Language Attitude And Language Learning Of Migrant Workers In A Factory In Shenzhen

Migrant workers is a very important social group in current China. Migrant workers’ language is a part of national language conditions of China. We can see more about China’s language conditions by investigate migrant workers’ language situation. The research object of this paper are the migrant workers from an electronics factory in Shenzhen. This paper discusses the migrant workers’language use, language attitude and language study according to the data from the questionnaire survey and conversational recordings.General Information of the migrant workers who fill in questionnaires are introduced in Chapter 2 firstly. Then I analyze the migrant workers’language use before they came to Shenzhen. The results show that the migrant workers who are younger and have better mandarin education speak mandarin more, on the contrary, the older ones speak their hometown dialect more. After they coming to Shenzhen for working, the migrant workers use mandarin in formal and unfamiliar situations, otherwise they use dialect in informal and familiar situations.The language attitudes to mandarin and dialect of the migrant workers in Shenzhen are discussed in Chapter 3. Migrant workers in Shenzhen hold that mandarin is the most important language in both function and social status. The factors impact the migrant workers’attitudes to mandarin include some objective factors and some subjective factors. Migrant workers in Shenzhen hold positive attitudes to their hometown dialect. Most of them approve their dialect and hope their children to learn the dialect well. This is decided by the status of dialect and the migrant workers’language habits.How the migrant workers in Shenzhen to learn mandarin and foreign language are introduced in Chapter 4. The migrant workers in Shenzhen learn mandarin are during their study in school or after they work in Shenzhen. According to investigation to the migrant workers in Shenzhen, none of them had ever taken part in any mandarin training or any mandarin level test. But most of the migrant workers in Shenzhen are very willing to take part in mandarin training in order to improve their mandarin speaking. So this paper makes some suggestions to how the migrant workers in Shenzhen to learn mandarin. Most migrant workers in Shenzhen have learned foreign language in the school, but they can’t use their foreign language well in their life. What’s more, they are willing to learn a kind of foreign language.The main innovative points and some deficiencies are listed in Chapter 5.