A Study On Pupils' English Learning Motivation In Primary Schools In Dingxi, Gansu

Many studies shown that the students' learning motivation is one of the most prominent factors that strongly related to achievement in L2 learning. Much of this research has been initiated and inspired by two Canadian psychologists, Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert who, together with their colleagues and associates, grounded motivation research in a social psychological framework. Gardner and Lambert also established scientific research procedures and introduced the standardized assessment techniques and instruments Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) of motivation. Thus setting high research standards and bringing L2 motivation research to maturity.Although Gardner's motivation construct dominates L2 motivation research over the years, it was under the challenge in the early 1990s as researchers tried to reopen the research agenda in order to "shed new light on L2 motivation in educational context." Gardner called this classroom-related discussion on motivation in L2 "motivational renaissance". Numbers of influential pioneering articles in this vein are provided by 'The Modern Language Journal debate' at that period. Among these researchers, Dornyel took up Crooks and Schmidt's approach of examining motivation at various conceptual levels and provided an extensive review of various motivational constructs and synthesizes them into a three-level framework for L2 motivation.The present study elaborates Gardner and Dornyel' motivation theories respectively and follows Gardner's social psychology motivation theory to investigate the main factors affecting primary school pupils' motivation for their foreign language (English) learning among 190 pupils in Dachen, Beiguan and Xiguan Primary schools in Dingxi, Gansu.It aims to test the application of Gardner's Social-education model in the situation of China, to realize the notion of New Curriculum Standard (The pilot edition) that motivating students to learn in the education context of Dingxi, Gansu. The significance of this study lies in facilitating primary school teachers in Dingxi, Gansu to become aware of and further develop students' English learning motivation in accordance with internationally recognized motivation theorie's and strategies and implementing the notion of New Curriculum Standard (The pilot edition) more decently.The instrumental tools used in this study are two questionnaires, which were administered in two different periods. All the data were processed by Excel software and made in graphs and figures so that the result would be observed clearly.The results of this study indicated: 1) Gardner's Social-education model can be applied in the education context of Dingxi, China; 2) the notion of New Curriculum Standards (The pilot edition) that motivating pupils to learn is implemented well in primary schools in Dingxi, China.The thesis contains six parts in detail. Firstly, the background of the Elementary Education Reform in China and the importance of learning motivation in L2/FL classrooms are considered to demonstrate the need for this study. Secondly and thirdly, the principle motivation theories both abroad and in China in the study of L2 and their application in relation to the situation of China are reviewed specifically. Following this, the author discussed the main motivation components that have been investigated in primary schools in Dingxi, Gansu and finally some suggestions and limitations of this paper are also pointed out. Although instrumental orientation is widely considered as the main factor influencing student's English learning motivation in isolated foreign language context of China, this paper argues that 'integrativeness' is still the major incentive leading to the high motivation of pupils' English learning.