A Study On Stimulating English Learning Motivation Of High School Underachievers By Target Teaching Model

Nowadays, with the development of International communication and cooperation, English, as an International language, has drawn more and more attention all over the world. Meanwhile, it is also becoming the basic demand of talents in the21st century. In curriculum structure of Chinese education, English has always been so important a subject that appears in all kinds of exams. Thus, its importance is very obvious and undeniable. While in the actual teaching process, although all the students are exposed to the same or similar learning environment and taught by the same teacher, they differ in their developing directions and speeds. Those who are inferior to meet the standards of English teaching goals are often called English underachievers. They are not only the headaches of teachers and parents, but also the teaching objects that can not be neglected.As a matter of fact, a lot of educators and English teachers have made researches on how to transform English underachievers in recent years. But after studying, the researcher found that there were thoughts and methods in the existing researches while there were not so many specific and detailed measures on how to do it. Hence, the researcher paid her attention to the daily English teaching, expecting to seek a new advanced teaching model that can stimulate English learning motivation of English underachievers. This model is Target teaching model proposed by Ames in1990, whose aim is to enhance students’learning motivation in classroom learning. In the process of research, under the guidance of Target teaching model, the researcher devoted herself to designing and applying specific and practical measures to foster English underachievers’learning motivation from six aspects—task design, authority distribution, recognition practices, group arrangements, evaluation practices and time allocation. While the purpose of this paper is to prove that Target teaching model indeed can play a positive role in stimulating English learning motivation of English underachievers by solving three main research questions:Research Question1:For English underachievers, what are the main influential factors in their English learning?Research Question2:What are the advantages of Target teaching model compared with traditional teaching model?Research Question3:Can Target teaching model stimulate English learning motivation of English underachievers?249senior high school freshmen from the Attached Middle School of Fuyang Normal College participated in this survey. Questionnaires, interview and teaching experiments were carried out specifically among these students. After all the data collected, the researcher used SPSS to realize analysis and comparison. According to the results, it can be concluded that Target teaching model is useful and effective in stimulating English underachievers’learning motivation.The researcher believes that, compared with the former researches, this paper offers English teachers not only scientific knowledge, but also practical, specific, and guiding teaching measures. This is also the essence of this research.