Abstract:

College English major and non-English major students’ learning motivations are unstable, learning goals are unclear and English learning motivations are different. This paper will adopt the way of questionnaire and interview to investigate college English and non-English majors’ basic situations, point out the difference between their English learning motivations, and analyze the influence of different learning motivations in Second Language Acquisition. Then it will find out the highest motivation in college students’ learning motivation and look for good methods stimulating college students’ learning motivations for making the Second Language Acquisition obtains better effect.

Key words: second language acquisition; learning motivation; activation

摘要：

大学英语专业跟非英语专业学生的学习动机不稳定且学习目标不明确，英语的学习动机也不相同。本文将采用问卷调查和访谈的方式对大学英语专业与非英语专业学生的学习动机基本情况的调查，指出他们的英语学习动机的不同之处；并分析不同学习动机对二语习得的影响，从而发现在大学生学习动机中占比例最高的动机并找出激发大学生学习动机的方法，使二语习得取得更好地效果。

关键词：二语习得；学习动机；激发；策略

1. Introduction
It is well know that motivation has been considered to be one of the most important factors in Second Language Acquisition. With regard to motivations, linguists have done a lot of meaningful researches. A large number of data show that active learning motivations keep a close relationship with successful Second Language Acquisition. Since the 1950s, foreign scholars hold that motivation is an important factor in the process of Second Language Acquisition. Actually motivation itself is complex, which involves many factors, but foreign scholars only emphasize one or several factors. During the early 1980s and 1990s, domestic scholars mainly introduce the foreign theories and take leaning motivations as an important social factor into consideration. Later, domestic scholars analyze learning motivations from different subjects, for instance, investigating primary and middle school students’ learning motivations. From the perspective of the existing research results, the research subjects are primary and middle school students in the majority, however, few scholars focus on the complex learning motivations of college students. In fact, college students’ learning motivations are more complicated. For college students lack enough learning motivations.