田海燕
（西宁市第九中学，青海 西宁，810000）
Abstract
Learning motivation plays an important role in our study. It is also constraints the quality of today’s school education directly. We can study happily because of the good learning motivation. Learning motivation has been considered to be one of the most important elements which influence the learning efficiency. The paper taking English learning as an example, analyses the learning motivation and its affecting factors, the relationship between learning motivation and learning efficiency. Then the paper shows the stimulating methods of learning motivation. It is concluded that the effective learning should base on the good learning motivation, as well as the teacher’s guidance and your efforts. Then, you will make progress continuously and gain the success.
Introduction
Learning motivation is an easily neglected problem in our study. The achievement of learning is closely related to it. With no doubt, learning English is a common phenomenon for world people. But because of the lack of learning motivation, many people have no interest in learning English and some even feel fear for English study. In order to find out the reason that how learning motivation affect the language study. Many researchers pull their spirit to research the learning motivation for the foreign language study. Gardner and Lambert, who is the founder of foreign language research on learning motivation, has proposed the classic model of learning motivation. From the view of social psychology, their theory pattern and research method has became the leading model and research model in the next three or four decades. Since 1980s, the learning motivation of foreign language has entered into a multi-faced new era. The combination of the motivation research and school education has become the core of research.( Dornyei, 1998, Oxford, et al,1994; Schumann,1998; William, et al ,1997). At present, the research of the second language is mainly tends to two trends. The first trend is to discuss the consist elements from the theory and the purpose of the theory structure of motivation.(Clement,1994;Drnyei,1994;William Burden,1997); the second trend is to discuss the internal structure of motivation with practice. (Schmidt,1996;Tremblay,1995). The research is still continuing and the reason why I choose this subject is that I want to know how learning motivation affect our study, how to promote the learning efficiency through learning motivation. We should support the whole life study. There is an old saying: never too late to learn; No matter what kind of job will we engage in the future, if you have a good learning motivation, you will benefit from it.
Chapter Ⅰ Motivation and Learning Motivation
1.1The Definition of Motivation
There are many views about motivation in the field of psychology. In general, the psychologist said: the motivation is caused by aim and object, it is a kind of internal process of psychology or internal power to stimulate and maintain the activities of individual.(Pintrich &Schunk,1996). All kinds of theories of motivation says that motivation is the basis of most behaviors(Weiner,1985). Motivation is driven by human activities，a motive or force, Including the individual’s intentions, aspirations, psychological impulse, or attempt to achieve. The motivation refers to the motivation types of learning motivation which is an internal power to motivate students to learn. The relationship between learning motivation and learning are mainly considered as an indirect relationship of promotion and declining. Motivation is an important condition to support the learning activities smoothly.
1.2 Learning Motivation and Its Functions
1.2.1 Learning Motivation
Learning motivation is an internal power to motivate students to learn. It is also a need of study to stimulate and guide students. The student’s study is affected by many factors which are mainly dominated by the learning motivation, but it is also linked with the students’ interest in learning, the need of learning, personal values, students’ attitude, students’ ambition and outside encourages.
1.2.2 The Functions of Learning Motivation
The learning motivation has four functions. The first one: Activation Function. When students are badly in need of study or skill, learning motivation will arouse the internal psychological state of excitement and anxiety to produce the behaviors of learning. The second one: Orientation Function. The learning motivation can make the learning behavior as a solid goal at the beginning of study. The third one: Enhancement Function. Under the promotion of the learning motivation, the students will become more and more industrial and sincere for study. The fourth one: Regulatory Function. The learning motivation can adjust the strength, time and direction of learning behavior. If they haven’t reach the goal which they set at the beginning, they will adjust the goal to achieve it.
Chapter Ⅱ The Relationship between Learning Motivation and Learning Efficiency
For the relationship between learning motivation and learning efficiency, most people will say that learning efficiency can be promoted with the high strength of motivation. Actually, it is wrong. High motivation will narrow students’ thoughts, affect students’ intelligence. If the learning task is difficult, the students who have high motivation but fail to success, then it will affect students’ confidence. So, proper motivation is needed for our study. If we know the relationship between learning motivation and learning efficiency, we will know what kind of strength of learning motivation is needed to promote learning efficiency.
2.1 The Positive effect on Learning Efficiency
The American psychologist Lowell used to make a test to compare two groups of college students’ learning efficiency. The learning motivation is different and the other conditions are the same. The result is that the group with relatively high motivation can make progress continuously and the learning efficiency is also increased. This test shows that learning motivation has positive effect on learning efficiency, and if the learning motivation is improved, the learning efficiency will be improved as well.
2.2 Optimal Motivation Level
The relationship between learning efficiency and the strength of learning motivation is not totally the direct ratio. The excessive or overexcited learning motivation will put the students into a state of nervous, the range of consciousness and attention would become narrow. So it will limit the activity of the intelligence, reduce the efficiency of the thought. Hence, there is the optimal motivation level in the learning motivation. It also means within a certain range, the learning efficiency will be promoted as the increase of the strength of learning motivation. However, the relationship can be affected by the factors of the learner’s personality, the nature of the subject and the difficulty of the material etc.
2.3 Yefkes-Dodson Law
The optimal level of the strength of motivation could be changed with the difficulty level of the learning activity. Generally speaking, the optimal level of the strength of motivation is relatively high if the learning activity is easy. On the contrary, it will become low if the learning activity is difficult. This is the Yefkes-Dodson Low
Yefkes-Dodson Law
What’s more, the optimal level of the strength of motivation is different from people to people. Under the same difficult level of learning activity, it would be better for those students to have high optimal level of strength of the motivation. For others it can be good to have low optimal level. So during the study, we can control our motivation to promote the learning efficiency. As long as we keep our motivation level in the optimal motivation level and try hard to study, we can promote the learning efficiency for sure.