（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）英语学习动机与学习策略关系的研究.pdf

a study on the relationship between english learning motivation and learning strategies iv 摘 要 随着教育心理学的发展， 越来越多的研究开始注重学习者个人因素，研究诸如年 龄、性别、动机、学习策略及个性等因素。动机被认为是影响学习成绩的最重要因素之 一，学习策略是二语学习中的另外一个重要变量。学习策略的选择受多种因素的影响， 其中，动机是首要决定因素。 本文旨在通过对中南民族大学非英语专业文科班学生和理科班学生的问卷调查， 探索英语学习动机和学习策略的关系。文科生和理科生代表不同学习特征的学习者，因 而他们的英语学习动机和学习策略也不尽相同。118 名大二学生参加了问卷调查，其中 文科生 61 名，理科生 57 名。所有参加学生都要在指定时间内完成学习动机与策略的调 查问卷。问卷数据分析使用软件 spss 13.0, 方法包括描述性统计分析和相关分析。 研究结果表明： （1） 英语学习中，文科生的动机要比理科生强，并且文科生更频繁使用学习策 略； （2） 无论文科生还是理科生，他们的融入型动机和工具型动机最强，其次是成 就型动机，最后是外在动机。 （3） 文科生频繁使用各种学习策略而理科生学习策略使用频率为中等情况； （4） 参加问卷调查者最不经常使用的学习策略是社会策略，表明学生并不喜欢 以交流提高英语学习，这在中国是个极为普遍现象。 （5） 融入型动机和工具型动机与学习策略有很强相关性，某些动机类型对特定 学习策略有影响。 以上研究结果期望能对语言教学与学习有一定启示。学习动机和学习策略的相关 性也表明在英语学习中，老师和学生都有必要意识到动机的重要性，并且，老师要尽力 激发学生的动机，鼓励学生使用各种学习策略。 关键词关键词：语言学习动机；语言学习策略；关系 a study on the relationship between english learning motivation and learning strategies ii abstract with the development of educational psychology, more and more attention has been paid to learners individual differences, such as age, sex, motivation, learning strategies, and personality. motivation is regarded as one of the most important factors influencing learning achievement, and learning strategy is another important variable in second language acquisition. the choice of learning strategy is affected by large number factors, among which motivation constitute the prime determining one. this thesis intends to explore the relationship between language learning motivation and learning strategies through a questionnaire conducted on two groups of non-english majors from south-central university for nationalities: students of arts and students of science and technology. the two groups of students are supposed to hold different motivation and therefore adopt different learning strategies. a total of 118 sophomore students participated in the research, 61 are of arts and 57 are of science and technology. the participants were required to finish the learning motivation and learning strategy questionnaire within the set time. the software statistical package for the social science (spss 13.0) was used for statistical calculation, including descriptive analysis and correlation analysis. the research results finally indicate: (1) students of arts are highly motivated than students of science and technology in english study, and they adopt learning strategies more frequently; (2) for both students of arts and students of science and technology, they hold strong integrative motivation and instrumental motivation, resultative motivation ranks second, and extrinsic motivation play the least role in motivating english study; (3) students of arts are more frequent in using a variety of strategies while students of science and technology use learning strategies at a medium level; (4) the strategies that all the participants do not favor are social strategies, suggesting students do not like improving english through communication, which may be a common phenomenon in china; (5) integrative motivation and instrumental motivation have strong correlations with 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 iii learning strategies, and some motivation can affect students preference of certain strategies. the findings of the research are expected to provide some implications for language teaching and learning. the correlation between motivation and strategies suggest that in language study, it is necessary for both students and teachers to be aware of the importance of motivation; moreover, teachers should try to stimulate students motivation and encourage students to use all types of learning strategies. key words: language learning motivation, language learning strategies, relationship 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 v list of figures and tables figure 2.1 a three-stage model of motivation14 figure 2.2 diagram of the strategy system: overview23 table 2.1 dimensions of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.10 table 2.2: definitions of learning strategies. 16 table 4.1: the mean score and standard deviation of each motivation.31 table 4.2: a comparison of each type of motivation held between group 1 and group 2.33 table 4.3 frequencies: integrative motivation (statement 1-6).34 table 4.4 frequencies: instrumental motivation (statement 7-11).35 table 4.5 frequencies: extrinsic motivation (statement 12-15).36 table 4.6: frequencies: resultative motivation (statement 16-19)36 table 4.7: the mean score and standard deviation of each strategy37 table 4.8: a comparison of each type of strategy used between group 1 and group 239 table 4.9 frequencies: cognitive strategies (statement 20-28).40 table 4.10 frequencies: meta-cognitive strategies (statement 29-33).41 table 4.11 frequencies: compensation strategies (statement 34-37).42 table 4.12 frequencies: affective strategies (statement 37-41).43 table 4.13 frequencies: social strategies (statement 42-45).44 table 4.14 correlation analysis on motivation and learning strategies.45 中南民族大学中南民族大学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的 研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或 集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均 已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保 留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借 阅。 本人授权中南民族大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库 进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 本学位论文属于 1、保密，在_年解密后适用本授权书。 2、不保密。 （请在以上相应方框内打“” ） 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 i acknowledgements the completion of the thesis is a laborious task in which many people are involved. among them, i would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, professor zhang liyu, who has been taken care of my academic study through the past three years. without her enlightening instruction, insightful advice and kind encouragement, the completion of this thesis would be impossible. i am also very grateful to professors who taught me during my master of arts candidacy, namely, professor yuan xuefen, professor huang chongzhen and so on. i have benefited a lot from their inspiring lectures and profound knowledge. thanks also go to my classmates long lirong, tan lijuan, zhao yan, and han lifen, whose invaluable suggestions played an important role in my thesis completion. special thanks go to teachers and students in scun for assisting me in conducting the research survey. last but not least, my endless thanks go to my parents, who supported me and encouraged me throughout the whole postgraduate study. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 background for a long time, foreign language teachers and researchers have been focusing on teaching methods, hoping to find a best approach that applied to all learners and bring out successful learning outcomes. so various teaching methods emerged constantly, such as grammar-translation, direct way, oral approach, audio-lingual method, communicative language teaching, total physical response, and silent way, etc. which however, failed to bring forth the anticipated results without the consideration of language learners. since the 1970s, with the development of educational psychology, more and more researchers and teachers interested in language learning began to shift their attention to learners, they gradually realized that for foreign study, teaching method is just an extrinsic factor, but the factor that decided is the learner factor, which is the intrinsic factor. so, the study of individual learners is gaining increasing attention. people find only through the study of individual learners factors such as the concept learners hold, the kinds of learning strategies they adopt, their learning motivation, their personality, age, intelligence and characteristics, etc. can they truly study learners and then help improving foreign language learning. the reason perhaps is that language learners vary in different ways, and they are affected by a good many social and psychological factors, while language is a skill that can be acquired only through the efforts of the learners themselves. that is to say, successful learning and teaching is a combination of many factors, among which teaching methods can only play a part, while more important are learners individual differences. this also means that foreign language study has shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered, and language learners have gradually been regarded as the center of research. oxford and ehrman (1993) suggest that teachers of a second language (l2) need to identify and comprehend significant individual differences in their learners if they are to provide the most effective instruction possible. as to how language learning is affected by learners individual differences, eight factors have been generally acknowledged and a study on the relationship between english learning motivation and learning strategies 2 discussed: motivation, intelligence, aptitude, personality, age, sex, first language and learning strategies. these learner variables have been considered significant in second language acquisition (sla), among which motivation is regarded as one of the most dynamic ones and it constitutes one of the most fully researched areas of individual differences in sla (ellis, 1999). vivian cook (2000, p.96) stated that some l2 learners do better than others because they are better motivated. chomsky (1988) pointed out the importance of activating learners motivation as: the truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interested in the material (arnold, 2000). motivation involves the learners reasons for attempting to acquire the second language, and it is argued that motivation factor in foreign language learning is especially important which can not be ignored by teachers and researchers. many empirical studies on foreign language learning have proved statistical evidence that students who are higher motivated will learn a second language better to a greater degree, besides, motivation and foreign language learning are closely interrelated: on the one hand, motivation can motivate the accomplishment of the learning goal, and then promote language learning; on the other hand, students who do better in language learning will be highly motivated. so corder once stated “given motivation, anyone can learn a language” (skehan, 1991, p.49). learning strategy, another important individual difference variable in second language acquisition, has attracted the attention of teachers and researchers since the 1960s, when a considerable amount of descriptive work has been carried out in this area. the study of learning strategy is of great importance, and the importance is becoming increasingly prominent (skehan, 1991), as appropriate learning strategy is a guarantee for effective learning activities and learning efficiency. used appropriately, learning strategy can improve the internalization, storage, retrieval or usage of a foreign language (wen qiufang, 2003). the choice of language learning strategy is influenced by many factors, among which learning motivation is a very important one. gardner (1985) states that motivation is the prime determining factor in language learning success because motivation, along with attitudes, determines the extent of active personal engagement in language learning and would be reflected in strategy choice. oxford and nyikos (1989) also mentioned that of all 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 3 the variables measured, motivation is the most powerful influence on the reported use of language learning strategies. however, are these findings abroad suitable to the students in china? oxford (1989) claimed “mixed findings exist about the influences of language motivations on language learning strategy use. clearly this is an area needing greater exploration”. so on the relationship between language motivation and learning strategies, there are still many questions to be solved, which needs further exploration. 1.2 purpose of the study at present, college english teaching is faced with great reform, new curriculum has been set up and improved to adapt to new students and new situation; new textbooks have been designed; various teaching methods have been explored and tried; new classrooms with technology are provided, etc. under these situations, the emphasis of language teaching has been shift from teachers to learners, and learners individual differences have gained increasing attention, learners variables like language learning motivation, learning strategy, and personality have been studied a lot. but previous studies about learning motivation and learning strategy mainly study them respectively, usually in accordance with some unmodified variables such as age and sex, and little work has been done on the relationship between the two variables. in this thesis, the author attempts to investigate and analyze the relationship between language learning motivation and learning strategies through the tool of questionnaires among non-english majors in chinese context. the specific purposes of the study are to find out: (1) what motivations are mainly held among efl non-english majors in south-central university for nationalities (scun)? what are the differences in regard to their academic majors? (2) what learning strategy do they usually choose? what are the differences with respect to academic majors? (3) what is the relationship between language learning motivation and learning strategies among efl non-english majors in scun? a study on the relationship between english learning motivation and learning strategies 4 (4) what type of motivation will influence students choice of learning strategies? the present study attempts to answer these questions by comparing two groups of learners chosen on the authors hypotheses concerning their motivation characteristics and their use of learning strategies. it is an empirical study and descriptive in nature, each participant is asked to fill in “motivation and learning strategies questionnaire” with background information as their academic major and the nature of their major. data analysis is manipulated in computer with the statistical software of spss13.0 (statistical package for social science). 1.3 significance of the study this study is important both theoretically and practically. theoretically because it is important to explore the differences in foreign language learning motivation and learning strategy among non-english majors in regard to different academic major and it investigates the relationship between efl learning motivation and learning strategy among non-english majors. so it provides empirical evidence for researchers, the results on the relationship between motivation and learning strategies will shed lights on foreign language teaching and learning practice, thus enrich and enlighten research on foreign language learning motivation and learning strategy. this study also has practical insights, as the findings of the study will benefit english teachers and learners in their practice. firstly, it can help college english teachers understand students motivation type and use of learning strategies, since teachers need to identify learners motivation and learning strategies, determining whether the strategies are appropriate for their particular goals and maybe change teaching method to arouse learners high motivation to improve teaching efficiency. secondly, it can help learners build up appropriate learning strategy system which would help facilitating their learning. 1.4 organization of the thesis the thesis consists of five parts: chapter one makes a brief introduction of the present study, points out what inspires the author to carry out the study, and then leads to the very topic of this study. after that, the 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 5 author presents the general purpose and raises specific questions, followed by the significance of the study. chapter two reviews previous studies on foreign language learning motivation and learning strategy in detailed respectively, including their definitions, classifications, relevant theories as well as empirical studies on these two areas, and then makes a general survey about the limited amount of research on the relationship between language learning motivation and learning strategy, thus establish a sound theoretical foundation for this study. chapter three elaborates in detail on the situations of the subjects, instrument employed in this study, the process of data collection and data analysis, especially on how the questionnaire was designed. chapter four first shows the results of data analysis and then compares language learning motivation held and language learning strategies employed by students of different academic majors in respect to each research question, especially in regard to their academic majors, and ends with the relationship between learning motivation and learning strategy. chapter five summarizes the whole study, providing some pedagogical implications, discussing limitations of the study, and proposing suggestions for future research. a study on the relationship between english learning motivation and learning strategies 6 chapter two literature review this chapter reviews literature of two variables: language learning motivation and learning strategy. the whole chapter consists of three parts: part one presents definitions and classifications of motivation, followed by influential motivation theories; part two introduces definitions and classifications of learning strategies; part three is concerned with the limited amount research on the re