Analysis Of Multi-factors In English Learning Of Yi Students

The trend that the world economy and politics get more and more globalized requests every nationality in China to respond actively and to blend into this change. Consequently, to offer better education becomes the intellectual support for this need. Learning English well is one of the manifestations that every nationality of China adjusts to this tide in education. Presently, the researches of teaching pedagogy on the national minorities are not in scarcity, such as a new method for Yi students, namely, the bilingual education carried out mainly in the Daliangshan area. However, within the researches on the features of Yi students' English learning process under traditional teaching method, there are few quantified study and case study, among which interviews and field studies are the most common forms. This research has developed a quantified research combined with analysis and discussion, by taking as examples, the junior middle school students in E Bian Middle School for Nationalities located in E Bian Autonomous County, Leshan City, Sichuan Province, in order to probe the learning motivation of Yi students, the degree of their L1 usage, as well as cognitive pattern of their English learning.The issues for which the researcher has investigated include the differences between the grades of Yi students and Han students in their English language examinations, the degree of effect of the three factors mentioned above on scores and their roles in predicting scores. The research methods are based on statistic means such as independent T-test, multi-factors variance analysis and multiple-regression. Analysis and discussion on the causes of results formation will also be considered. The results of this study are: firstly, differences do exist between the scores of Yi students and Han students in their English language examination, although this discrepancy is not obvious at the statistic level. Secondly, the differences between Yi students' motivation of learning, the degree of their L1 usage and cognitive pattern of their English learning are embodied in English achievement to some extent. To be concrete, the difference of motivation is very obviously shown on scores. Most of the Yi students showed a fairly high level of deep motivation, that's to say, they are firmly fascinated by the English language and its culture, but the level of surface motivation is comparatively lower, because the present learning condition makes it hard for them to realize their motivation. Both the divergence of degree of L1 usage and cognitive pattern of their English learning is not manifested clearly in their scores; but through contrast, the researcher finds that the students who are more logic and absorbed in matters of themselves rather than their surroundings will be easier to adjust to the English pedagogy applied in E Bian, and thus, gain higher achievement. Thirdly, within the scores that the three factors are able to predicate, motivation's co-efficiency with the scores is 14.111, the degree of their L1 usage is 0.66, and the cognitive pattern is -0.567, the constant is 16.394, as shown in the following formula: scores = 16.394 + 14.111 * motivation + 0.66 * L1 using - 0.567 * cognitive pattern.By analyzing and discussing the cause formation of above results and other factors that may affect English learning achievement, the researcher lists out some suggestions below from macroscopic and microscopic view: to enhance the ability of induction and deduction and understand the effect of field independence; to connect what have learnt in class to world knowledge and become adapted to new surroundings rapidly, and to bring into full play of the advantages of field dependence; to understand the connection between L1 and L2, and continue to carry out bilingual education; to meet the conditions of surface motivation and foster deep motivation of learning; to set a reasonable learning goal and guide the students to develop correct attribution; to improve those backward teaching methods and put different emphasis on listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating; to make use of the advantageous national policies and perfect the local regulations of education; to change utterly the backward opinions and appreciate the positive functions of education; to spread those valuable culture embodied in the English language and create a favorable foreign language learning circumstance; to cultivate talented persons in various ways, and develop in fields of art, science, engineering, agriculture as well as medicine. This study investigates and analyzes the specific problems of certain group of Yi students in the framework of language teaching research on the national minorities from linguistic and pedagogic perspectives, completes and testifies certain thoughts within this framework, e.g. L1 is not the main concern in the initial stage of SLA, (Ellis, 1994) and the field independent learners are better learners, because they will focus on the relevant variables in class and conversation. (Seliger, 1983) It is of quite high value for us to prove the theories of language teaching to national minorities in practice.