A Study On Primary School Students' Motivation Of English Learning

English is not only a language in the global village but also a symbol of the development and civilization of a nation;therefore,the learning of this language has been strategically important for a nation.Chinese language is greatly different from the English one,then the learning of such a different thing won't be an easy thing.There are policies and standards to guide the language learning;furthermore,more and more young learners join the trend of the English language study.However,quite a lot of students still lose their way in learning this foreign language.There are many studies focused on this issue and many findings have contributed to the improvement of language learning.Among them the study on learning motivation has aroused the author's interest as she believes that interest is the best teacher.Most studies on the motivation of English learning focus on middle school students or college students but few turn the eye on that of primary school students;therefore,this is the specialty of this thesis.The author did a research in two schools to answer the three questions proposed by her in the hope of making another contribution to this filed.It is reported that the motivation of children' English learning will be influenced by three factors: family environment,individual attitudes and the teacher.Family environment mainly concerns about the parents' attention on and intention to the child's English study;individual attitudes refer to children' own efforts on and intention to the language learning;the third factor--teacher includes the teacher's care of the children and his teaching methods.Motivation strongly affects students' ability of the second language acquisition as it can directly influence the students' learning strategies and goals setting.Therefore,the study on language learning motivation will be one of the keys to improve the pupils' English proficiency.The research was made in two schools in Xining city and the author named them as School A and School B.The research instruments include tests,questionnaires,interviews and classroom observations.180 students from School A and School B were selected as the research subjects.The thesis consists of five parts.The first part introduces the significance and the purpose of the research;the second part reveals the theoretical bases which support the research and the related researches made both at home and abroad;the third part focuses on the research procedures;the fourth part analyzes the research data,which is also the core of the whole thesis;the last part is the conclusion,in which the author tries to list several research findings and proposed future suggestions to the similar study after admitting the limitations of the thesis.