Learning motives and strategies in high-school students' english learning

Abstract

This study explored the structures of learning motives and strategies, and examined a model positing that motives affected strategy selection, which in turn influenced performance in English learning of high-school students. Six scales for learning motives were employed, which had been made through a classification of students' free responses. Correlation analysis revealed that the six scales could be divided into two groups, i.e., "content-attached" and "content-detached" motives. On the other hand, factor analysis showed that learning strategies for English words were classified into the following three : organization, imaging, and repetition. The content-attached motives correlated significantly with each of the strategies, but the content-detached motives did not. Moreover, only the organization strategy had a significant effect on performance which was represented by three scores in an achievement test. That was consistent with theories and experimental findings in cognitive psychology, and supported the effectiveness of organization strategies in verbal learning. It was concluded that content-attached motives were needed to use organization strategies, and that the framework of so-called "intrinsic motivation" should be reexamined.