A Study On Chinese Learning Motivation Of International Students With Medical Science Major

Motivation is considered to be one of the main determining factors of success in learning a second language (L2) or a foreign language (FL). Followed Gardner & Lambert's classic model, Scholars home and abroad have dong more research about motivation and its variables. In our country, most studies focused on the motivation of English learning students or on the whole of international students.Considering the close connection between education of Clinical Medicine majors and Chinese learning, the paper explores the motivation situation among international students of Clinical Medicine majors when they are learning Chinese in order to examine the Chinese learning motivation types, motivational intensity and the difference for the difference of individual.This study examined the students'motivations by a likert scale questionnaire on 157 international students of Clinical Medicine majors in Taishan Medical College selected through stratified sampling. Then Carried on the statistical analysis by SPSS 13.0.Five types of motivation were found:1)Communication Media; 2)Academic Achievement; 3)Culture Interest; 4)Learning Situation; 5)Language Interest; Communication media and Academic achievement, which had some features of practicality, became the main types of motivation. For the reason of English teaching model, the international students of Clinical Medicine majors had lower Chinses language interest.The study also uncovered that individual background factors were somehow associated with motivation types and motivation intensity. For the reason of clinical training practice, the motivation of academic achievement, culture interest, learning cituation, language interest increase same like the motivation intensity, but the motivation of communication media decrease. Following the grade increase, the motivation of communication media and academic achievement decrease, but the motivation of culture interest and language interest increase, the motivation intensity also increase, then decrease in the end of their studying.International students with higher motivations of comunication media, academic achievement, culture interest, learning situation and language interest made more effort on Chinese learning, and the difference between every two groups was significant.The author has put forward some strategies to stimulate the students' motivation effectively on the aspect of teaching target, curriculum arrangement, textbook building and test criterion in order to fulfill the Chinese teaching assignment better.