A Study On Motivation Of English Learning Of Migrant Workers In Junior High School

This thesis is about schools in cities where children of immigrant workers are enrolled. Teachers in this kind of school have met many difficulties because these students come from different parts of China and received different levels of English education in their hometown, and formed different learning habits. Their family backgrounds are different, even some of them have some psychological barriers. Due to these factors, their learning is affected, so is the whole English teaching of schools. After reading some theories about English learning The researcher find she can help the children of migrant workers by stimulating their motivation.In order to solve the problem, the writer started with studying the learning motivation of the children whose parents are immigrant workers in the school where she has been teaching. Learning motivation is one of the important factors that affect English learning process and many famous scholars have studied motivation. Canadian psychologists, Gardner and Lambert have started the research on motivation for foreign language learning in 1950s. In China research on motivation for foreign language has been studied by Wen Qiufang, Sun Tiehong and Bao Zhanguang and so on from the 1980s. However, learning motivations of the children of Chinese migrant workers is a new area of research. Many researchers consider motivation as one of the main determining factors of success in developing English learning. So it is necessary for English teachers who work in the school which takes in the children of immigrant workers to know about the students'motivation and try their best to improve and direct their motivation and interest and let them try their best to study English and improve their English mark.The author studies the different factors which influenced the motivation of the children of the migrant workers, e.g. their family background, personality characteristics, curves of three years of learning English and the adolescent factors. Then she conducts an interview with the children of the immigrant workers. This study lasted for three years. The researcher observed the subjects during the three- year period, and gave them right direction and tries to find the most suitable strategies. The results of the questionnaire were put into the computer and analyzed by Excel and SPSS, and make different charts. Such statistical procedure as descriptive analysis, independent samples T-test and correlation analysis are applied.According to the results of descriptive analysis and independent samples T-est of the interview of children of different immigrant workers, for Grade One students of immigrant workers, During the English learning motivation, the most important motivation is the intrinsic motivation. For Grade Three students, it is their extrinsic motivation of desiring for a better living which is the most important learning motivation. Motivation changed significantly during the 1st semester of Grade Two and the 1st semester of Grade Three. As to the correlation analysis, so it's the best time for teacher to master the motivation of the children whose parents are migrant workers? The following results are obtained:motivational intensity correlates positively and significantly with achievement; higher motivational intensity leads to high achievement. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers in the schools where children of the immigrant workers are enrolled should pay attention to their internal motivation and their extrinsic motivation, and developing teaching strategies to stimulate their learning motivation.