A Study On The Motivations Of The Senior Middle School Students In Foreign Language Learning

Motivation is one of the most significant factors that affect the L2 learners' learning results. The foreign studies on motivation mainly focus on the western learners in L2 environment at a variety of ages, whereas the domestic ones on college and postgraduates students. As one of the largest group of FL learners in China, the students in high schools were always either lack of deserved attention of scholars or excluded from researchers' academic scope. In this phase, the learners lay the foundation for their future L2 learning, which even highlighted the significance of the study.In this research, comprehensive approaches of observation, such as Questionnaire Survey, interviews, observations, and the Case Study, were employed to systematically investigate the English learning motivation of the students in a provincial key high school located in a county town in Shannxi Province.At the First Phase of the research, three intact classes randomly chosen from 60 intact classes in three grades respectively, including 109 boys and 110 girls, 219 subjects in all—participated in the research. In Questionnaire Survey I , we found that the gap between the rural and urban subjects, gender differences and grade differences existed among the subjects in the three grades. On gender, the motivations of the female subjects were obviously higher than those of male ones. As for the gap between the rural and the urban subjects, the motivations of the former were higher than the latter. As to the differences between the grades, the significant gaps stood between the three grades and the motivations of Grade Two were obviously lower than the other two. The research conducted the tentative analysis to probe into the reasons from the perspectives of internal and external factors. At the Second Phase, on the basis of their teachers' recommendation, ten low-motivated subjects were chosen from the subjects in Grade Two and a two-month treatment was performed on them. During the treatment, the internal as well as the external factors were enhanced and reinforced. In Questionnaire Survey II, we found that the ten subjects' motivation were significantly improved. Based on the research, we proposed some constructive suggestions on ameliorating the current EFL learning and teaching in high schools.This thesis consists of five parts.The first part comes as an introduction. In this part, the writer mainly states the research background, the objectives and its great significance to the English teaching in high schools. The overall structure of the thesis is introduced as well.The second part is a review of the relevant theories on motivation, which includes the definitions and categories of the motivation. The researcher illustrated the previous and current relevant studies on motivation both at home and abroad. Additionally, special attention is attached to the relation between motivation and EFL teaching as well as the significance of motivation in EFL teaching.The research design is introduced in the third part, which includes two phases, the first part is the Questionnaire Survey and the second is the Case Study. In the first phase, Questionnaire Survey I was conducted to investigate the internal factors and the external ones affecting the senior middle school students' FL learning. The former mainly referred to the individuals' psychological factors, previous language learning experience and personal factors and the latter referred to environments of school, family and society. Among them, the teacher is one of the most important factors which exerts far-reaching influence on high school students' motivation of FL learning. In the second phase, based on the recommendation of the teachers, ten de-motivated students in Grade Two in the senior middle school were selected to ameliorate their external factors and strengthen their internal factors from every aspect to incite their motivations, which lasted for two months. After that, Questionnaire Survey II was accomplished to testify the outcomes.The fourth part goes to the analysis of the data from the Questionnaire Surveys and the discussion of the results of the Case Study with SPSS to testify the hypotheses proposed in research design.The fifth part reaches as a conclusion. In terms of the research findings, some suggestions are put forward at the end of the paper, aiming at helping motivate the students in FL learning.