Research Into The Role Of Role Play In Reinforcing Junior One Students’ Motivation

Motivation is considered by many to be one of the main determining factors of success in developing a second or foreign language. The new English curriculum puts great emphasis on language motivation and takes it as one of the goals of English teaching. In our class, we find some unmotivated students who are insufficiently involved and therefore unable to develop their language skills. How to motivate these students is the common issue met by all English teachers and it is also the main cause that I do research into the students’language learning motivation.Motivation theory in foreign language learning has been improved by researchers’ long study. It has been a hot issue to define the foreign language learning motivation. Different definitions have been drawn to highlight some of its specific aspects. Generally speaking, motivation is the direct force of action, a certain internal reasons to encourage people to take action to achieve certain goals, and an individual psychological state of maintaining its operation and launching. Motivation is extremely important to people’s behavior and activities, and it determines the individual consciousness, enthusiasm, tendentious and selective in activity.The writer has the knowledge of the situation of students’ English study because of her engaging in English teaching for many years. Many middle school students don’t have enough confidence in English study when they are the freshmen of middle school, thus causing negative feelings such as anxiety and fear. These feelings hinder their initiative in their English study, This is the prevailing situation among higher vocational college students. As to how to stimulate students’ motivation many English teachers combine motivation research results with the concrete teaching context, applying many measures to different teaching contexts. However, how to instruct students to establish a right motivation and sustain their motivation through some activity was rarely stated. The writer attempts to apply relevant foreign language study motivation to "role play" activity, using questionnaire and class observation to test whether this activity can promote and maintain students’ motivation. The writer hopes to probe one of the solutions to students’ motivation.The writer has conducted a one-year longitudinal experiment among one grade of students from Middle School Attached to Hunan University so as to certify the hypothesis of role play strengthening students’ motivation. The result has revealed that students’ interest in English study has been strengthened after role play has been adopted in class. The obvious improvement in students’ oral ability via role play enhances students’ motivation in a certain degree.In the last chapter, the writer discusses the limitation of this role play activity and meanwhile puts forward some other suggestions in promoting students’ motivation.