Title
Chinese Students Motivation to Learn English at the Tertiary Level

Keywords: attitude; motivation; undergraduate non-English majors; English proficiency

Authors
Meihua Liu
Tsinghua University, China

Bio Data
Dr. Meihua Liu, a lecturer of English at the Department of Foreign Languages, Tsinghua University, China, is mainly interested in EFL teaching and learning in the Chinese context, classroom research, and EFL writing. Her recent publications include Anxiety in EFL classrooms: Causes and consequences in TESL Reporter (2006), Anxiety in Chinese EFL students at different proficient levels in System (2006), and Cohesive features in argumentative writing produced by Chinese undergraduates in System (2005).

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 ClÄ—ment 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.