A Study Of The Interventions To Middle School Students’ English Learning Motivations

Middle school students’ English learning motivations are various and play veryimportant roles in their English learning, so learning motivations have always been thefocus on SLA and foreign language teaching. In recent years, the focus of teachingEnglish turns to how to learn from how to teach. The studies of learning motivationshave attracted even more attention of the researchers. Although many researches areabout students learning motivations, the studies of the interventions that influence onmiddle school students’ English learning motivations are less. As the academicachievement is directly influenced by learning motivations, stimulating and maintainingstudents’ learning motivations in English teaching are the important strategies for theteachers to help the middle school students improve their confidence on Englishlearning. Proper interventions of learning motivations may help middle school studentsto overcome their negative emotions on English learning and to improve their learningmotivations and interest.Based on the previous researches about the motivation of English learning from theperspectives of human psychology and the theories of learning motivations in SLA, thefollowing three research questions are put forward in this study:(1)What kind of English learning motivations do the middle school students have?(2)What is the correlation between these different English learning motivations?(3)Whether and how the interventions intervene in students’ English learningmotivations?This study approaches the problems by analyzing the statistics of middle schoolstudents’ questionnaires. According to relevant primary studies and the interviews withthe students, the author designs the questionnaire and analyzes the five types ofmotivations: inner motivation, achievement motivation, learning situation motivation, social responsibilities motivation and individual development motivation amongTaiyuan middle school students from training classes. The situations of English learningmotivations are further explored from4aspects: students’ schools, ages, genders andmarks. The study shows that most middle school students have higher achievementmotivation but social responsibilities motivation is low. Different students showdifferent levels of inner motivation, learning situation motivation and individualdevelopment motivation. Based on the data analysis of middle school students’ learningmotivation, the author designs motivation interventions from three aspects: learningsituations, achievement and social responsibilities.The study indicates that appropriate motivation interventions can influence middleschool students’ English learning motivations. Achievement motivation and learningsituations motivation are improved obviously after the three interventions. Socialresponsibilities motivation is improved a little but not obviously. The middle schoolstudents’ inner motivation and individual development are also improved and the innermotivation represents the most obviously. Though it is difficult to find out which factorsinfluence the students’ inner motivation the most, according to the three interventions,inner motivation is influenced by learning situations motivation, achievementmotivation and social responsibilities motivation. From the study of the interventionsinfluence on English learning motivation, the implications are concluded and somerecommendations for the teachers and students are given through the influence oninterventions and interviews of the students.