A Study Of English Learning Difficulties And Their Affective Factors On Dongxiang Minority Senior High School Students

English is a new course for many junior and senior high schools in ethnic regions of China. In order to pass down modern civilization and minority language cultures, these schools have to offer bilingual courses with ethnic language and Mandarin language for a long period of time. Hence, it is called"minority language teaching school". To satisfy the needs of English learners in the society, these schools begin to offer English courses formally and regularly in recent years. Due to the special environmental and increasing burden of study, students at different level come across English learning difficulties. Thus, it is necessary and essential to do some research on these difficulties, and analyze causes in order to provide supportive scientific policies and education practice.Bilingual teaching with ethnic language and Mandarin language has been carrying out for a long period of time, and even trilingual teaching with ethnic language, Mandarin language and English was adopted several years ago. This study mainly based on the definition of learning difficulty, and related theories of learning motivation, learning strategies and learning interest for supporting the thesis. The samples are selected from Dongxiang No.1 Senior High School of Dongxiang Autonomous County. The study is both quantitative and qualitative including a survey and an oral interview. The data obtained from the survey goes through statistical analysis and the major findings are as follows:1) 50% of the students'parents are farmers in Dongxiang Autonomous County, and students in this area have English learning difficulty in common as a result of the special ethnic and geographical environment. 2) There are two major important causes lead to such difficulties: external affective factors and internal affective factors. External affective factors include natural environment, social environment, home environment and school environment factors; internal affective factors include students'learning motivation, learning strategies and learning interest. This study also has strong pedagogical implications for English learners, English educators, textbook compilers, and educational administrations.The limitations of this study are as follows: 1) the author has only done preliminary research on some of the affective factors of English learning difficulties, and may overlook other affective factors; 2) The researcher knows little Dongxiang Language, so this paper has not covered the language itself.