1。2 1。2 Purpose and Significance of the Research 

This study involving English-major students as subjects aims to investigate the preferences about motivation and learning strategies of subjects in City Normal University and their English achievements, thus to explore the relationships between both motivation and language learning strategies and English proficiency levels and this purpose will be accomplished through answering the following questions:

1。 What relationship is there between learning strategies and English proficiency levels?

2。 What relationship is there between motivation and English proficiency levels?

3。 What are the patterns in the use of learning strategies by English-major students as evidenced by the data?

4。 What are the patterns in the use of motivation by English-major students as evidenced by the data?

This study intends to make contributions to provide additional information about influences of motivation and language learning strategies on foreign language learning。 As college students, they are cognitively mature, and able to monitor their motivation levels better as well as what strategies to use under what conditions。 Therefore, this study may shed light on these relationships which, in turn, will be able to provide insights to language teachers to help them improve or innovate in their instruction methodologies, facilitate their teaching efficiency and deepen their teaching influence。 

1。3 1。3 Organization of Thesis来自优W尔Y论W文C网WWw.YoueRw.com 加QQ7520,18766 A

This thesis consists of five aspects:

Chapter One provides an introduction briefly indicating the broad research background and the necessity of this thesis and showing a general layout of whole dissertation。

Chapter Two offers the review of relevant literatures about the taxonomies of language proficiency levels, taxonomies of language learning strategies (consisting of definition and classification), taxonomies of motivation (including definition and classification), and the relationships between both motivation and language learning strategies and English proficiency levels。

Chapter Three is about methodology, discussing about the research questions, subjects who participated the research, instruments, procedures including data collecting and data analysis。 

Chapter Four presents the final results of this research and further discussions based on the analysis of collected data for answering research questions completely。

Chapter Five constitutes the conclusion and implication of this thesis, meanwhile stating some recommendations for English instruction and some limitations inside this dissertation。

2。 Literature Review

2。1 2。1 Taxonomy of Proficiency Levels

Based on the theory of Douglas Brown (2013), proficiency levels referring to the levels of language proficiency, are the ability of an inpidual to speak or perform in an acquired language。 So without the guidance of it, teachers tend to be difficult to instruct their students more professionally。

Although so important the proficiency levels are, there are some sets of criteria of defining proficiency levels discussed to depict the levels of proficiency vividly。 For example, they have been measured and defined differently in various kinds of studies according to the study of Abdullah Ahmed Zughaibi (2013)。 

First is to define students’ proficiency through their year of study, including the research of Naoko Taguchi (2008), who pided 63 Japanese students into 2 groups according to their times spent on study。 In other words, the longer time they have studied the higher level they can achieve。 Secondly, some researchers also designed the assessments to make judgements on that。 For example, Yamanaka (2003) used a cloze test and Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei (1998) gauged students by self-rating methods。