The Correlation Of Minority Students’ EnglishLearning Motivation And Their Ethnic Identity

With the rapid development of economy and culture in the world, English is widely used in various fields. For vocational school students, the mastery of English is important for them to find desirable jobs. Minority students have multiple identities, thus their English learning has some unique characteristics. Minority students in a vocational school are the objects of this study. The relationship between minority students’ English learning motivation and their ethnic identity is explored. The research attempts to answer three research questions: 1) What is the situation of minority students’ English leaning motivation and ethnic identity? 2) What is the relationship between minority students’ English learning motivation and their ethnic identity? 3) If minority students’ English learning motivation is related to their ethnic identity, what are the strategies that can be used to improve ethnic students’ English learning motivation?Both qualitative and quantitative researches are applied in the research. A questionnaire survey and a structured interview are carried out among minority students. The data collected by the questionnaire survey are analyzed through SPSS software 21.0, and a descriptive analysis result, a difference analysis result and a correlation analysis result are obtained. The results of this investigation indicate: Firstly, minority students’ English learning motivation ranges from a medium level to a low level. Their instrumental motivation is the strongest in degree. Female students’ English learning motivation is stronger than that of male students’ in degree. The fourth grade students’ instrumental motivation level is significantly higher than that of students of other grades. Secondly, minority students’ English learning motivation and ethnic identity have positive correlation. Thirdly, adding contents relating to ethnical culture in English classes is an effective strategy to motivate minority students to learn English.The study can provide some data to prove the relationship between minority students’ English learning motivation and their ethnic identity to some extent, and it has some implication for teaching minority students English.