The Study On The Motivation Of The Migrant Workers’ Children In English Learning

With opening-up and the reform of China, together with the gradual progress of urbanization, rural labor force’s migration to urban areas has emerged.The education problem of migrant workers’ children in cities has already come into being. In recent years, the central government has been focusing on people’s livelihood and emphasizing the equity of education.Thus the problem of migrant workers’ children receiving compulsory education has attracted special attention, and a series of related documents have been introduced to solve the problem of compulsory education of migrant workers’ children.It fully shows that the education of migrant workers’ children has become the focus of attention to the people’s livelihood issues and important social issues.Most of the students in Wuhan Decai Middle School, where the author serves as an English teacher, are migrant workers’ children. The author has found English learning has always been their weak subject during her nearly 10 years’English teaching. Based on the investigation of the students in the experimental grade-two classes in Wuhan Decai middle school, this study is to understand the English learning motivations of migrant workers’ children in cities.On the basis of motivation theory and guided the learning motivation theory, the author studied and analyzed the related influence factors of their English learning motivation. The study, which select sixty-eight students in the above-mentioned classes as the research object, comparing with the data of the students of the same grade in Erqiao Middle School, using EXCEL2003 for statistical analysis of the questionnaire data, has carried out statistical analyses respectively from the three aspects of cultural motivation, instrumental motivation and situational motivation.Finally, combining with the result of statistical differences, the author interviewed some of the students to further understand the main factors affecting the students’ English learning motivations and to get inspirations.The study shows:1) The learning motivations of migrant workers’children are mainly influenced by the recent vision and learning interests in cultural motivation, personal development and information media in instrumental motivation, and the factor of teachers in situational motivation.2) Among those above, the influences of learning interests and the factor of teachers are particularly prominent. And nevertheless the lack of the orientation of correct vision and the confidence in English learning is the main problem of migrant workers’ children while learning.The results suggest that it is helpful for migrant workers’ children to learn English by distinguishing short-term from long-term motivations correctly as well as making use of them reasonably, providing relaxed learning environment, and encouraging them to put English into practical use.