Effects of School Environment, Classroom Instruction, and Self-efficacy on Chinese Students’ Motivation for Oral English

In this study, we examined the relationships among students’ self-efficacy of oral English competency, oral English environment in college, English class instruction, and motivation. The participants were 1,045 non-English-major freshman and sophomore students from a tier-one university in central China. Hypotheses were tested with a structural equation model (SEM), which controlled for gender, age, major, the score of English college entrance examination, and extra time spent on oral English learning. The overall model yielded a good fit with the data (CFI = .95, TLI = .94 RMSEA = .05, and χ2(230) = 796.50, p< .01). The results showed that students’ self-efficacy positively mediated the effects of college oral English learning environment in predicting students’ oral English motivate   on. The significant positive effects of the environmental and instructional factors on motivation via self-efficacy suggest that students will benefit from school activities and instructional approaches that foster their expected English learning goals. Policy recommendations to motivate university students in English-foreign-language contexts are provided based on the findings.