How Motivation Affects Academic Performance: A Study of English Learning Motivation Among Chinese Undergraduates

Abstract

Under the circumstance that English learning is facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges, more and more importance should be attached to English learning in order to better develop the sustainable globalization. This study is to clarify the connection between academic success and motivation for learning English. The questionnaire has been separated by the research team into two categories: intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. By means of systematic sampling and questionnaire survey, the research team collected the final scores of freshmen in an English course and asked them to fill in a questionnaire about learning motivation. It turned out that intrinsic motivation does have a positive impact on English learning academic performance. However, the research team didn’t find any correlation between the factor of extrinsic. In this research, intrinsic motivation has been verified to have a strong and positive correlation with academic success, but the connection between extrinsic motivation and academic performance remains unclear.