A Study Of The Correlation Between Language Attitude,ethnic Identity And English Achievement Of Zhuang Junior Middle School Students

With the development of bilingual learning research,minority students‘ foreign language learning in the trilingual context is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers and scholars both at home and abroad.It is a great challenge for minority students to learn English as a foreign or third language in China.Reviewing the previous studies,the research on Zhuang middle school students‘ English learning is not sufficient or comprehensive.Taking the Zhuang junior school students of Pingzhai Middle School of Quibei County,Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture,Yunnan Province as the research subjects,this study makes an attempt to explore the correlation between language attitude,ethnic identity,and English achievement of Zhuang junior middle school students with research methods of questionnaire,interview,one-way ANOVA and regression analysis.The results of the research are as follows:1.Most Zhuang junior middle school students acquire their ethnic language first.Their ethnic language--the Zhuang language--is the most continually used language at home and in the community.Mandarin Chinese is the most regularly utilized language in school and public places like shopping malls,restaurants,stations and so on.Most students prefer Chinese in terms of entertainment like listening to music.2.Their ethnic language--the Zhuang language—is highly regarded by Zhuang students,followed by Mandarin Chinese,and English comes at the bottom.They think their ethnic language and Mandarin Chinese are delightful to hear and sound amiable,but not English.They rank Mandarin Chinese as the most useful language.Compared with Mandarin Chinese,their ethnic language is considered less useful.As for English,it is not that useful for them.They keep an optimistic attitude towards both the Zhuang language and Mandarin Chinese,while a negative one towards English.Gender and grades are significantly influential factors on students‘ attitude towards English.3.Zhuang junior middle school students have a high ethnic identity.Gender,grade,parents‘ ethnicities,Chinese proficiency,and English proficiency are not influential factors to the students‘ ethnic identity,but there was a significant difference between their Zhuang language proficiency and ethnic identity.4.There is a significant but weakly positive relationship between their language attitude and ethnic identity.However,there is no significant correlation between their language attitude,ethnic identity,and English achievement.