摘要
自20世纪以来,英语作为一个交流工具在中国已经成为最受关注的学科及最为流行的外国语言。同时,面临着经济全球化所带来的机遇和挑战,中国急需那些本身拥有出众的专业知识和能力,同时又能使用英语作为第二语言并且能够同世界不同领域专家和学者交流的专门人才。因此,我们迫切需要培养这方面的适合社会和国家建设的复合型、实用型的人才。
在当今全球化时代,教育的多样化正在成为必然并已经被中国人民所接受。一股奔涌的兴办教育的浪潮滚滚而来,其中民办教育异军突起并扮演着越来越重要的角色,为国家的整体教育的不足提供了极好的补充。相当一部分在全国高考中落榜的考生选择了到民办大学里一圆自己的大学梦。鉴于此,客观来讲民办大学的学生素质是偏低于那些公办大学的学生的;那么采取恰当的措施来激发民办院校的学生的英语学习的动机,调动他们的积极性以此促使学生能够掌握更地道的英语语言就显得尤为必要且异常紧迫了。
时至今日,国内外的许多专家和学者著述了很多有关于语言学习动机的具有研究价值的文章,他们普遍认为良好的掌握一门外语和很高的动机水平是紧密相关的。本文作者试图从研究民办大学的新生,这一最为复杂的,同时也是最值得关注的学生群体,研究他们的学习动机水平现状和种类等问题并予以回答以下的问题:
1.英语专业一年级学生的英语学习动机的特点是什么?男女生之间的动机水平是否有所不同?
2.哪些因素影响了学生的英语学习动机。
3.影响学生的英语学习动机的因素对教师的教学工作有何启示?
本文采用了定性研究的问卷调查和访谈的研究方法,根本上从内在动机和外在动机两方面对大学一年级学生进行了学习动机的调查和分析,进而研究了造成一年级学生的不同动机的原因,从而进一步探讨了针对于一年级学生的英语学习动机的策略,为今后促进民办大学英语教学质量的提高和发展提供一份有价值的参考;
本次研究着重对长春东北师范大学人文学院的2007级四个班122名新生进行了问卷调查,并对其中10名同学进行了面对面的采访。采用问卷、访谈的研究方法来搜集数据,最后对数据进行了教育统计学的方法进行了分析。根据所进行的分析结果研究发现:
1.大一的学生多数有着较强的英语学习动机,就内部动机和外部动机而言,动机的趋向比较分散、但是总体上趋向外部动机。
2.新生中,性别这一变量对于倾向哪种学习动机影响不显著。
3.相当一部分新生对待学习英语语言的动机还存在不明确的现状。
本文作者还提出了今后研究的方向:
1.加长研究的时间,并扩大研究的范围,横相比较其它民办院校的新生的学习动机状况。
2.力求今后后续研究能够综合使用其它的信度更高的研究方法。
Since the 20th century, the theory of motivation has been very popular in China. It is strongly believed and advocated that the study of learning motivation would be very promising and constructive in the future and playing a great and decisive role in English education development in China. At the same time, facing the opportunities and challenges offered by the globalization, China is in the great need of professional talents who, along with their own major, have the good command of English as their second language to communicate with different people in different fields of international exchange. Thus, English teaching are highly expected to contribute to Chinese education system and motivating the whole atmosphere for Chinese students especially those from the private colleges.
In order to meet the need of training students with such high quality, it is quite urgent to practise, and take suitable measures to stimulate the learning motivation of students from private college because the students there are generally inferior to those in public colleges in ability for learning English.
At present time, there are quite many research papers in which researchers from home and abroad illustrated a lot on learning motivation. Here, the author of this paper tries to study the problems on learning motivation of students from private colleges in China, and manages to answer these questions as below:
1. What are the characteristics of first-year English major’s learning motivation? And whether there is a difference between male and female students from private colleges.
2. What factors affect the students’learning motivation?
3. Are the factors that affected the learning motivation of freshmen implicative to teachers’teaching work in the future?
This paper employed the qualitative and quantitative research methods to study the learning motivation of freshmen from the angle of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. 122 students from grade one participated in the survey. Ten of them attended the interview and exposed their real thoughts about present state of learning motivation, which also enhances the reliability of this research. Then, the results of the research about the learning motivation were produced and analyzed on roots. At the meantime, the motivational strategies which are only intended for the freshmen were put forward, which will be a referential value to private colleges for improving its teaching quality in English course.
The results out of this research indicate the present level of learning motivation of freshmen and the relevant problems appeared:
1. The majority of first-year English majors show a high level of learning motivation but there is no obvious inclination for one single learning motivation among them.
2. Among the freshmen, the only variable has nothing to do with the choices of learning motivation for freshmen.
3. Quite a number of freshmen can not make sure whether they are interested in learning English.
At the same time, some feasible proposals are put forward for the future research:
1.) The present study still has limitations. For instance, the time for this study is limited; the reliability needs to be improved because participants are only the first-year students of the same college, further researches should be carried out by sampling more students from different private colleges.
2) The study here has only adopted a very simple method for investigation on learning motivation by giving just a descriptive illustration. However, other research methods should be used in the future studies.
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