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

Chinese university students have to take English courses to pass theCET-4 and 6 to benefit their academic and employment careers, butthey have been heard to complain that studying English at university isa waste of time. The goal of this study is to explore whether they reallyfeel they do not improve in English, whether only the tests motivatethem, and what factors influence their perceived improvement. Toanswer these questions, a questionnaire was filled out by 418participants from a prestigious science and technology university. Thefindings are that most students pass the CET-4, but the CET-6 is muchmore challenging. Despite spending a great number of hours on English,more than 60% believe they do not improve in English. A subsequentregression analysis showed that the best predictors of perceivedimprovement are a positive attitude, the amount of time and effortspent on learning English, previous academic test scores and out-ofclassEnglish exposure. The best predictors of test-driven motivationare social pressure, the number of times the CET-4 and CET-6 weretaken, time and effort and appreciation of formal instruction