【Abstract】It has been found that motivation is very important to children’s reading competence. This paper intended to study intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and find their relationship with children’s reading competence. In order to do so， previous investigations about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were critically reviewed， and their results were discussed in this paper.
　　【Key words】intrinsic and extrinsic motivation； children’s reading competence
　　Introduction
　　Children’s reading competence plays an important role in their school study. Researchers suggested that reading motivation was an important predictor of children’s reading competence （Park 2011）. Reading Motivation is generally divided into two types： intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. This paper will critically review previous research of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and study the relationship between children’s reading motivation and reading competence.
　　Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and their relationship with children’s reading competence
　　Intrinsic motivation refers to a person engages in reading because of his interest or enjoyment in a task while extrinsic motivation is defined as read for something outside the task like grades （Retelsdorf et al. 2011）. Wang and Guthrie （2004） believed that intrinsic motivation plays a positive role in children’s reading competence while extrinsic motivation tends to be negative. Children intrinsically motivated may spend more time and energy in reading， while extrinsically motivated children are possible to disinterest in or resent a certain task （Park 2011）. Many researchers did investigations to examine the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Becker et al. （2010） carried out a longitudinal study and found that intrinsic motivation positively affected children’s reading. Andreassen and Br?ten （2010） indicated that extrinsic motivation negatively predicted children’s reading comprehension in their research. Longitudinal study permits researchers to study people over an extended period while some members may drop out during the long time. Thus， longitudinal study appears to help researchers see the effects of reading motivation on children’s reading competence but may also lose some important data due to the loss of several participants in the process. Moreover， Law （2009） claimed that reading strategy had positive correlation with intrinsic motivation but the negative relation with extrinsic motivation. Children with intrinsic motivation showed willingness to utilize various reading strategies to understand reading texts but children with extrinsic motivation did the opposite （Law 2009）. Law （2009） analyzed intrinsic and extrinsic motivation separately， while Park （2011） argued that reading motivation was more than a simple direct predictor. Intrinsic and extrinsic may interact with each other and work together in learning. Therefore， the effects of both motivations cannot be examined alone. Park （2011） demonstrated a curvilinear relationship between extrinsic motivation and reading performance in his investigation. That is to say， extrinsic motivation was only negative to a child with low intrinsic motivation but not the one who had high intrinsic motivation. Moreover， it was found that extrinsic motivation can be positive to children with at least moderate intrinsic motivation （Park 2011）. 　　Conclusion
　　It can be found that many investigations proved that intrinsic motivation positively affect children’s reading competence while extrinsic motivation tends to be negative. However， more researches are needed to study intrinsic and extrinsic motivation together， to explore how they interact with each other and influences on children’s reading competence.
　　Reference：
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　　[2]Becker M.，N.McElvany and M.Kortenbruck.2010.Intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation as predictors of reading literacy：A longitudinal study.Journal of Educational Psychology 102/4：773–785.
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