Abstract:
This study investigated Chinese university students’ attitudes towards and motivation to learn English and the correlations of the said variables with the students’ English proficiency. A modified 44-item survey adapted from Gardner’s (1985) and Clėment et al.’s (1994) was administered to 202 third-year non-English majors in a southern university in China. The study revealed that the students had positive attitudes toward learning English and were highly motivated to study it, that the students were more instrumentally than integratively motivated to learn English, and that the students’ attitudes and motivation were positively correlated with their English proficiency. Based on these findings, some pedagogical implications are discussed.

Key words: attitude; motivation; undergraduate non-English majors; English proficiency

1. Introduction
The study of motivation in second language acquisition has become an important research topic with the development of the socio-educational model on second language motivation (Gardner & Lambert, 1972; Gardner, 1985, Gardner & MacIntyre, 1993; Tremblay & Gardner, 1995). According to Gardner and Lambert (1972), motivation to learn a second language is grounded in positive attitudes toward the second language community and in a desire to communicate with valued members of that community and become similar to them. This latter desire is integrative orientation, which is a better support for language learning, while an instrumental orientation is associated with a desire to learn L2 for pragmatic gains such as getting a better job or a higher salary (Dörnyei, 2001; Gardner & Lambert, 1972). The role of orientation is to help arouse motivation and direct it towards a set of goals, either with a strong interpersonal quality (integrative orientation) or a strong practical quality (instrumental orientation) (Dörnyei, 2001). To measure L2 learners’ motivation, Gardner (1985) developed the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB), a multi-component motivation test made up of around 130 items concerned with variables such as attitudes towards French Canadians, European French people and learning French, interest in foreign languages, orientation to learn French, French class anxiety, parental encouragement, motivation intensity, desire to learn French, and motivation index. 

   The development of the Battery has resulted in numerous research studies on L2 motivation, which reveal that, in general, motivation enhances second/foreign language acquisition, and that learners ranking high on integrative orientation work harder and learn faster than those who are low on integrative motivation (Clėment et al., 1994; Gardner, Lalonde & Pierson, 1983; Gardner, Lalonde & Moorcroft, 1985; Gardner, Lalonde, Moorcroft & Evers, 1987; Gardner, Moorcroft & Metford, 1989; Gardner & MacIntyre, 1991; Lai, 2000; Masgoret & Gardner, 2003; Tremblay & Gardner, 1995). Gardner et al.’s study (1983) supported the claim that proficiency in a second language was affected by attitudinal variables, which was confirmed by a later research study (Gardner et al., 1985). The study also showed that motivation had a direct effect on situational anxiety and second language achievement. In addition, two other studies led to the conclusion that integrative orientation was closely related to persistence, language attrition and retention (Gardner et al., 1987; Gardner et al., 1989).

   In order to investigate the role of motivation in foreign language learning, Clėment, Dörnyei, and Noels (1994) applied Gardner and Lambert’s (1972) social and psychological constructs to the acquisition of English in the unicultural Hungarian setting. A survey assessing students’ attitude, anxiety, and motivation toward learning English as well as their perception of classroom atmosphere and cohesion was administered to 301 students in Grade 11. Meanwhile, the teachers were asked to rate each of the students on proficiency and a number of classroom behaviors and to evaluate the cohesion of each class group. It was revealed that achievement in English was significantly related to self-confidence, the evaluation of the learning environment and the motivational indices. The attitude and effort index was also found to be related to self-confidence, the learning environment, and a cluster of affectively based attitudes and motivational factors. 

   As empirical studies on second language learning motivation blossom, it has been found integrative and instrumental orientations are not opposite ends of a continuum (Belmechri & Hummel, 1998; Dörnyei, 1994). Instead, they are positively related and both are affectively loaded goals that can sustain learning. They both may be in return enhanced by better proficiency and higher achievement in the target language (Oxford & Shearin, 1994; Belmechri & Hummel, 1998; Dörnyei, 1994, 2001). Students’ learning goals also proved to break up into different motivation clusters, the definition of which varies depending upon the socio-cultural setting in which the data are gathered (Clėment et al., 1994; Oxford & Shearin, 1994). Thus, new motivation clusters have been identified such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, orientations for travel and becoming intellectual which are considered specific types of orientations for learning the target language (Clėment et al., 1994; Noels, Clėment & Pelletier, 2001; Oxford & Shearin, 1994). Extrinsic motivation, like instrumental orientation, refers to the desire to learn a second/foreign language because of some pressure or reward from the social environment (such as career advancement or a course credit), internalized reasons for learning an L2 (such as guilt or shame), and/or personal decisions to do so and its value for the chosen goals (Noels et al., 2001). Intrinsically motivated students, like integratively motivated ones, learn an L2 because of the inherent pleasure in doing so; they are expected to maintain their effort and engagement in the L2 learning process, even when no external rewards are provided (Oxford & Shearin, 1994; Noels et al., 2001). When a learner has no extrinsic or intrinsic goals for learning a language, amotivation arises. Consequently, the learner may quit learning the target language at the earliest convenience (Noels et al., 2001). As these concepts have gained popularity, it is claimed that intrinsic motivation plays a central role in learning a second/foreign language (Noels et al., 2001; Oxford & Shearin, 1994).  
         
   In conclusion, both integrative and instrumental orientations or intrinsic and extrinsic motivations contribute to the learning of a second/foreign language. Nevertheless, as to which one is more important varies from context to context. Likewise, students in different contexts may be motivated to learn a second/foreign language by different orientations. This is why the issue is still worth further exploration in situations with different groups of learners.

   Although integrative orientation or intrinsic motivation plays a more important role in second/foreign language learning than instrumental or extrinsic motivation (Gardner et al., 1987; Gardner et al., 1989; Noels et al., 2001), it may not be true in all learning situations, especially in Mainland China. As China’s economy is developing fast and Chinese people are in more contact with those from other cultures in various ways (such as attending conferences, studying and traveling), English is becoming more important. It plays a major role in determining what university middle school graduates can choose and in selecting college graduates for further education. It is also an influential factor in deciding what jobs and salaries people can get in the job market. As Chinese people become richer and have more contact with people from other countries, the probability for them to travel abroad becomes higher too. For these reasons, Chinese students are often highly motivated to study English (Hao, Liu & Hao, 2004). Nevertheless, the learning and teaching of English has long been a difficult task for both EFL students and teachers in Mainland China due to reasons such as lack of resources and little contact with the target language (Liu, 2005). Therefore, it will be interesting and worthwhile to investigate Chinese students’ motivation to learn English, especially non-English majors’ learning motivation because they constitute the main portion of the EFL population in the country. Surprisingly, not many empirical studies have been done in this area (Hao et al., 2004; Hu, 2002; Zhou, 1998).

   In Mainland China, English courses (such as intensive reading, extensive reading, speaking, listening, and reading) are compulsory for non-English majors during the first one or two years in 3-year or 4-year colleges or universities. The type of courses and textbooks and the teaching hours per week vary from university to university. For example, in the university where the present study was conducted, mainly the course of College English (reading, speaking and writing were integrated into one course with enormous emphasis on reading) was offered to the students who met the teacher(s) twice per week, each meeting lasting for two hours, while in top universities such as Tsinghua University, only a 90-minute lesson was offered to students per week. After that, English courses become selective and the majority of the students stop taking any of them, especially after they have passed the College English Test (CET) band 41. Because of the absence of pressure, most students stop making efforts to learn the language. Consequently, they often find that their English proficiency decreases and feel frustrated about it and even often complain about it. Targeting third-year university students, the present study sought to identify their English-learning motivation types and their relationships with the students’ achievements in English, hoping to shed some light on the teaching and learning of English for third- and fourth-year students. To achieve the aim, the following research questions were proposed:
(1) What are Chinese third-year university students’ attitudes towards learning English?
(2) What are the English-learning motivation level and types of Chinese third-year university students?
(3) Is there any relationship between students’ attitudes and motivation types on the one hand, and their achievement in English on the other?

2. Research methodology
2.1 Participants
202 third-year students (51 females and 151 males) in six classes were randomly selected for the study. With an average age of 21.3, these students were from Xia’men University, a national key comprehensive university situated in a harbor city in the south of China. 182 (90%) were from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the rest were from the Department of Business Administration and the Department of Economics and Management. Beginning to study English in junior high school and having passed the CET band 4 in the University, all these students stopped taking any English course when the study was conducted.

2.2 Instrument
The instrument used in the study consisted of a motivation survey, an open-ended question and an English proficiency test.

The motivation survey
The motivation survey used in this study was adopted from the questionnaires developed by Gardner (1985) and Clėment et al. (1994) respectively under the condition that repetition was avoided. To fit the present situation, only items about students’ attitudes towards learning English and their learning orientations were retained; other items such as classroom anxiety were omitted because the students did not take any English courses when they participated in the study. Likewise, the item “English is an important part of the school program” was deleted. To better suit the EFL learning situation in Mainland China, further modifications were made. For example, items “It is important for me to know English in order to think and behave like the English/Americans do”, “I like the way the Americans behave” and “It is important for me to know English in order to be similar to the British/Americans” were omitted because the students did not have much contact with native speakers of English. It was rather difficult to imagine being similar to them.

   Designed on a 5-point Likert-scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree” with values 1-5 assigned to each alternative, the modified survey had two main parts: Attitudes towards Learning English (ALE) (items 1-8, see Appendix) and the English-learning Motivation Scale (MS) (items 9-44, see Appendix). The MS was composed of three subcomponents: integrative orientation (IntO) (items 9-22, see Appendix), instrumental orientation (InsO) (items 23-38, see Appendix) and travel orientation (TO) (items 39-44, see Appendix) designed by Clėment et al. (1994). The survey for travel orientation was adopted mainly because the participants, living in the harbor city of Xia’men which attracts many native and foreign tourists every year, might be specifically motivated to learn English by travel, different from those living inland.

   At the end of the survey, an open-ended question was added: Are you more or less motivated to learn English than when you were a first-year or second-year student? Why?

Background information
The background questionnaire was designed to obtain demographic data about the participants such as name, gender, age, and department.

English proficiency test.
To test the participants’ English proficiency, a 2-hour simulated CET band 4 English proficiency test was specifically designed. The test, like the real CET band 4, consisted of six parts arranged in the same order: listening comprehension (20 items, 15 points); vocabulary (20 items, 10 points); cloze (10 items, 10 points); reading comprehension (20 items, 40 points); translation from Chinese to English (5 items, 10 points); and writing (15 points). The first four parts were multiple-choice questions to test students’ knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary, and understanding of the details, intentions and implications of listening and/or reading materials. The translation part required the students to translate five English sentences into Chinese which were excerpted from the reading passages in the test. Finally, the students had to write an argumentation of at least 150- words in 30 minutes.

2.3 Procedure
The survey items were translated into Chinese and checked twice by a professor with a Ph.D degree in translation. The survey was first piloted to a small sample and then administered to 212 third-year students in 6 classes by their content course teachers on the same day in the middle of the second term of the academic year 2002-2003. The students were asked to finish the survey within 15 minutes during the normal teaching period. All the questionnaires were collected by the teachers and given to the researcher and 202 were complete for statistical analysis. A week later, the simulated CET band 4 English proficiency test was administered to the students on a Friday evening.

2.4 Statistical analysis
The results of the survey were computed in terms of mean, standard deviation, mode, median and range to examine the students’ levels of attitudes towards and motivation to learn English. The correlation analysis was conducted to determine the relationships between the students’ attitudes and English-learning motivation and their English proficiency. The responses to the opened-ended question were analyzed and calculated according to different themes (Krippendorff, 1980).

   To avoid bias, only the multiple-choice objective measures—listening comprehension, vocabulary, cloze and reading comprehension were marked to examine the relationships between students’ English proficiency and their attitudes and motivation to learn English.

3. Results and Discussion
3.1 Attitudes towards Learning English
Achieving a reliability score of .89 in the present research, the 8-item Attitudes towards Learning English (ALE) scale had significant part-whole correlations with the total score, with the mean item-total correlation being .74.

   In order to know the general tendency of the students’ attitudes towards learning English, the mean, standard deviation, median, mode and range of the ALE were computed. When doing so, the researcher adjusted the values assigned to different alternatives from ‘Strongly Disagree’ to ‘Strongly Agree’ of some items. Items 4-8 which expressed negative attitudes towards learning English had values assigned to their alternatives reversed. Namely, to these items, the response ‘Strongly Disagree’ got a value of 5 instead of 1, the response ‘Strongly Agree’ got a value of 1 instead of 5, and so on. Thus, the total score of the ALE revealed the respondent’s degree of positive attitudes towards learning English. The higher the score, the more positive attitudes a respondent had toward learning English.

   Since the ALE comprises 8 items with a score range of 8 to 40, a total score of more than 32 implies that a respondent has strongly positive attitudes towards learning English, a total score of 24 to 32 represents moderately positive attitudes and a score of less than 24 signifies (strongly) negative attitudes. The results are shown in Table 1.

As can be seen from Table 1, some students (with a score of 10) showed extremely negative attitudes towards learning English. To them, studying English was dull and not enjoyable at all, as indicated in the survey items. They might even hate English or would give up the study of English entirely when leaving the University. Irrespective of this, a mean score of 32.31, a mode of 34.00 and a median of 33.00 on the ALE, all far more than the average score of 24.00, indicate that the majority of the students had moderately or strongly positive attitudes towards learning English, as found in Yang and Lau’s (2003) study. Many of them believed that studying English was an enjoyable experience and planned to learn as much English as possible.

3.2 English Learning Motivation
Achieving a reliability score of .746 in the present research, the 36-item English-learning Motivation Scale (MS) had significant part-whole correlations with the total score, with the mean item-total correlation being .67.

   In order to know the general tendency of the students’ English learning motivation, the mean, standard deviation, median, mode and range of the MS were computed. Since the scale has 36 items with a score range of 36 to 180, a total score of more than 144 on the scale implies that a respondent is strongly motivated to learn English. A total score of 108 to 144 signifies moderate motivation and a total score of less than 108 indicates no/little motivation. Namely, the higher the score, the more motivated a respondent was to learn English.

   It is worth noting that the motivation survey consists of three components: integrative orientation (IntO), instrumental orientation (InsO) and travel orientation (TO). The mean, standard deviation, median, mode and range of each of these three subscales were also computed. Given the total number of items of each subscale, a total score of more than 56 on the IntO which has 14 items (with a score range of 14 to 70) implies that a respondent is strongly integratively motivated to learn English, a total score of 42 to 56 represents moderate integrative orientation and a score of less than 42 signifies no/little integrative orientation. A total score of more than 64 on the InsO which has 16 items (with a score range of 16 to 80) implies that a respondent is strongly instrumentally motivated to learn English, a total score of 48 to 64 represents moderate instrumental orientation and a score of less than 48 signifies no/little instrumental orientation. A total score of more than 24 on the TO which comprises 6 items (with a score range of 6 to 30) implies that a respondent has a strong orientation to learn English for travel, a total score of 18 to 24 represents moderate travel orientation and a score of less than 18 signifies no/little travel orientation. It holds true for all the three subscales that the higher the score the more motivated the respondent was to learn English integratively, instrumentally, or by travel. The results are reported in Table 2.

As presented in Table 2, although with a maximum score of 48.00, a mean score of 32.67, a median of 33.00 and a mode of 35.00 on the Integrative Orientation, all far below the average score of 42.00, suggest that the majority of the students were not integratively motivated to learn English, unlike Lamb’s (2004) study. Some students with a total score of 14 even strongly disagreed with all the statements. All these imply that it was not a concern for the students whether they were able to better understand and appreciate English art and literature or know the life of English-speaking nations. They were not motivated to learn English to know more about British or American people either. This might be due to the fact that the students still had little contact with native speakers or the target language in their daily life even though Xia’men is a harbor tourism city. It might also be because the students put much less effort into exposing themselves to English after they had finished all compulsory English courses and had passed the CET band 4. Most of them might just occasionally access English by watching or listening to English programs or reading English books and so on. As a result, they seldom had the idea to learn English well enough to be like native speakers of English such as American or British people.

   Although the students were not integratively motivated to learn English, as seen in Table 2, they were fairly strongly instrumentally motivated to learn the language. Despite the fact that some students (with a score of 27) were not instrumentally motivated, a mean score of 61.78, a median of 63.00 and a mode of 65.00 on the Instrumental Orientation, all far above the average score of 48.00, reveal that the majority of them were strongly or moderately instrumentally motivated to learn English, as found in previous studies (Belmechri & Hummel, 1998; Dörnyei, 2001; Gardner, 1985; Gardner & MacIntyre, 1991, 1993; Noels et al., 2001). To them, English was important to have a brighter future, to search for information and materials on the Internet, to be more knowledgeable, and to know what was happening in the world, as indicated in the survey items. Hence, they studied it hard.

   The case was almost the same with travel orientation. A mean score of 21.87, a median of 21.00 and a mode of 24.00 on the Travel Orientation, all slightly above the average score of 18.00, indicate that most of the students were moderately or strongly motivated to learn English by travel, as found in Belmechri and Hummel’s (1998) and Oxford and Shearin’s (1994) studies. They believed that they needed to study English in that it would enable them to travel abroad and make their life easier when staying abroad, as implied in the survey items. In addition, the language could broaden their outlook and enable them to make friends with foreigners. This might be because of the fact that Xia’men, as a harbor tourism city, usually attracts tourists from different places of the world. Consequently, many of the students might have also developed the idea of traveling around the world.

   On the whole, more than half of the students in the present study were moderately or strongly motivated to learn English because of different reasons, as evidenced by a mean score of 121.39, a median of 122.00 and a mode of 125.00 on the Motivation Scale, all far more than the average score of 108, as reported in Table 2. Meanwhile, the students were more instrumentally than integratively motivated to learn English, as indicated by their mean scores presented in Table 2. Travel was a principal motivation as well. 

4. Relationships between Students’ Attitudes, Motivation and their English Proficiency
4.1 English proficiency test
As previously stated, only the scores of multiple-choice objective measures of the test were used in the present research to examine the relationships between students’ English proficiency and their attitudes and motivation. With a possible score range of 0 to 75, the test achieved a high reliability score of .79 with the level of difficulty of .61. The result of the statistical analysis is reported in Table 3.

4.2 Correlations between Students’ Attitudes, Motivation and their English Proficiency
In addition to the statistical analysis of the students’ attitudes towards English learning and different learning orientations, a correlation analysis was conducted to explore the relationships between the students’ attitudes and motivation and their English proficiency. The results are presented in Table 4.

As shown in Table 4, the students’ attitudes and different English-learning orientations except for integrative orientation were not only significantly but positively correlated with their English proficiency. The more positive attitudes the students had towards learning English, the higher they scored on the proficiency test (r = .225, p < 0.01), as found in previous studies (Gardner & Lambert, 1972; Gardner et al., 1985; Olshtain et al., 1990). Nonetheless, the coefficient was not so high as that in Gardner’s studies (1982, 1985; Gardner et al., 1972; Gardner et al., 1985; Gardner et al., 1989), which might be attributed to the fact that Gardner’s studies were mainly situated in SL situations in Canada while the present study targeted Chinese EFL learners. Hence, the impact of attitudes towards the target language on proficiency in that language might vary.

   Likewise, the more instrumentally motivated the students were to learn English, the higher scores they achieved on the proficiency test (r = .425, p < 0.01). It was the same with travel orientation and the overall motivation scale (r = .321 and .405 respectively, p < 0.01), similar to previous studies (Gardner & Lambert, 1972; Gardner et al., 1985; Hao et al., 2004; Olshtain et al., 1990). It seemed that the more positive attitudes and the higher travel and instrumental orientations, the more proficient in English the student was. However, it might be bi-dimensional: the more proficient in English the student was, the more positive attitudes s/he had towards English learning and the more motivated s/he was to learn the language, and vice versa.

   In addition, Table 4 reveals that the students’ attitudes towards English learning and their learning orientations were significantly positively correlated with one another. The more positive attitudes the students had towards learning English, the more motivated they were to learn English (r = .867, p < 0.01). They were more instrumentally and travel motivated as well (r = .851 and .724 respectively, p < 0.01).

5. Conclusions and implications

This study attempted to investigate Chinese third-year undergraduate non-English majors’ attitudes toward learning English, English-learning orientations, and the correlations between these measured variables and the students’ English proficiency. The statistical analyses reveal that these third-years had positive attitudes toward learning English and were highly motivated to learn the language as well. This could be attributed to the fact that the rapid development of economy in China in recent years has yielded an increasingly high demand for university graduates with high English competency in various fields such as education, market, business and science and technology. Meanwhile, maybe due to limited contact with English native speakers or the target language, the students were more instrumentally than integratively motivated to learn English, which was different from Gardner’s (1985) claim that integrative orientation was more influential in achieving success in second language learning. To have a brighter future (such as a better job) seemed to be a more deciding factor for these students to learn English than to better know or behave like the British or American people. The common instrumental orientations found among these students were: getting promoted in career development, getting a good job, searching for information on the Internet, being better educated, knowing the world, studying and working abroad. They were highly motivated by travel as well.

   The correlation analysis revealed that the students who had more positive attitudes towards learning English tended to score higher in the proficiency test and that the students who were more instrumentally and/or travel motivated tended to perform better in the test. Nevertheless, more positive attitudes and higher instrumental and travel orientations might be also the result of higher English proficiency.

   Despite the high motivation found in the present study, most of the students reported that they had actually become demotivated to learn English. According to their responses to the open-ended question, only 15.84% (32) of the students believed they retained the same amount of motivation as in the first two university years; 10.4% (21) thought they became more motivated in that they had a clear plan of going abroad for further education. The majority of them (149/73.76%) reported that they became less motivated to learn English mainly because of no immediate pressure of learning English, little contact with the target language and heavy burden of major study.

   As mentioned previously, most of the third- and fourth-year students, especially those who had passed the CET band 4, stopped taking any English courses. Coupled with the fact that the burden of their major study became heavier, many of the students had fewer chances to access English and/or made little effort to continue to learn the language. As a result, their English proficiency would have probably decreased. To maintain or enhance the students’ positive attitudes toward and motivation to learn English and ultimately improve their English proficiency, it might be beneficial for the University to offer ESP courses throughout the university years so that non-English majors could have constant contact with the target language. Otherwise, they might lose the motivation soon since most of them were principally instrumentally motivated to learn English, while according to Gardner et al. (1987), integrative orientation played a more important role in urging adult learners to continue to learn the target language after the language class was over and helping them retain the language proficiency longer.

   Because Xia’men University is a national key comprehensive university in Mainland China, the findings may have some relevance for third- and fourth-year non-English majors in other EFL learning situations across the country. However, due to the nature of the particular sample which was limited to the students at only one university, inferences drawn from the results of this study are limited. Replication of the study with language learners at similar proficiency levels with varying backgrounds in different learning contexts is necessary to understand how well the results may be generalized to other EFL students in the country. Students majoring in international business, foreign affairs and information technology and so on may demonstrate a different trend of orientation to learn English. The case may also be different if there are more female participants. Moreover, other research methods such as interviews and reflective journals can be employed to supplement the survey so that the changes or differences in attitude and motivation among students can be explained.

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1 The CET band 4, the most important English proficiency test for undergraduate non-English majors across the country, is held once a term. It consists of six parts: listening comprehension, vocabulary, cloze, reading comprehension, translation and writing. Students, especially 4-year college students, can take it any time, but mostly in the first or second year, during their university years in order to be granted the degree of certificate upon graduation on time.

Appendix. See PDF file