Creating A Motivating Setting Conducive To SLA

Nowadays, many teachers and educators are confronted with a challenge: How to promote the students' motivation. Motivation is considered by many to be one of the main determining factors in developing a second or foreign language competence. Motivation, the act of providing an incentive or a reason for doing something, is a key to learning or doing anything successfully. When individuals are highly motivated and their experiences are meaningful and purposeful for them, they learn more readily. It is for this reason that The New Curriculum Guide for High School(2001)specifically demands that teachers care for the students' learning attitude,affection and ideas of value. It stipulates that English course should return to life, that is, English course should relate to society and life, it should have close relationship with students' life. Students' real life should relate to their individual development. In line with the requirements of new course standards, students should use English to express what they have learnt in their daily life. What's more, they should explore and find opportunities to learn something new in English in their daily life. But in China, English is merely a foreign language, and students only know about and practice English in their English class. Other subjects are always taught in Chinese. So, there is a lack of atmosphere for English acquisition. In view of this unfavorable condition for English learners, we as English teachers are challenged to promote a learning environment and to create a motivating setting conducive to English acquisition. To meet this challenge, this study is conducted in an attempt to find out answers to the following two key questions:1. Is it possible to build up a truly motivating setting in China that is conducive to English acquisition by high school students?2. Can efforts to create such a setting in turn lead to the improvement of English teachers' teaching method?The author had an experiment conducted among 110 students from Class 11 and Class 12, Grade 7 of Sha Xian No. 6 High School. The experiment consisted of two questionnaires, three examinations and an interview. During the experiment, the learning environment of the experimental group, Class 11 has been changed greatly. The students in the controlled group, Class 11, were taught as usual. By analyzing the results of the experimental research, the author conclude that in following the traditional English teaching method, the learner are liable to have instrumental motivational problems, but all these problems are alleviated when the linguistic environment becomes advantageous to English learners. Such an environment is helpful to improve the teachers' teaching method and style as well.The answers to the research questions mentioned above thus point out a way to sharpen the students' motivation in learning English. And they hold some significant pedagogical implications for English teaching in China's middle and high schools.