An Investigation And Analysis Of Pupils’ Motivation In Learning English As A Foreign Language

National English Curriculum for Nine-Year Compulsory Education (2011) requires that teachers should give priority to cultivating pupils’ interest in English and good English learning motivation. Therefore, studying the English learning motivation of primary students is an important task which current English education workers are facing. Especially in the current background of new curriculum reform and "Ten Rules for Reducing Students’ Load", a study on pupils’English learning motivation is significant in practice to reach the level objectives and the overall target of National English Curriculum for Nine-Year Compulsory Education. And at the same time, understanding and stimulating students’English learning motivation has important theoretical and practical significance in guiding English teaching.This study is based on the primary school English education of Ganzhou City, guided by Bandera’s self-efficacy theory, Gardner’s socio-educational model and Dornyei’s three-level model of motivation, and quantitative research method was adapted. After compiling the self-reported questionnaire on pupils’English learning motivation, the author conducted an investigation into 502 pupils from two schools, and then made a detailed statistical analysis of 488 valid questionnaires. The survey is aimed at gaining the status quo of the level of pupils’ English learning motivation, exploring whether there is significant difference between different schools, genders or grades, and discussing the approach to stimulating and keeping students’ English learning motivation.The study results show that the total level of pupils’ English learning motivation in Ganzhou City is high, and there is significant difference in pupils’English learning motivation between schools, sexes and grades. The differences are specifically embodied in three aspects:the ELM level of urban primary school students is obviously higher than that of suburb primary school students; girls’ ELM level is clearly higher than boys’; third-graders show the highest level of English learning motivation, but when they reach higher grades, their motivation has been decreasing, with a sharp decrease especially during their third and fourth grades. This indicates that English teachers should pay much attention to those third-graders and fourth-graders, and grasp the critical period of cultivating and sustaining pupils’ English learning motivation. So during primary English teaching, teachers should follow pupils’ psychological development and cognitive laws, stimulate their learning interest, increase chances for them to gain a sense of achievement and develop their learning self-efficacy, so as to improve their English learning motivation and improve the efficiency of primary English teaching.