Exploring attitude and test-driven motivation towards English at Chinese universities

Chinese university students have to take English courses to pass the CET-4 and 6 to benefit their academic and employment careers, but they have been heard to complain that studying English at university is a waste of time. The goal of this study is to explore whether they really feel they do not improve in English, whether only the tests motivate them, and what factors influence their perceived improvement. To answer these questions, a questionnaire was filled out by 418 participants from a prestigious science and technology university. The findings are that most students pass the CET-4, but the CET-6 is much more challenging. Despite spending a great number of hours on English, more than 60% believe they do not improve in English. A subsequent regression analysis showed that the best predictors of perceived improvement are a positive attitude, the amount of time and effort spent on learning English, previous academic test scores and out-of-class English exposure. The best predictors of test-driven motivation are social pressure, the number of times the CET-4 and CET-6 were taken, time and effort and appreciation of formal instruction.