An Investigation And Analysis Of The Elementary Students’ Interest And Motivation In Learning English As A Foreign Language

Since 2001, the Ministry of Education has spared no effort to promote the construction of the English curriculum at elementary schools throughout the nation, attaching much importance to the learning of English on the part of pupils. But the mission started much later in the elementary than in the middle school. Therefore, its requirements for the pupils need to be put into practice, tested and verified; and its teaching rules, to be pursued and discovered; its methods, to be explored and summarized. Therefore, the aim of the investigation was to make an objective analysis of such issues with a view to providing a deep insight into the features and characteristics of the mission and exploring ideal and practical pedagogical notions and theories.The primary task of the elementary school’s English curriculum is designed to stimulate pupil’s interest in learning English as a foreign language, to cultivate their positive attitude towards the behavior and help them build enough self-confidence in the practice. Such well-designed curriculum will lay the solid foundation for the pupils’continuation of learning English in their upcoming middle school.A positive learning attitude is the key to the success of English learning in pupils. Motivation and interest are important components of the positive learning attitude. Therefore, the course of English teaching in primary schools is supposed to attach great importance to cultivating pupils’motivation and interest in their involvement.Theoretically, the current study was based on the psychological theories concerning motivation and interest. It attempted, from a cognitive perspective, to examine and analyze the status quo of pupils’motivation and interest for English learning, to explore how the target language was taught and learned according to the theories and notions concerning motivation and interest in the practice of English learning, and to pursue whether pupils’learning progress was closely related with some correlations between them, as indicated by the three questions put forward below:1. What constitutes pupils’motivation and interest in their learning of English?2. How do pupils’motivation and interest contribute to their learning progress?3. What effective teaching strategies should the language teacher employ to cultivate pupils’lasting motivation and interest in learning English?In the current study, the author chose the pupils as subjects at Shenzhen Yantian Foreign Language Elementary School, which is a regional key school. In order to make this study more objective, representative and comparable, some pupils were selected from an ordinary elementary school as controls. The investigation on motivation was carried out on 245 pupils in the form of questionnaire, and in the meanwhile, the investigation on interest was individually done among 90 pupils from the Foreign Language Elementary School.The method of quantitative research was applied to the current investigation, guided by Gardiner’s motivation theory, Dornyei’s three-leveled learning motivation model and cognitive motivation theory. The questionnaire on pupils’motivational components was designed based on Huang Hong’an& Wen Weiping’s (2005) questionnaire’on undergraduates’English learning motivational components,’and also on the status quo of the pupils’English learning.According to the questionnaire-based research data, various motivational factors were analyzed. Considering the children’s characteristics, the pupils’kinds of learning interest were also analyzed in the form of interview and questionnaire.As indicated by the findings, motivation and interest were found to be key factors of effectively arousing the pupils’initiative in improving their learning efficiency. The analyses revealed that their motivation stayed high in general and highest at Grade 2; that it dropped to the lowest at Grade 4, and that it began to climb at Grade 6. But viewed as a whole, the tendency of their motivation and interest presented a gradual slope. It can be concluded that Grade 3-4 is a critical period of motivation maintenance, which is worth serious consideration on the part of teachers and parents so that they can take full advantage of the period.In addition, the data showed that most pupils were confident of their potential to learn English well, and that the pupils’motivation and interest were positively correlated with their teachers’teaching approaches and positive pedagogical attitudes. Such positive connection could provide the teachers of English with a good opportunity to encourage pupils to learn English well in all aspects.In view of which, it can be concluded that the learning and teaching of English as a foreign language in the elementary school is a comprehensive, systematic and scientific education, and that the process is related to psychology, linguistics, pedagogy, personality, and etc.A further conclusion can be drawn that those teach English as a foreign language at an elementary level should obey the law of classroom teaching process, follow the basic principles of psychology and linguistics and take full advantage of the mechanism of pupils’psychological development and cognitive evolution. For the sake of pedagogical effect, the teacher of English ought to focus on pupils’emotional education, cultivate their learning interest, inspire their inner motivation and arouse their enthusiasm to the full.