EMPIRICAL STUDY ON CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS' ENGLISH LEARNING MOTIVATION IN LOCAL UNIVERSITIES

摘要

Based on the questionnaire of college students' English learning motivation developed by Gao Yihong(2 000), with 304 college students from some local universities as subjects, the paper aims to discuss the intensity of college students' English learning motivation as well as the most common motivation content, and compare different types of college students' English learning motivation. The results show that the intensity of college students' English learning motivation in local university are above average, which are in the following descending order: personal development, social responsibility, information media, inherent interest, achievement, going abroad and learning situation. The most common five main motivation contents are related to personal development. Undergraduates' intrinsic motivation is significantly lower than that of junior college students. And college students who have done parttime jobs have distinctive higher inherent interest motivation, going abroad motivation, social responsibility motivation, information media motivation than those of students who have no working experiences. The differences of English learning motivation in gender, grade, only child, student status, autoditacte, majors have not been found in this research.