Study On Chinese Learning Motivation Of Overseas Students From Central Asian Countries

Learning motivation has long been considered one of the active factors among those affecting individuals in second language acquisition. On the basis of theories in the fields of psychology, education and second language acquisition, the researcher conducts an empirical study to explore Chinese learning motivation of overseas students from Central Asian countries by means of applying a questionnaire, classroom observation and an interview. Altogether 215 overseas students are involved in the study. After a comprehensive consideration of the internal and external factors which affect those overseas students learning Chinese, a general construction of their Chinese learning motivation is achieved. It goes further to detect and analyze the differences among the students from the perspectives of their present Chinese education level, country, sex and self-evaluation on Chinese learning respectively. Finally, the thesis presents suggestions and specific teaching strategies on initiating students'Chinese learning motivation, both from the respect of administrators and that of Chinese language teachers.The thesis consists of 5 correlated chapters. Chapter 1 serves as a brief introduction to the background of the study, the present state and development of both foreign and domestic studies, and on the basis of such literature review, it states the problem, objectives and significance of the study. Chapter 2 presents the concept of learning motivation and foreign and domestic motivation theories from the aspects of educational psychology and second language acquisition. In chapter 3, the specific research design is elaborated, as the introduction to the objectives that the empirical study is supposed to achieve, the choice of subjects, the development of the research instrument, the means of data collection and analysis. Chapter 4 demonstrates results of the study, along with further analysis and discussion. Finally, the results are restated, the defects are pointed out and further possible studies are proposed and orientated.As the results indicate, among the internal and external factors affecting their Chinese learning motivation, overseas students expose strong motivation in factors of teachers'role and expectancy, less strong motivation in the following seven factors: goals, attribution of success, inside and outside of classroom activities, task value, attitude, interest and feedback, and even less in factors of goals and important others. Their Chinese learning anxiety is low, which contributes to their Chinese learning. Those evaluating themselves unsuccessful learners fail to attribute their failure properly. There is no significant difference in general among the students when different Central Asian countries are concerned, except that Tajikistan students display higher anxiety than Kazakhstan students and Kyrgyzstan students respectively. Students at different education levels demonstrate significant differences in factors of goals, attribution of success, attribution of failure, important others and feedback. The strongest motivation goes to students of non-academic education. As regard to sex, there shows no significant differnce. Compared to failure-evaluation students, success-evaluation counterparts present stronger Chinese learning motivation and lower anxiety. Among them, there exist significant differences in factors of expectancy, task value and inside and outside classroom activities, and significant differences in the sub-factors of proximal goals and distal goals are as well detected.