Micro-social Contextual Motivations Of English Learners From Rural And Remote Areas

Social contextual motivation together with individual differences has been the focus of second language (L2) motivation study. In previous studies, social context that influences learners'L2 motivation is subdivided into macro-context and micro-context. The former refers to cultural environment while the latter is specifically associated with learning environment such as schools, families, and peer support. However, these studies put much emphasis on the immigrants and their social identities in the macro-social context rather than common foreign language learners in the micro-social context. Researches have shown that in the context of foreign language learning, micro-social contextual motivations play more important roles than macro-social contextual motivations do, especially in China where there are large regional differences between urban and rural & remote areas. Therefore, it is necessary to separately study micro-social contextual motivations in urban and rural & remote areas, and special attention should be given to micro-social contextual motivations in rural and remote areas(R&R).This paper studies how micro-social contextual motivations influence personal motivational variables---goal-setting and attribution of successful and failed learners from rural and remote areas by combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Results indicate that micro-social contextual motivations have different effects on different learners in different stages of their English learning. Even in the same stage, one social factor may contribute to positive goal-settings but negative attributions. This study also finds that, in the learning process, many successful learners tend to take neutral or negative factors as positive factors, while failed learners often change neutral factors into negative factors and their views are always in change. Besides, the turning point in the learning process is discovered in this study, where teachers'and parents'encouragement combined with their proper guidance is particularly important.The significance of this study is that it studies the specific relationship between micro-social contextual motivations and learners'motivation variables in rural and remote areas in China with a temporal concern, integrating social contextual motivation into personal motivation, and differentiating successful learners from failed ones. All of these make practical implications for the improvement of English teaching and learning in these areas. In addition, it combines qualitative with quantitative research which is a new way of motivation study in China.This paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction of this research, presenting the backgrounds, the reasons, the purposes, main contents, the methods and its significance. The second chapter is a literature review on L2 learning motivation, social contextual motivation, the social context in China, and the characteristics of successful and failed learners. All of these constitute the theoretical framework and practical foundation of this study. The third chapter is the research method, explaining the combination of qualitative with quantitative methods, and describing the process of data collection. The fourth chapter includes results and discussions. It first illustrates micro-social contextual motivations in detail and its influences on successful and failed learners in different learning stages, making a comparison between the successful and the failed to make implications for improvement of English teaching and learning in rural and remote areas, and then these results are further discussed. The last chapter concludes the research findings and its limitations.