A Study On English Learning Motivation Of Junior High School Students In Inland Tibetan Classes

In order to help Tibet to cultivate a large number of talents as soon as possible, the Tibetan classes (schools) were founded since1985in some inland provinces, cities whose advanced educational advantages can be used. The foundation of Inland Tibetan Classes is not only a special window of our country’s minority education policy, but also an important measure to support the development of our national minority education. As for the students of Inland Tibetan Classes, English is one of the major subjects, which plays a decisive role to students’ overall academic learning, so improving these students’ English level is one of the vital steps for enhancing the education of Inland Tibetan Classes. Students’ English learning motivation is an essential factor that can guide and influence the students’ English learning. This paper is to study these students’ performance in English learning motivation, their chief motivation types, the factors affecting their learning motivation, and explore the practical strategies that can improve their English learning motivation to further enhance the students’ English level in Inland Tibetan Classes.Directed by the theories of English learning motivation, this study mainly focuses on the following three questions:1) what is the chief English learning motivation of the students in Inland Tibetan Classes?2) what the main differences of these students’ learning motivation among different grades, between different genders?3) what factors are affecting Tibetan students’ English learning motivation? To solve these problems, this study makes Tibetan students in Xi’an Chanba No.1Middle School as the research objects. It conducts the survey of sampling questionnaires to study70Tibetan students among three grades,7classes to analyze their English learning motivation. In addition, the author uses work convenience to carry out classroom observation and communicate with Tibetan students after class, and interview10Tibetan students. They are picked up as typical cases that are consisted of top students, average students and underachievers to understand Tibetan students’ English learning motivation deeply. This study adopted the questionnaires made by Qiu Weiqin (2005). With the aid of the EXCEL, the data is categorized and analyzed. The results showed:First of all, Tibetan junior middle school students have a strong motivation to learn English in general. They have a strong desire to treat English as a tool, and their integrative motivation (For example, they think their English teacher likes them so that they study English hard) is very low.Besides, The Tibetan students among different grades, between different genders have different learning motivations. In conclusion, the students’ learning motivations in lower grades are higher than the students in higher grades, and the female students’ learning motivations are higher than male students.What’s more, the Tibetan students affected most by the factors of learning attitudes and learning environment. Because the Tibetan students have fewer opportunities to contact with something new than Han students, their reactions toward new things are also slow, and even it’s hard to know the influence of learning English on their life. Besides, lacking of parental supervision and encouragement is also a big issue. Consciously, these factors will affect the improvement of their motivation in English learning. The students in Inland Tibetan Classes may have stronger English learning motivation intensity and simpler motivation, because they all live in school which is far away from their homes, and have less influence by the outside world. They affect most by the school environment and the school’s teaching management, which certificates the positive correlation between students’ English learning motivation and teachers’ teaching strategies.In conclusion, the study mainly focuses on the analysis of the chief English learning motivation types for the students in Inland Tibetan Classes, the influential factors for their English learning motivation. Based on the previous researches in this field and combined with the actual situation and characteristics of the Tibetan students, some suggestions are proposed to improve Tibetan students’ English learning motivation. The researcher hopes that this study and English teaching suggestions can provide help for students and English teachers in Inland Tibetan Classes and related future researches.This paper is divided into the following five parts:In Chapter1, the background of the thesis is presented, followed by the purpose, the significance of the thesis, and the organization of the thesis.Chapter2elaborates literature reviews which can be divided into three parts: motivation and language learning; major motivation theories in second\foreign language learning aboard; motivation studies in China.Chapter3explains the research that contains the research aims and questions, subjects of the research, instruments of the study, and data-collection.Chapter4aims to make analysis based on the data drawn from the scores of the questionnaires and the interview.Chapter5is a conclusion, including main findings, suggestions, limitations of the study, and suggestions for further studies.