Action Research About The Stimulation Of Tibetan Middle-School Students’ English Academic Motivation

Any behavior is carried out with motivation. Motivation is usuallydefined as an internal state that arouses and directs behavior as well asmaintains and adjusts behavior. The research on motivation has a longhistory, and it has given birth to many different theories, of which themost famous ones are Hierarchy of Human Needs by Maslow andSelf-efficacy by Albert Bandura. These theories are widely used in thearea of education, and many practical psychological effects andsuccessful teaching strategies come out from them.Due to the differences in language and culture background ofTibetan middle school students, there exists a certain difficulty in learningEnglish. Only the students’ motivation in learning English was stimulatedmaximally to change “I have to learn English” to “I want to learnEnglish”, English teaching optimization in Tibet can be achieved.It is the whole English teachers’ task to help the Tibetan middleschool students to become talents with the ability of learning English andphysical and mental health. So the teachers should adopt scientificmethods as well as proper strategies to stir the students’ motivation tolearn English well and voluntarily.Action research, which joins a teacher and a researcher together,aims to solve the problems the teacher face in his/her work. It gains more and more attention in the area of education. It usually follows the model:firstly, find a problem and collect information about it, and then analyzeit according to some scientific theories to make a plan and carry out theplan to solve the problem.Lastly adjust the plan if necessary. In order tohelp the Tibetan middle school students build positive attitude to studyEnglish and improve their English level as well as the ability of studyingEnglish, I exploit the action research method to stimulate my students’motivation to study English. During the research, I have adopted methodsof questionnaire survey, interview, cases, diaries to record and analyze thecollected information about students’ English level and the effects ofusing the motivation strategies.