................................. 31
4.3 Research Instruments............................. 32
Chapter Five Results and Discussion................................39
5.1 Features of L2 Learning Motivation among College Students....................... 39
5.1.1 General Situation of Self-motivations among College Students...........39
5.1.2 Features of Self-motivations of College Students.................................41
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1 Features of L2 Learning Motivation among College Students
In order to figure out the characteristics of college students’ motivation, thissection is mainly about the analysis of questionnaires among Non-English Majors andEnglish Majors. Some discussion on the features of college students’ motivation willbe made in this section as well.
5.1.1 General Situation of Self-motivations among College Students
In order to see the characteristics of college students’ L2 learning motivation, thedescriptive statistics of questionnaires in two groups (Group 1 represents“Non-English majors”; Group 2 refers to “English majors”.) are presented in Table5.1.
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Chapter Six Conclusion
6.1 Major Findings
The current study tries to find out the features of the college students’ differentself-motivations, and the relationship between them and achievements. Then, thisstudy also investigates the self-based motivational strategies in the classroom, aimingto improve the college students’ self-motivations and the teaching effects as well.
Features of College Students’ L2 Learning Motivation
The emergence of L2MSS has provided a more rational viewpoint for themotivational studies. The study explored the characteristics of Chinese collegestudents’ motivation from the perspective of L2MSS.
For non-English majors, the strongest motivation is the ideal self-motivation,followed by ought-to self-motivation, present self-motivation, and second languagelearning experience motivation. But the intensities of the latter three vary little. Thestudents have their own ideal self image. And they all want to narrow the gap betweenthe actual self and ideal self, thus producing the strongest ideal self-motivation tolearn the second language.
For English majors, the intensity of motivation gradually decreases in the orderof ideal self-motivation, present self-motivation, ought-to self-motivation and thelearning experience motivation. The students are confident in their English proficiency so that the present self-motivation ranks second only to idealself-motivation.
The present self-motivation and ideal self-motivation of English majors arestronger than those of non-English majors. But they have similar intensity of ought-toself-motivation and learning experience motivation due to the fact that the freshmenhad the similar learning environment before.
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