A Study Of Self-Determination Motivation On Thai And Korean Students In Chinese Learning

More than60years has seen the development of the teaching of Chinese as aforeign language and the area of teaching Chinese has been attracting continuousresearch home and abroad. Undoubtedly, learning motivation of Chinese is always a hottopic. A strong motive is a sound way to learn Chinese and any other language well.Effectively knowing, arousing and developing students’ motivation can optimize bothstudy and teaching. Therefore, research on motivation has remained to be a fastdeveloping area.Early studies on motivation home and abroad are motivated mostly by the theoryof Gardner. As learners’ motivation diversifies, Gardner’s theory cannot totally describeall the traits of motivation. In the late period of1990s, the self-determination theory hasattracted attention in China. So far, most of the research is theoretical. Appliedmotivation studies on oversea students who learn Chinese in Chinese universities is rare.The present study, based on Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory, intends toexamine the motivation of the students from Thailand and Korea based on Noel’slanguage learning orientation questionnaire. In addition, the study offers somesuggestions in order to enhance the self-determination motivation of those students..Results of the thesis are as follows:(1) Intrinsic motivation of both Thai andKorean learners is stronger than extrinsic motivation. Students with amotivation are rare.Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of Thais is stronger than that of Koreans.(2) Thehigher the learners’ level is, the stronger their self-determination motivation is. Themotivation of Thais from the three levels is stronger than that of Korean from the samelevel. The strongest motivation of Thais from advanced level is knowledge of intrinsicmotivation, while that of Koreans from the same level is stimulation of intrinsicmotivation. The strongest motivation of Thais from the other two levels is stimulationof intrinsic motivation, while that of Koreans from the same level is knowledge ofintrinsic motivation.(3) Intrinsic motivation of learners from respective levels is allstronger than extrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation is stronger than amotivation.As for the six motivations, Thais from advanced level almost fit the whole Thaissituation, while it is Koreans from the primary and secondary levels that fit the wholeKoreans situation.Hopefully, this research can boost learners’ self-determination motivation and contribute to self-determination motivation field.