Final Research Report

Background

Motivation plays a key role in foreign language learning. It is widely accepted among language teachers that motivation plays a significant role in language learning. It is one of the key factors which influence the success or failure of learning a second foreign language.

As we know there are two different motivation styles, inside force motivation and outside force motivation such as teachers, university. It’s useful to discover what kinds of motivation students are in pre-sessional English course for find out which activities are more useful for motivate them to learn English.

Also, Pre-sessional English course is conditioned to start degree in London Metropolitan University .We need to know about how this course and teachers in London Metropolitan University motivate students to learn English in this course and which activities are more useful for motivate them to learn English.

Aim


The purpose of this research is to find out how much pre-sessional English course motivates international students to learn English.

Secondly, we were interested in looking at how individual students motivate themselves to make progress with their language studies.

Do students recognise that motivation needs to be an intrinsic force, or do they feel it should come from outside (from their teachers, from the University, from their parents)?

Method

The Sample

The sample size was 35 students; these respondents were of different ages and genders and from different nationalities. They were all students of London Metropolitan University in Pre-sessional English course.

Data collection

This was carried out through the use of questionnaire. At first the question was trialled with sample of 4 students. A new improved questionnaire was then devised. This covered 6 questions about what kind of motivation students are, how do students feel the motivation to learn English from their teachers, how much do they agree with three different activities in the Pre-sessional English class, how important and influence seven different learning materials for students in this course and what kind of tutorial is more useful for students in pre-sessional English course in London Metropolitan University?

Finding

In term of the most important different motivation, more than half of respondents (51%) claimed that they are intrinsic person however just under half of students (49%) said that they are extrinsic.


According to the chart ,The majority of pre-sessional students (94%) in London Metropolitan said that they are strongly agree or agree that their teachers gave them helpful feedback and their teacher were extremely good at explaining things (91%). Also, we can see the large number of students (89%) said that their teacher motivated them to do their best work.

It’s clear from the data provided that almost all of the respondents (97%) felt their teachers were helpful or very helpful for motivated them to learn English in pre-sessional English course.

When it comes to how important classmate from different nationality to motivate them to learn English in pre-sessional English course, the majority of students (89%) claimed that it is very important or important.

Many of respondents (45%) said that finding out their needs and problems and practice in that area is more useful tutorial recommendation for them.


As can be seen in the chart, almost all of the respondents (97%) said “watch TV and write their summary “is very important learning material for them. Also; the majority of respondents (88%) cited “read a book and prepare its summary” and “read a book and pick up useful vocabularies” are important learning materials for them.

Surprisingly, when asked how important social activities to motivate them to study English, the large number of students (40%) claimed that it’s not important.

Discussion

According to the given data, there are nearly a half of students are intrinsic and almost a half of them are extrinsic motivate person. This could mean that university should attention to both different motivation and use learning material which can be helpful for both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.

It’s clear from the data given that high ratio of students think their teachers gave them helpful feedback, extremely good at explaining things and motivated them to do their best work .This could indicate that teacher in pre-sessional English course are successful and this suggest that university should to keep these teachers for future.

As we can see the majority of students (89%) claimed that classmate from different countries are important to motivate them to study English.

This could indicate that classmate from different nationality motivates students to learn English and this suggests that university should try to make classes in pre-sessional English course with students from different countries.

The large number of respondents (45%) said that finding out their needs and problems and practice in that area is more useful tutorial method than other methods for them. Perhaps this means that the more likely useful tutorial learning method by teachers in pre-sessional English course is find out students needs or problems and give them more practice in that area .

According to the chart almost all of the pre-sessional student(97%) believed “watching TV and writing their summary “is significant learning material for them
This could mean that the watching TV and writing their summary is the most useful learning material to help them to learn English.

Also, perhaps this means that the teachers should be more encourage students to watch a TV and write their summary in self study or homework.

Meanwhile, the majority of respondents (88%) said “reading a book or journal and prepare its summary” and “reading a book or journal and pick up useful vocabularies” are important learning materials for them. This could indicate that reading a book or journal and summaries and pick up a vocabulary are more likely learning materials that help students to study .As a result, university could be select more books or journal match with theirs student levels for student that can be use by students .Also, teachers can give them more homework about reading a book or journal and summaries or pick up the vocabulary too.

On the other hand, unexpectedly the large numbers of pre-sessional students believe that the social activity is not important to motivate them to study English. This could mean that, the program in social activity is not interesting and helpful for pre-sessional students in London Metropolitan University.


Conclusion


The research carried out was intended to explore the motivation to learn in pre-sessional English course also, in regarding to different motivation , find out which learning materials are more useful for pre-sessional students.

It was discovered that, on the whole, almost there are the same number of intrinsic and extrinsic students in this pre-sessional English course. As expected, the results show a high percentage of satisfaction with this quality of study and quality of teaching in
pre-sessional English course at London Metropolitan University.

Also, the majority of students believe that classmate coming from different countries motivates them to study .Regarding to various learning materials, the majority of students think watching TV and summarise books and journal is the most important methods that can motivate them to study. On the other hand, social activities are the least important as a learning material for them.

In term of further research it would be interesting if the University could find out why the large number of international students (40%) thought that the social activity is not important learning material for this course.


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