An Empirical Study Of The Present Status And Causes Of English Learning Interest Of Primary School Students

With English courses offered in primary schools one after another in our country, over the past ten years, the study and discussion of the primary school students’ interest in learning English has never stopped. However, the vast majority of existing studies simply discussed the strategies of developing primary school students’ interest in learning English; the topics of the overall situation of the students’English learning interest and the influential factors were rarely mentioned. In addition, these studies were front-line teachers’ summary and description of their teaching experience; empirical studies are very few. On the basis of previous studies, an empirical research method including survey and interview is used in this study to explore the status and main influential factors of English learning interest of primary school students.The main findings are as follows:1) The results show that the general condition of the English learning interest in the primary school that offers English classes from Grade One and those which offers English classes from Grade Three has no big differences; however, from the data analysis, the general level of English learning interest in the former is a little better than the latter.2) Students’ interest about English learning is good on the overall situation. In the investigation about half of the children has good interest, and about more than half of the children has certain interest of learning English. Children without interest or with keen interest in English are both few.3) There is big significance in terms of Grade, Sex, and the foundation of early English and the participation of the extracurricular English classes. Girls’ English learning interest are significantly higher than that of boys. In addition, as the grade increases, students’English learning interest decreases.4) The third-graders have the strongest English learning interest, and much stronger than that of other graders. The general level of English learning interest of first-graders and second-graders is not optimistic. Meanwhile, the general level of English learning interest of six-graders is not optimistic, either.5) Among the five concluded influential factors, the English environment has the biggest impact on students’ English learning interest and the recognition of teachers has the least impact on it. The decreasing orders of impact are as follows:the school English environment> family support> the organization of classroom activities> the attribution tendency> the recognition of teachers. All the five factors have direct impact on students’English learning interest, in which the attribution tendency has the negative influence on English learning interest. Based on the conclusions above, the researcher strongly recommends that the big effort should be made to create English environment at schools. And English teachers should try their best and pay more attention to keep students’ English learning interest once it is inspired by using different kinds of teaching methods according to their different characteristics.