A Study of Technical College Students' English Learning Motivation in Southern Taiwan

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题名:	A Study of Technical College Students' English Learning Motivation in Southern Taiwan
作者:	Chiung-Li Li;Sandy Haggard
贡献者:	Associate professor, Applied Foreign Languages Department, Meiho University;Lecturer, Applied Foreign Languages Department, Meiho University
关键词:	motivation;instrumental;expectancy-value;self-efficacy;supereminence
日期:	2010
上传时间:	2011-06-18T02:28:24Z (UTC)
摘要:	The English proficiency of students in Taiwan’s technical colleges has become increasingly worse over the years. Teachers face the difficult challenge to find ways to help improve technical college students’ English proficiency in a short amount of time. In fact, many factors are responsible for EFL college students’ poor English competence. Based on a review of the literature, learning achievement can be correlated with learning motivation, learning strategies, learning styles, learning environment, instructors’ teaching methods, teaching materials, teaching attitudes, and parental attitudes. Though different factors have different levels of effect on learning achievement and efficiency, the researchers strongly believe that learning motivation is a vital element in the process of learning, and it is the fundamental force in reaching a goal. Without a doubt, having no learning motivation is not easy to gain learning achievement. According to Dörnyei’s statement (2001), most researchers agree that motivation is the choice of whether to perform a particular action, the persistence pursuing the action, and the effort expended on the action. In other words, motivation is the reason why people decide to do something, how long they are willing to sustain the activity, and how hard they are willing to pursue the activity. Learning English is required in the technical college curriculum even though most of the students’ English background is weak; therefore, determining how to promote technical college students’ English learning motivation is crucial. According to Gardner (1985), language learning motivation has three components: motivational intensity, the desire to learn the language, and the attitude towards learning the language. Moreover, based on Dörnyei and Otto’s definition of L2 motivation (1998), motivation can be defined as the dynamically changing cumulative arousal in a person that initiates, directs, coordinates, amplifies, terminates, and evaluates the cognitive and motor processes whereby initial wishes and desires are selected, prioritized, organized and (successfully or unsuccessfully) acted out. Schumann (1998) also argued “second language acquisition is emotionally driven and emotion underlies most, if not all cognition.” In other words, motivation plays a critical role in language learning. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to determine which kind of learning motivation the technical college students regard as most important when learning English. The research instrument was an English Learning Motivation Scale designed by Li et al. (2006), and the subjects were 396 English Level A and C students enrolled in the General English course at Meiho Institute of Technology, located in southern Taiwan. Based on the data collected from the English learning motivation scale, the findings showed that the ranking of learning motivation given by the English Level C subjects from the highest to the lowest was an interest in foreign cultures, supereminence motivation, self-efficacy, passive motivation, expectancy-value, and instrumental motivation. Moreover, the ranking of learning motivation given by the English Level A subjects from the highest to the lowest was passive motivation, supereminence motivation, an interest in foreign cultures, self-efficacy, expectancy-value, and instrumental motivation. Finally, the researchers drew a conclusion and provided some implications to English learners and instructors.
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