The Relation Between The Learners' Individual Factors And The Different Results In Learning Chinese In Non-Chinese Environment

Taking the Thai Junior middle school students as the objects of study and employing the two methods of quantitative research and qualitative research, this thesis analyzed the relation between the learners' individual factors and the results of Chinese learning, and discovered many problems in learners' Chinese learning motivations and strategies. At last, some methods to solve the problems are proposed.The thesis is composed of five chapters.The first chapter introduces the background and the goal of this research. While working as a volunteer Chinese teacher in Keera-pat International School in Thailand, the author found many problems in students' Chinese study and decided to find out the reasons from the angle of the relations between the learners' individual factors and the results of their Chinese study by analyzing the influence that every factor has on Chinese study. Classifications and the research angles of the individual factors from the scholars are also introduced in the literature review of this part.The second chapter divides the individual factors into two parts of the internal factors and the external factors by introducing them from the angles of Cognitive Psychology and summarizes their relations into a graph. This chapter emphasizes the learning motivations and learning strategies in accordance with their significance.The third chapter introduces the research process. The two methods of quantitative research and qualitative research are employed here. The former was carried out with three research questionnaires and 41 students as research objects while the latter was done in two ways of the material analytic and the direct interview. The materials of the two learners' individual factors were collected by many methods and then the direct interviews were carried on separately.The fourth chapter is about the findings after the synthetic research of last chapter.1. Chinese study- related family background affects the student's Chinese learning motivations.2. The learner's instrumental motivation is stronger than the integrative motivation, the girls motivation is stronger than the boy' and some students have no motivation.3. The outstanding Chinese learners are holders of two kinds of motivations. 4. The six learning strategies are used with the ratio from high to low in turn: Affective Strategies, Social Strategies, Cognitive Strategies, Memory—related Strategies and Metacognitive Strategies.5. Many of the individual factors, such as gender, language aptitude and disposition, affect the use of learning strategies.6. The outstanding Chinese learners are good at exploring and using the learning strategies.7. Better learning effects can be achieved by employing the synthesis of strategies.8. Some students' learning strategies are quite monotonous while a few of them have no strategies at all.9. English and the mother tongue are relied on excessively.The fifth chapter puts forward several proposals to improve the present situation of Chinese teaching, which are teaching students in accordance with their individual factors, stimulating learning motivations and raising learning strategies.The achievement and deficiency are simply summarized in the conclusion at last.