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12 By฀Carrot฀and฀by฀Rod:฀Extrinsic฀Motivation฀and฀ English฀Attainment฀of฀Tertiary฀Students฀in฀Hong฀ Kong1฀ Angel Lin and Champa Detaramani ABSTRACT฀ The chapter report s findings o f a survey of 524 students randoml y drawn from the population of first-year full-time students (N=2466) at a Hon g Kon g tertiar y institution . Informatio n o n th e students ' motivation an d thei r Englis h proficienc y wa s obtaine d b y a questionnaire, and written and listening cloze tests. Results show that students have a much stronger desire to learn English than Chinese, and have much greate r extrinsi c than intrinsic motivation t o learn English. At the same time, they are found to have a stronger feelin g of being forced to learn English than to learn Chinese. It is found that the higher the intrinsic motivation, the less the feeling of being forced to learn English, while the converse is true for extrinsic motivation. Lastly, a negative relationship exists between a feeling of being forced to learn English and English attainment. These results suggest tha t intrinsic motivation , whic h i s associate d wit h self-administere d rewards during the process of learning and using a language, rather than extrinsic motivation, which is associated with other-administered rewards a s a resul t o f th e end-produc t o f languag e learning , i s positively related to a high level of English attainment that can serve much more than merely survival needs. INTRODUCTION฀ In a quiet neighbourhood there lived an old man who had always enjoyed his quiet 286฀Ange l฀Lin฀and฀Champa฀Detaramani฀ life until one Sunday some noisy kids came to play in front of his house. The old man went out to them and said, 'Kids, I really enjoyed watching you play here. Why don't you come every Sunday to liven up my place?'He then gave them each a dollar as reward forplaying and making noise. The next Sunday the boys came again to play and to make noise. This time the old man gave them fiftycents each as reward. The followingSunday, the kids came again, but this time the old man gave them nothing. The kids were angry and said to him, 'We won't come here to play any morel It's not worth it!' And no more they came. It may not be too surprising t o the community o f Hong Kong that a tourist guide who had been learning English in China for just three years spoke better Englis h tha n som e university student s i n Hong Kon g wh o had bee n studyin g th e languag e fo r twelv e o r fiftee n year s (Fu , 1987 , p. 27). The University of Hong Kong, for instance, has complained abou t the English standards of its students since as early as the 1960s (Lord, 1991). What remains a central question is why many Hong Kong students seem to attain less than they are expected to in the English language after finishin g twelve to fifteen year s of study in English in school — study that involves not only six to eight hours of English classes per week, but also the supposed use of English in content classes as well. A consideration of the local context suggests a host of factors that seem to qualify a s possible answers to the above question: the relatively grea t linguistic and cultural distance between the Chinese and the English, the rather limite d opportunitie s o f th e averag e Hon g Kon g studen t t o us e English for authentic communicative purposes (Lai, 1994), the unfavourable pedagogic contex t (Penningto n an d Cheung , 1995) , and othe r factor s a s reviewed by Richards (1993, this volume). Among all these possible factors, the one that has received most attention from local researchers is perhaps that of attitudes and motivation. As early as 1972, a study found that many university students in Hong Kong felt a knowledge of English to be essential to the securing of a lucrative position here: but it was also observed that there was "a tendency to disdain the use of English except under compulsion" (Kwok and Chan, 1972, p. 74). In a questionnaire surve y o f 561 secondary schoo l students, Fu (1975 ) foun d that Hong Kong...

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