. . . . 北 京 师 大 学硕士研究生学位论文开题报告 论 文 题 目An Action Research on Improving Students Motivation Through Listening Teaching在英语听力教学中提高学生学习动机的行动研究 一、立论依据（选题的研究意义、国外研究现状分析）1. RationaleMotivation provides the primary impetus to initiate learning the L2 and later the driving force to sustain the long and often tedious learning process; indeed, all other factors involved in L2 acquisition presuppose motivation to some extent. (Dornyei 1998: 117) As a result, English teachers care much about whether students are well motivated and willing to learn what they are taught especially at the early stage of English learning. The new English Curriculum Standard (ECS) also puts forward that the goal of fundamental English courses are not only to improve students language skills, but also develop their positive attitudes towards language learning. Motivation is one of the most important factors in students emotional attitudes. In recent researches, more and more researchers are interested in the motivation of various middle school students. Most researchers focused on several key factors of motivation, such as self-confidence, attitude, sense of achievement, and the relationship between motivation and achievements on learning. However, there are only a few focuses on how to promote the students motivation through daily teaching in an ordinary middle school, which is the focus of this research. In Guiyang, the capital city of Guizhou Province, English course has been offered in most primary schools. But most suburban primary schools do not have enough qualified English teachers to offer English classes for the students. When these students entered middle school, it is the real beginning for the students to learn English when they enter middle school. Due to poor family education environment or atmosphere, most students have not developed a good habit of learning. It is found by the author that most students (about 70%) demotivated to learn English after a few months since they became junior school students owing to several reasons. In class, most of them seldom actively participated in teaching activities or answered questions. After class, they seldom listened to English. Because they have invested so little effort to learn English, they could not understand, read or speak English. For them, learning English is only a frustrating experience which made them encounter failures again and again. In English class, they always got nervous and felt embarrassed because their own disappointing performance. As a result, they lost interest, confidence in learning English. They even thought that English is awful because this subject only brought them embarrassment, sadness, a feeling of nervous or scared, but no sense of achievement at all, and some of them even hate the subject. They lacked learning motivation. Motivation can be divided in two broad categories, Extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. ( Paul. E& Don K, 2005) Extrinsic motivation is the motivation to engage in an activity as a means to an end, whereas intrinsic motivation is the motivation to be involved in an activity for its own sake. (Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). Obviously, facing such group of totally demotivated students, to improve their intrinsic motivation, with which the students will feel interested and happy in learning English and would like to invest effort to learn English, becomes the core of the authors teaching focus. 2. Literature review.a. Motivation.Recent decades witnessed many researches on motivation of L2 learning at home and aboard. First, Gardener and Lambert and Gardners work on the social psychology of language learning in the bilingual context of Canada started the serious study of motivation from the social language-learning perspective. They conducted second language learning motivation research. (Gardner 1985) Their early work suggested that integrative motivation correlated most strongly with measures of L2 achievement while subsequent research has shown equal importance and interaction of both the integrative and instrumental motivations. Based on a social psychological framework, their research linked L2 motivation with attitudes toward the community of the target language speaker. In addition, it also involved willingness to communicate with target language speakers and the degree to which non-native speakers can identify themselves with the target language community. Gardner has played a most important role in the field about language learning motivation mainly because his dichotomy of motivation, as a starting point, has paved the way for much subsequent work in the area. Gardner (1985:203) defines motivation to learn an L2 as the extent to which the individual works or strives to learn the language because of a desire to do so and the satisfaction expe