Abstract:Motivation is a significant factor in the success of second language acquisition. This paper aims to explore how motivation works and what motivation includes in the process of language learning through the examination of previous influential theories on motivation---Gardner’s socio-educational model of language learning, Williams and Burden’s social constructivist perspective on motivation, and Dornyei’s three-level categorization model. Besides, a personal research on English learning motivation of the Grade 7 students from Jiangdu No.3 Middle School is presented and analyzed in the paper so as to provide some suggestions for language instructors to boost motivation in the students and make their teaching more efficient. The research results show that the middle school students’ motivation in learning English is mainly instrumental in current exam-oriented education context; the factors that inhibit their learning motivation are mainly on the language level and the learning situation level. Therefore, three suggestions are proposed in order to solve the problems accordingly.

Key words: Motivation, Second Language Acquisition, Socio-educational Model, Social Constructivist Perspective, Three-level categorization

摘要:动机是第二语言习得取得成功的一个关键因素。本篇论文旨在通过探究三种较有影响力的动机理论来分析动机所包含的各层面的因素。这三个理论分别是：R·加德纳的社会教育模式，威廉和布尔登的社会建构主义的观点，以及唐耶的语言学习三层次动机模式。此外，本文呈现并分析了对江都市第三中学初一年级的120名学生进行的一项个人研究，该研究旨在调查这个群体的英语学习动机情况。调查结果显示，该学生群体学习英语的动机主要是工具性动机，抑制其学习动机的因素主要来自语言层面和学习情境层面。因此，本篇论文据此提出了三条教学启示，以帮助英语教学者激励学生的学习动机，使英语教学更为高效。

关键词：动机，第二语言习得，社会教育模式，社会建构主义的观点，语言学习三层次动机模式