浅析中国城市初中生学习英语的动机

叶朝成　姚文俊

1.Problem statement

Many researches have been carried out on motivation in English learning and teaching，but few studies have examined middle school students' English learning motivation，even though English has always played an important role within the middle school curriculum，and quite a number of middle school students have often come across more or less different kinds of problems with their English learning.Clearly this is an area needing greater exploration to find out the junior high school students' beliefs concerning ELF motivational components and their beliefs that negatively influence the increase of motivation and if there are ways to integrate the understanding of motivation to the teaching activities in the English classroom.

2.A Survey and Major Findings

The present study aims at investigating the middle school students' motivational beliefs about English learning，and the influence of their beliefs on their motivational behavior.The author has conducted a survey among 25 middle school students to find out their beliefs that negatively influence the increase of motivation，and to present some implications for junior middle school English teaching and learning in Chinese context.Specifically，the study addresses the following two questions：

1） what types of motivation do Chinese urban junior high school students have for learning English？

2） How does learners motivation influence their motivational behavior？

The instruments used in this study are a telephone interview of the motivation for learning English.

The results and findings obtained from the survey are reported as follows.

1） Immediate achievement is the main driving forces for students to exert effortful behavior out of their regular English class.

2） Students are mostly motivated by utilitarian purposes，such as striving for a career，meeting an educational requirement to learn English.

3） Learning situational motivation proves to be an important factor that exerts its impact on learners in this study.

4） Most of the participants show interest in English.Interest can be derived from favorable attitudes toward native speakers or their culture or from preference for the language itself.But according to the present study，although interest is a significant type of motivation students present，it is not closely related to learners motivational intensity.

5） Correct understanding about the value of learning English is still lacking.

6） Learners Immediate achievement motivation does not influence their motivational behaviors favorably.

This finding shows that most Chinese urban junior high school students are motivated to learn English just for going to a better senior high school.In other words，they learn English mainly for the purpose of passing examinations.Therefore，they highly value performance goals like improving test skills in standardized examination.However，they do no attach as much importance to long-term and mastery goals as to short-term and performance goals probably because long-term goals and mastery goals seem to be a little remote to them and they do not perceive immediate benefits from these goals as they can get from short-term and performance goals.

3.Suggestions for altering Chinese urban junior school students' negative motivational beliefs

According to the findings of the survey，problems that negatively influence the improvement of motivational strength for the junior high school students become clear.The results of the survey indicate that examination-related goals are the main driving forces for students to exert effortful behavior； however，their desire for achieving long-term and mastery goals is weaker.In addition to over-emphasis on short-term and performance goals，students' other negative motivational beliefs include high perception of English learning cost，attribution of previous failure to uncontrollable factors and perceiving teachers as controlling and less informative.Setting of long-term and mastery goals develop in a downward trend while perception of cost develops in an upward trend.Proper steps should be taken to remedy these beliefs.

The most obvious way to achieve this is by initiating a discussion with your students with the objective of outlining group goals.Personalized learning itineraries and contracts have also worked in many classrooms because they allow students to define their own personal criteria for success.Other key issues in goal setting involve the identification of those goals features that increase student performance most； trying to construct activities that can accommodate simultaneous pursuit and attainment of many different kinds of goals； and resolving constraints.It is important to emphasize that the initial effort to establish a sense of direction and a common purpose for the group needs to be followed up by a recurring review of the original goal in view of the progress made towards them.

References：

[1]Ames， C.Classroom， Goals， Structures and Student Motivation [J].Journal of Educational Psychology.1992.84：287-309.

[2]Dornyei.Teaching and Researching Motivation[Z].England： Pearson Education Limited.2001.