1。3 The Purpose and Significance of the Study

English learning motivation is to inspire inpidual's learning activity and maintain the learning activities has been caused。 Meanwhile, it can make the learners’ behavior achieve a certain goal。 To some extent, Learning motivation can effect and even strengthen learning activities, while leaning activities can activate and consolidate learning activities。 In a word, learning motivation has closed link with learning activities。 In China, English learning is an essential part in middle school study。 Amongst a large amount of factors that effect learning results, the motivation is one of the most dominate factor。 It can psychologically motivate the learners to learning English actively。 Also, it is a prerequisite which can improve their learning ability 。 Overall, it is essential for teachers to understand the influencing factors of learning motivation and master the methods of activating learning motivation to mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of learners English learning。

Therefore, the purpose in the survey study is to have a general knowledge of English learning motivation in middle school students, and find out the effects that high motivation has on learning English。 Subsequently, through different kinds of methods (which will be mentioned in Chapter 3), author tries to answer three questions(which will be mentioned in Chapter 3) and have better understanding of the motivation。 

Also, the theoretical and practical significance of this study is as follows:

Firstly, the result of the study could give English teachers of middle schools some hints, which could help them work out more measures to design an appropriate class to arouse students’ learning motivation。

Secondly, the result of this study would provide some data for the research of English learning motivation, making a supplement in these fields。

Thirdly, the study could provide assistance for further research in the future。

Hence, the findings of this study will be beneficial for English teachers and researchers to some extent。

2。 Literature Review

Motivation is of great importance in SLA, because it provides the driving force to initiate and sustain a long learning process( Liu, 2013:23)。 So the researches about motivation in the nearly past 50 years have seen the development and achievements about it。 In this part, the definition of motivation, the theoretical basis of motivation and the limitation of former study。

2。1 Definitions of Motivation

    With increasing attention paid to the roles of learners in the process of language learning, there is a general consensus in the literature that motivation is one of the key learner characteristics。 Many teachers and researchers have done a lot of researches on the role of motivation and explored it from perse perspectives such as behaviorism, cognitive psychology and sociology, which are all related and add to our understanding of what motivates students。 Brown (1980:112) has made a statement that motivation is possibly the most often used catch-all term in explaining the success or failure of almost any complicated tasks。 Deci and Ryan (1985:67) in their self -determination theory argue that different subtypes of motivation, i。e。, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, can be shown along a continuum depending on the degree of self-determination。 Crooks and Schmidt (1991:79) think it as the learner’s orientation regarding the goal of learning a second language and suggest that motivation to learn a language has both internal and external factors。 Dornyei (2009) maintains that motivation is one of the most important concepts in psychology and language education, which is commonly used to ex-plain learners’ success and failure in learning。论文网

    However, it is the work of Gardner and his companions that has heavily influenced the research on motivation in SLA。 Gardner (1972:114-116) has suggested that motivation is considered as a central element along with language proficiency in determining the success in the process of learning other language。 He suggests that motivation is influenced by two orientations to language learning which are integrative orientation and instrumental orientation。 Gardner et al。 (1977:86) define them as follows: integrative reasons are defined as those that indicate an interest in learning the language in order to meet and communicate with members of the second language community。 Instrumental reasons refer to those reasons, which stress the pragmatic aspects of learning the second language, without any particular interest in communicating with the second language community。