A Study Of Early Children’s Learning Attitude And Tendency Toward Chinese And English Through Metaphor Analysis

In recent years,there has been an increasing enthusiasm in bilingualism learning in China.Chinese parents send their children to institutions early to learn bilingualism.Despite the manpower and material resources they put in,rarely have parents listened to their children‘s ideas or asked about their children‘s willingness and interest.Few researches have been done to study early children‘s interest,preference and feelings about bilingualism.Such value judgments standing in an adult perspective forget the fact that children are learning subjects and ignore children‘s right to choose bilingualism and their appeals for learning.Therefore,this study,based on the perspectives of early children,employs an internationally advanced research method—elicited metaphor analysis,which may effectively explore the attitudes and tendencies of early children to bilingualism,aiming at finding out Chinese children’s interest,opinions and experience of bilingual learning,as well as providing empirical evidence for early bilingual education policy formulation,teacher training,teaching material compilation and classroom teaching reform,comprehensively and systematically improving the quality of bilingual personnel training and realizing the future security strategic goals for the nationFor respond to ―What are the feelings and thoughts of early children on bilingualism?‖ this study adopts a mixed-method model,and carries out qualitative analysis and quantitative statistics on the elicited metaphorical texts.First,the study explored whether the early children were willing to learn bilingualism,and whether they were interested in bilingual learning or not.Then,we further explored the developmental problems of early children’s attitudes towards bilingualism and their tendency to change with age.Finally,the relationship between the development trend of early bilingual learning attitudes and the development of bilingualism was analyzed,and the pedagogical value of early bilingual learning attitudes was revealed.Firstly,we used a cross-sectional metaphorical way to analyze early children‘s attitudes and tendencies to learning Chinese and English.In Shanghai,Mudanjiang and Changzhou,243 early children(half in male and female,half in urban and rural areas)were randomly selected.We made sure variables were strictly controlled and materials were used to elicit early children to give a metaphor,as "Learning Chinese(English)is like...,because....." The metaphorical texts were collected,transcribed,coded,summarized,classified and analyzed,thus we learned about early children‘s attitudes and tendencies to bi-lingual learning.The research finds that early children have interest both in learning Chinese and English,and their positive attitudes towards learning Chinese are better than those to English.Being placed in an environment more suitable to learn Chinese,subconscious,they show more interest and better attitude to Chinese learning.Secondly,their early bilingual learning attitudes cognition originates from daily embodied experience and has the characteristics of "taken from body nearly and from materials far",which is in line with embodied philosophy.Thirdly,based on a detailed analysis of children’s metaphorical categories,a conclusion may be made that the local culture of ―Bread is the soul of life.‖ influences their learning cognition and experience,thereby indirectly affecting their bilingual learning attitude.Finally,early children in different regions have different interest performance in bilingual learning.Children in remote areas have better attitudes than those in developed regions.Secondly,we also designed a longitudinal study to dig the law of the development of early bilingual learning attitudes and its relationship with the development of bilingual skills.56 early-stage children(half male and half female)were randomly selected from both Shanghai and Mudanjiang.Elicited materials were served to collect texts of metaphorical learning attitudes,at the same time,their Chinese and English language proficiency was examined.Follow-up studies lasted a year and a half,we notice the "Matthew Effect" —early children show more interest in Chinese learning,while less interest in English learning.According to this study,the main reason involves the misreading of national policies,family disapproval and inappropriate teaching methods.This lack of interest in early bilingual learning may have a bad influence on their future learning.Thirdly,analyzing the relationship between early children bilingual learning attitudes and bilingual skills,the study indicates that the two form a mutual causality,showing s postpositional effect.When early children are interested in Chinese learning,their Chinese skills keep improving,in turn,the improvement in Chinese skills promotes their learning attitudes.The same is true with English,when they show little interest in English,their English skills decrease,and in turn,this decrease makes them more negative in learning English.Researchers owe it to poor bilingual environment,teachers’ "discipline" policy,inappropriately teaching means and so on.The change of learning attitude is the main effect of the decrease in bilingual skills.Finally,some suggestions are put forward to the readers.Parents should attach importance to early bilingual learning.Regardless of the conditions allowed,they should expose their children to bilingual environment and cultivate them bilingual learning interest by means of reading bilingual picture books,watching bilingual animations,listening to bilingual children’s songs and so force,in this way accumulating learning experience for the future.Besides,it‘s also necessary to inheriting native culture and accepts bilingual cultures.We should create a bilingual environment based on cultural diversity,allowing children to maintain a positive bilingual learning attitude,removing the adverse effects of negative attitudes,while improving bilingualism and maintaining a good situation of mutual development.Moreover,This study gives specific suggestions on early bilingual education policy formulation,bilingual teaching material compilation,classroom teaching reform,parents’ and society’s approval for early bilingualism and promotion of professional early bilingual teachers’ development,promoting the quality of bilingual personnel training and making preparation for our national security in the future.