V。 Conclusion 16

5。1 Major Findings 16

5。2 Limitations 17

Bibliography 19

Acknowledgements 20

Appendices 21

Appendix I 21

Appendix II 22

Appendix III 23

I。 Literature Review

1。1 Introduction

Due to the reform and opening-up policy in China, Chinese more frequently communicates with foreigners。 At the same time, English becomes an essential tool in international contact。 On this basis, the author wants to investigate the English learning motivation of Chinese students’。 There is no doubt that no one can achieve long-term success without motivation, so is learning English。 For this reason, tremendous researches have been conducted both at home and abroad to study students’ learning motivation in second language acquisition, such as Dornyei, Gardner, Gao Yihong, and etc。 But few of them pay attention to non-English majors’ in normal universities。 Therefore, this study is designed to investigate the English learning motivation of non-English majors’ in normal universities, in order to fill up the blank in this field。 Meanwhile, the author wants to put forward some measures for teachers to improve their teaching quality and stimulate students’ English learning interest。论文网

This paper consists of five parts。 The first part introduces some famous definitions and the classifications of learning motivation。 The second part presents the methodologies used this study, including research objectives, research subjects, and the instruments。 One hundred sophomores are randomly selected from Zhoukou Normal University, which aims at finding out the non-English majors’ learning motivation and relationship between motivation and gender。 Then, the third part is to analyze and discuss the results of the investigation。 From the results, a clear picture about students’ learning motivation, the relationship between motivation and gender, and factors influencing students’ English learning motivation comes into view。 Based on the findings above, some implications are presented in part four, which are important for teachers to maintain and enhance students’ English learning motivation。 The last part gives a conclusion about the whole paper and points out some limitations of this study。

1。2 Definitions

“If teachers are asked to identify the most powerful influences on learning, motivation will probably be high on most teachers’ list。” (Williams and Burden, 1997) The meaning of learning motivation in literature has not reached a consensus, because of its inherent complexity。 However, a great number of research approaches and theories have been put forward。 This part gives the general meaning and classifications of learning motivation as well as the factors which influence students’ English learning motivation so as to offer a solid foundation for this study。

It is difficult to define the term “motivation”, because different researchers have different point of views toward the meaning。 Although many researchers agree that motivation is very important and strongly related to the achievement in second language learning。 But general agreement on the definition of motivation has not reached。 Gardner’s definition is the best known and frequently-quoted in second language acquisition。 In his social-education model, motivation consists of three elements, respectively, desire, efforts, and attitude。 Desire refers to what levels the learners want to reach in the language studying; efforts illustrate that the time and energy is spent in learning the second language; attitude indicates the learner’s emotional reactions to the language learning。 These three elements are related to each other and form a union。 If someone is strongly interested in learning a foreign language, not put his active feelings into practice or doing his greatest best to studying, this is not real motivation。文献综述