Developing The Learning Interest Of Chinese Learners: The Study Of Chinese Language Major Students In Elementary Course In Thailand

For the past few years, there have been an increasing number of students who choose Chinese language as a subject for their university entrance examination. However, the number of Chinese-major graduates does not increase as expected. Further, for those Chinese-major graduates are also experiencing some difficulties in using Chinese language in their workplaces, reflecting by their lacking of Chinese language proficiency.There have so many debates of why universities could not produce well-qualified Chinese language major graduates to fulfill the requirement of labor market.The paper argues that the possible reasons contributing to this issue could be those Chinese language major students may not have enough interest in the subject; and the Chinese teaching methods may not be appropriate.In order to find out what factors could be contributing to the motivation of learning language and be able to make further suggestion for increasing the motivation of Chinese learners, the paper will analyze and compare the learning interest between Chinese language major students and other language major students. The paper will utilize questionnaire method for data collection. The period of collecting data is during May to August 2011, the sample unit is language major students in Thailand universities.320 of questionnaires were sent out and 275 were received back.240 of responded questionnaires were effective,138 respondents were Chinese language major students and the other 102 respondents were other language major students.The paper has found that Chinese language major students seem to have only external motivation, unlike Korean and Japanese language major students. To illustrate, some students might choose Chinese language as their major because:1) their family want them to study Chinese; 2) their English language skills are not good enough for taking entrance examination, so they take Chinese language as their alternative choices (for the university entrance examination system in Thailand, students have to take one second foreign languages examination). In contrast, students who choose Korean language and Japanese language as their major subjects tend to be driven by their own interest of Korean and Japanese ’entertainment industries’cultures. This is quite a different circumstance comparing Chinese language major students.Additionally, Thailand’s university system allows students to change their major unconditionally; students are only required to take sufficient credits for their graduation. This may encourage some Chinese language major students who did not do well in Chinese subjects or low-motivated students to switch their major. Therefore, the number of Chinese language major graduates is not significantly increasing.In conclusion, the paper analyzes the factors influencing the interest of Chinese language major students in Thailand, and further makes some suggestions regarding Chinese teaching methods for improving learners’interest.