A Study on L2 Motivation and Applications in Reading Class in Senior High School

Abstract

Foreign language acquisition is a complicated process, which involved various factors. The personality factors, especially non-intelligence factors, such as motivation, attitude, character, etc. are the most direct and important ones. Among them, apparently, motivation is the key to learning. This thesis extends the previous studies, trying to have a basic understanding of Chinese senior high school students’ reasons for learning English and their efforts paid in this learning process. This study was carried out among 96 students in grade 2 in Zhenjiang NO.1 middle school. A language learning motivation questionnaire was constructed based on Gardner (1985) to examine students’ responses on 9 items. The results of the study show that students hold stronger instrumental reasons towards English learning, which is similar with the traditional view that instrumental motivation is more characteristic of EFL learners. However, instrumental motivation causes no effect on students’ motivational intensity. The findings shed some lights on the teaching practice, especially on the reading class. One thing to emerge meaningfully from this study is that the combination of integrative motivation and instrumental motivation may exert a greater influence on reading class improvement; English teachers shall take some effective applications to arouse students’ motivation in reading class and help them develop integrative motivation towards English learning.