The students’ motivational dynamics at different stages of learning english

The article represents the results of a survey conducted among undergraduate students of the Faculty of Journalism of the Moscow State University. The main purpose of the survey is to identify the students’ motivational dynamics nature in learning English. The survey involved 152 students of 1-4 full-time courses. The survey is also aimed to identify the reasons for their interest (or the absence of it) in the subject, such as: an inclination to learn English, a timetable, a teacher’s personality, the need to learn the discipline, etc. In addition, the objectives of the survey also included determining the place of the English language in the Faculty of Journalism discipline system, the importance of the subject for students both during their studies at the university and in the process of their further work. The students were offered 29 questions in total, while 20 of them had been taken from the already existing questionnaire by Tatyana Dubovitskaya, PhD in Psychology, which aim was to identify students’ internal and external motivation. According to the feedback results received during the survey, there were identified certain tendencies in motivation extent typical for students at different stages of studying. For example, the motivation of 4th year students has been found out to be as strong as the motivation of younger students. In our opinion, it is an unpredictable trend. In addition, there were revealed some factors contributing to a significant motivational growth during studying, such as: aspect teaching, the teacher rotation, the introduction of the rating system, the importance of English in studying other disciplines.